The Depot for Prisoners of War at Norman Cross, Huntingdonshire. 1796 to 1816

“The Transport Office is a newly created Board, and was instituted in July 1794 at first for the superintendence of the Transport Service only; but to that employment has since been added the management of the Prisoners of War, in health, at home and abroad.” [7 - July 1797—Reports House of Commons, “18th Report of Committee of Finance.”]

To this department all communications in reference to the prisoners of war had to be addressed, and through them all information reached the Admiralty.  There was another special department of the Admiralty, that for the care of the sick and hurt, into whose charge the prisoners of war passed when they ceased to be “in health.”

The following extract gives further details of the Transport Department, on which for twenty years the lot of the prisoners of war so greatly depended.  The paragraph was written in 1803, when the war was supposed to be at an end.

“Transport Office, Dorset Square, Westminster, established in August 1794, for the purpose of conducting the transport business which had hitherto been transacted by the Navy Office; it has also the care of the prisoners of war.  It was at first managed by three commissioners, but the business having much increased two more were added in the year 1795.  The salary of each commissioner is a thousand a year.  They have under them, several resident agents at the different sea-ports both at home and abroad, to superintend the particular service of embarking, re-embarking of troops, etc., and seeing that the contracts made in this particular service are strictly adhered to.  These agents are captains and lieutenants of the Royal Navy.  There are also several agents afloat.  The captains have one guinea a day; the lieutenants fifteen shillings, and nineteen shillings more per month for a servant.  At the conclusion of the war in 1802, the Board was reduced to three commissioners; Capt. Schank retired on a pension of £500 per annum, and Joseph Hunt, Esq., was removed to the ordnance as clerk of the deliveries.

Schomberg, Naval Chronology, chap. v., p. 213.

In order properly to understand the establishment of the Depot at Norman Cross, it is necessary to briefly review the events which led up to it.  It arose at a very momentous era in our history.  It was not officially called a barracks, or a prison, but a Depot.  At that time there were few barracks in England, practically none, and what we term garrison towns were very scarce.  Our regular army was abroad fighting, and the internal defence was in the hands of the Militia and Yeomanry.  Service in the former was compulsory, but substitutes could be purchased, so that it is easy to judge who would actually serve, especially at a time when scarcity and high prices were the rule, while the Militia were well fed.  In the Yeomanry were enrolled the gentry and well-to-do persons of each locality; this was a very large force.  There was a special troop of Norman Cross Yeomanry, in which the farmers and others from the neighbouring villages gave their services, and there were one or more troops in Peterborough and the neighbouring towns.  The duty mainly consisted in putting down the various small riots that arose in different parts of the country.  In their travels they were “billeted” on the publicans and the public at a tariff fixed by the Government, and which, not being very extravagant, gave rise to much dissatisfaction, oppression, and fraud.

As the foreign wars continued, the number of prisoners sent to Britain multiplied and the military duty increased.  In 1793 the Supplementary Militia Act was passed, and it was determined to spend about £2,000,000 in erecting barracks, and out of this sum Norman Cross was built.  It was always hoped that peace was at hand, and the prisoners of war had hitherto been confined not in places built for, or exactly suitable for, their retention, but in fortresses or castles or ships, and when these became overcrowded, in empty warehouses or similar buildings specially hired.  It was not considered safe to keep prisoners of war in sea-ports, or even near the coast.  Ireland was in a state of rebellion, and had to be kept down with a strong military force, hence the great Depot at Kinsale was formed.

We must bear in mind that at this period the Parliamentary Reports were very closely watched by our enemies, and information which might be of service to them was suppressed and consequently is sought for in vain to-day.  The country was in a state of turmoil, the Government departments were overladen to a terrible degree, and red tape, far more than now, reigned supreme.  These conditions led to careless supervision and defalcations even in high positions; the Barrack Master-General, General Oliver de Lancey, was dismissed from the Army after a Commission had investigated his accounts.  He was responsible for Norman Cross, and it is in accordance with the finding of the commission referred to in this preface that no official account of the original cost can be found.  The ground was purchased from Lord Carysfort. [8 - In 1803 the Earl of Carysfort of the Irish Peerage took the title of Lord Carysfort of Norman Cross, as a Peer of the United Kingdom.]  It is from measurements of foundations remaining on the site, from plans, and from scattered and brief references to reports, of which the originals cannot up to the present be found, that a history and description of the original buildings can be given.  They were begun in haste, hurriedly built, and in a continual state of repair and alteration during the whole of their existence.

In 1793 a large sum of money was voted by Parliament for barracks both permanent and temporary.  A Barrack Master-General had already been appointed.  The first measure taken by this official was the conversion of existing buildings to meet their new object—viz. the safe custody of the captive soldiers and sailors, and the provision of suitable accommodation for lodging and maintaining them and the troops who guarded them.  Even in the first three years of the war these efforts were barely sufficient to meet the requirements, and in February 1796 the matter of prison accommodation had become most urgent.  The Dutch Fleet was at sea, and a meeting with the English Fleet being probable, it was reported to the Admiralty, in reply to their inquiries as to the means of disposing of the large number of prisoners expected in the event of a successful battle, that Porchester Castle was capable of containing 2,000 men, and the Dutch prisoners could be kept separate from the French.  Forton would be of little use, as not more than 300 extra could be accommodated; it was already full, 6,000 being incarcerated in the hospital there.

On the 20th June of the same year it was reported that the number of prisoners had increased, until every prison was overcrowded.  At Mill Prison, Plymouth, calculated to hold 3,300, there were confined 3,513, and in consequence of the report 200 were transferred from this prison into a ship; this in turn also became crowded, and another ship had to be pressed into the service.  Fresh prisoners still poured into the country.  Sir Ralph Abercrombie reported that he was sending upwards of 4,000 from the West Indies, and the urgency was such that it became absolutely necessary to construct with the utmost rapidity a new prison.

In selecting a site, several requirements had to be considered.  To be suitable for its purpose the prison must be within easy reach of a port, in order that prisoners might be landed, and conveyed rapidly and at small cost to their place of confinement.  At the same time it must not be too near an unfortified port, as such a situation would offer facilities for escape, and there would be danger of support from the sea, in the event of a general rising, and a combined attempt to restore to the fighting ranks of the enemy the thousands of captive soldiers and sailors who were in captivity hors de combat.  The site must be healthy, well supplied with water, and conveniently situated for the provision of the necessaries of life—and further, it must be near trunk roads, for convenience of administration, and in order that in the event of a rising, troops sufficient to quell the mutinous prisoners could be concentrated on the spot.

The site chosen for the Norman Cross Depot possessed all these advantages.  It was situated on the Great North Road, one of the most important in the country, the Ermine Street of the Romans, and it was only seventy-six miles from London.  The situation was altogether suitable from a sanitary point of view, although later, at a period when the bulk were ill clad, the poor half-naked French, accustomed to a warmer climate, complained bitterly of its cold and exposed position.  An abundant supply of excellent water could be obtained by sinking deep wells, the surrounding country was agricultural, the land fertile and well stocked; there were small towns near from which supplies could be obtained, and, finally, the transports could be brought to the ports of Yarmouth, Lynn, or Wisbech, and the prisoners landed there could be cheaply conveyed by water to Yaxley, Stanground, and Peterborough, all of which places were within a few miles’ march from the prison gates.  As an alternative the prisoner could march direct from the ports to the prison.

On the 8th December 1796 the Transport Commissioners applied to the Barrack Office for estimates for a building to contain 10,000 prisoners, but official red tape could not be disregarded, and the Barrack Master-General replied that as the Admiralty had not authorised the construction of any such buildings, he could not give any opinion on the subject.  In the Transport Office, however, were officials who recognised the urgency of the situation, and when at length on the 13th February 1797 the Barrack Master-General wrote to the Transport Board, referring to his letter of the 19th December of the previous year, and asking for an order for the building, he was too late.  The Transport Commissioners were already at work, the prison had been planned, and the work, started in the previous December, was, under the direction of William Adams, Master Carpenter to the Board of Ordnance, already making such rapid progress that portions were nearly complete.

The material selected for the structure was wood; this was economical, and suited to the temporary character of the building.  No one, however pessimistic, thought in 1796 that the prison would be required to house prisoners of war, with only two short intervals, for another nineteen years.  Such wooden buildings, the outer walls constructed of a strong framework, with feather-edged boards overlapping one another covering and casing in the framed work, were much used in domestic architecture at this period, and many houses thus constructed may be seen in the neighbourhood of London.  A good example of a village mansion of this kind may be still seen in Lower Sydenham, where it is at present occupied by Lady Grove, the widow of Sir George Grove.  The wooden buildings were erected on a buried brick or stone foundation.

Above all, wood lent itself to rapidity of construction, which was an urgent and essential requirement at this crisis.

When nine years later, in 1805, fresh accommodation for the ever-increasing number of prisoners flowing into Great Britain was necessary, and Dartmoor was selected as the site for a new prison, granite was the material adopted for its construction.  The stone was obtainable on the spot, while the price of timber was prohibitive, in consequence of the blockading of the Prussian ports. [9 - The price of timber had risen in December 1806 to £8 8s. a load; at one date the contractor complained that even by paying £12 a load he could not obtain fifty loads in Plymouth.  The Story of Dartmoor Prison, Basil Thomson.  (London: William Heinemann, 1907.)]  The granite prison at Dartmoor, commenced in 1805, received its first batch of prisoners in May 1809.  The stone building took four years to build, it served its original purpose for seven years, stood empty for thirty-four years, and is at the present time, and has been for sixty-one years, a convict prison.  The wooden buildings of Norman Cross, commenced in 1796, were ready for use in four months, served their purpose for eighteen years, and were rased to the ground in 1816.

The earliest official information, as to the plan and the buildings of the Depot, is found in a long report by General Beathand dated 13th January 1797; later official reports and documents, paragraphs in the newspapers, and other sources of information show that the original plans were modified and expanded as the work of the prison progressed.

The timber framework of the building was made in London, and was carted down to Norman Cross, where 500 carpenters and others were employed day and night, and seven days a week, those who would not work on Sunday being discharged.  The erection of the prisons, the accessory offices, and the barracks for the Military Guard progressed very rapidly, and on the 4th February (nine days before the Barrack Master-General applied for the order to start the work!) such progress had been made that the Admiralty instructed Mr. Poore, a surveyor, to proceed to Stilton “to survey the buildings erected near there for the confinement of prisoners of war.”  He did so, and reported that a portion of the building was already complete.  General Nicolls, the officer commanding the district, was sanguine enough to report on the 13th February that the prison at Norman Cross would be ready in about three weeks for the reception of prisoners from the citadel (Plymouth).

This estimate of the date when the barracks would be finished was too sanguine, although the work was being carried out with all possible speed.  By the end of January the sum of £6,000 had been paid to and disbursed by Mr. Adams in wages alone. [10 - The sum of £14,800 was paid to Adams between the 1st January 1797 and 29th November 1797 in the following instalments:The total amount paid to 19th November 1797 for the Norman Cross Prison was £34,518 11s. 3d., for Hull £22,600, for Lewes £12,400, and for Colchester £15,620.]

The total amount paid on account of the Norman Cross Depot up to the 19th November 1797 being so large, while the large expenditure on the alterations of old prisons and fortresses in the country was going on simultaneously, it is not surprising that on the 14th April 1797 a question was asked by an economist in the House of Commons as to the extraordinary expenditure on barracks; nor, looking to the rate at which the building of the Norman Cross Depot was being pushed forward, can we be surprised at the curt reply of the Secretary of State: “Extraordinary exertions involve extraordinary expenses.”

There is reason to believe, however, that the question was not put without good reason.  The want of method and the overlapping of departments were not conducive to clear statements of accounts.  The action of the newly appointed Transport Board in commencing the building of the prison, while the Barrack Master was refusing to undertake this urgent work because he considered that official routine had been neglected, has already been alluded to.  The Barrack Master’s Accounts were very confused.  In the Records of the Audit Office (Roll 354, Bundle 146, Declared Accounts) the total expenditure by the Barrack Master at Norman Cross, from 1st January 1797 to Christmas 1802, is only £5,175 3s., and it is evident that the sum of £34,518 11s. 3d. does not appear in the Barrack Master’s account.  The total expenditure of his department amounted, when an inquiry was held, in 1802 to £1,324,680 12s. 5d. and there was a deficiency of £40,296 9s. 11¼d.

Out of the confused chaos of figures there emerges the interesting fact that, between the 25th December 1796 and the 24th June 1797, £390 10s. 1d. was spent on coals supplied to the Norman Cross Depot!  A large coal bill for half a year, when we consider that in none of the blocks occupied by the prisoners, excepting the hospital blocks, was there any artificial heat.

As the work went on, there were, as has been already stated, various alterations in the plans; thus in February and March 1797 it was ordered, that a hospital for the sick should be provided by adapting some of the blocks originally intended as prisons to this purpose, and that increased accommodation for prisoners should be obtained by adding a storey to each block in course of erection, in preference to multiplying the buildings.

On 21st March a payment was made to Mr. Poore of £142 2s. for his services in surveying and settling the establishment at Norman Cross.  This shows that within three months from the commencement of the buildings they were in a sufficiently advanced condition to make the consideration of the necessary staff for the administration of the prison when it should be opened, a matter requiring Mr. Poore’s immediate attention.

By the 25th March the staff had been engaged, and on that day it was reported that a section of the buildings, sufficient for the custody of 1,840 prisoners, was ready for their reception.  On the day before this report was sent, a portion of the military barracks had been occupied by the small number of troops considered sufficient for the moment.  These marched in on the 24th, and were ready to mount guard over the expected prisoners.

The work of building went rapidly on during the rest of the year, and nine months from its commencement Mr. Craig, a principal architect of the department, was sent down for the final inspection.  As will be seen by the footnote, page 14, payments to W. Adams, Chief Carpenter, went on up to 29th November 1797, when we may assume that the prison in its first form was complete.

From the time of its occupation, this prison was, like others of its class, known as a “depot”—“The Norman Cross Depot for Prisoners of War.”  Locally it was frequently spoken of and written about as the Norman Cross Prison, or the Norman Cross Barracks, or even Yaxley or Stilton Barracks.  The term depot included the prison proper, the barracks, and all other Government buildings.  In the succeeding chapter this Depot is fully described, and its necessary establishment touched upon. [11 - As illustrating the hardship which, already in its fourth year, this war had imposed upon the nation, the following extract from the report furnished to the Transport Office, by Captain Woodriff, R.N., agent to the Commissioners, of the average price of provisions and the rate of wages in the district in which the Depot had been established, during the time that the prison and barracks were erecting, may be of interest.  Mutton was 10½d. per lb., beef 1s. per lb., bread 1s. per quartern loaf.  Carpenters’ wages were 12s. per week, shoemakers’ 10s., bakers’ 9s., blacksmiths’ 8s., and husbandmen 7s.  Starvation wages were then a literal truth.  Four years later from a Parliamentary Report we find the Government granting a bounty on all imported wheat, in order to keep the price down to £5 a quarter, other grain being treated in the same way.  We can well understand that, as the price of provisions went up, and the taxation increased with the prolongation of the war (a war which, however it originated, was prolonged for years by the ambitious projects of Buonaparte for the aggrandisement of himself and of France), the animosity not only of the actual combatants, but also of the suffering men, women, and children, steadily grew against the man and the nation whom they regarded as the authors of all their misery.]

CHAPTER II

THE PRISON AND ITS ESTABLISHMENT

It is no flattery to a prisoner to gild his dungeon.

    Calderon, Fortunas de Andromed et Persus.

The following description of the Depot is founded on personal observations of the site, on contemporary plans and records, of greater or less accuracy, on the meagre information which could be obtained from the few old people who had in their early days seen and known the place, and who were still alive in 1894, when the materials for the lecture on which this narrative is based were collected, and on facts recorded by recent writers the accuracy of which can be verified.

The site of the Depot was a space of forty-two acres, situated in the angle formed where, seventy-six miles from London, “the Great North Road” is joined, five miles from Peterborough by the old Coach Road from Boston and East Lincolnshire.

The ground rises here, by a rapid slope from the south and east, to a height of 120 feet above the level of the adjoining Fens, and it was in this elevated and healthy spot that the prison and barracks were built.  It had been ascertained that by sinking deep wells an abundant supply of good water could be obtained, and it is said that there were about thirty such wells, although in the best extant plan of the Depot nineteen only are shown.  Some of these are still in use at the present day, and each well is nearly 100 feet deep.  Great attention was paid to the sanitary arrangements, a very necessary matter, when one considers that it was resolved suddenly to concentrate in one spot a population (including prisoners and garrison) of nearly 8,000 adult males, who were to live for several years on about forty acres of ground.  There is a legend that the site is even now honeycombed with sewers, and that within recent years a ferret turned into one of them, which had been accidentally opened, at once took out 150 yards of line.  This, like many other traditions, is not, I believe, founded on fact.  The main feature of the sanitary arrangements was that all refuse should be removed in soil carts, without the intervention of drains, cess-pools, or middens.  For further information on this and many other matters connected with the structure of the Depot, the reader may study the Report of a Survey by Mr. Fearnall in 1813.  It is evident from this report that the maintenance and repair of the buildings had been greatly neglected during the seventeen years which had elapsed between their erection and the date of the report. [12 - Appendix A.]

The Peterborough Natural History Society, which has in its museum the finest collection in Great Britain, if not in the world, of straw marquetry work, bone carving, and other artistic manufactures executed by the French prisoners, possesses three plans of the prison.  The earliest of these is a pictorial plan (Plate II., Fig. 1, Plan A), which was bought at a sale at Washingley Hall, and which I therefore call the Washingley Plan.  It was presented in 1906 by the Mayor, T. Lamplugh, Esq.; it is an east elevation.  Another (Plate II., Fig. 2, Plan B) of about the same date is a ground plan, and was presented by Miss Hill, the daughter of the late Mr. John Hill.  This is taken from the west.  Mr. Hill, who was born in 1803, and was thus only thirteen when the prison was demolished, was said to have drawn the plan himself; if he did so, it must have been copied from one made a few years before he was born, as the plan is that of the Depot in the first period of the war, which came to a close in March 1802.

Both these plans are of a very early date in the history of the prison.  A third (Plate II., Fig. 3, Plan C) is that which belonged to Major Kelly, who, as Captain Kelly, was Brigade-Major at the time when the prison was closed; this includes a pictorial plan, or bird’s-eye view, with the Peterborough Road on the south to the left hand and the North Road above, a ground plan, and above this the north elevation of the whole group of buildings.  It is of later date, probably about 1803–4, the commencement of the second period of the war.  A fourth plan (Plate II., Fig. 4, Plan D) was made by Lieut. Macgregor of the West Kent Militia, and dedicated to the officers of his regiment which was quartered at Norman Cross in 1813.  This was engraved and published by Sylvester of the Strand.  An almost perfect copy of the print is in the possession of the Reverend Father Robert A. Davis; it shows the Depot in its final state two years before Waterloo and three years before it was demolished.

In the Musée de l’Armée at the Hôtel des Invalides in Paris, is a model of the Depot, the work of a French prisoner named Foulley, who was confined at Norman Cross five years and three months.  M. Foulley constructed the model after his return to France.  It represents the prison as it appeared on the occasion of the rejoicings at the departure of the first detachment of prisoners to France after the entry of the allied armies into Paris, and the abdication of Buonaparte in 1814.  By the courtesy of General Niox, the Director of the Museum, and of his Adjutant, Lieut. Sculfort, a photograph of the model has been taken for me; this is reproduced at page 251, chapter xii., where the final clearing of the prison is described.  The model corresponds in its main features with the plans which I have enumerated.  It is on a large scale, beautifully executed, and its production must have required months of hard work.  It is the only plan, or model, which shows a prisoners’ theatre in the centre of the south-east quadrangle.

M. Foulley’s model is incorrect in certain details.  It represents the prison wall as quadrilateral inclosing a square, instead of an octagonal space.  It omits the large and deep embrasures, in the recesses of which each of the four gates of the prison stood.  The wide fosse which encircled the prison at the foot of and within the wall is omitted, nor is there a sufficient space left between the wall and the prison buildings to admit of such a fosse being shown in the model.

Outside the wall of the prison M. Foulley had to rely probably on the description of others, as from within the wall the prisoners could only gaze at its dismal brick surface.  Of what was beyond he could have no personal knowledge during the long years of his captivity, unless he was fortunate enough on occasions to be a delegate to the market without the Eastern Gate.  Hence probably it arises that the buildings representing the quarters of the military guarding the prison are huddled together, in confused order, which bears no relation to that which was their actual position.

Although the model is not, as a whole, made accurately to scale, the reader will appreciate its size from the fact that the caserns are modelled on a scale of about 1 to 171—the actual length of each casern was 100 feet, the length in the model is nearly 7 inches.  A key plan of the model and M. Foulley’s description are given with the photograph in chapter xii., p. 251.

To avoid confusion in following the description, the reader must bear in mind that the Washingley Pictorial Plan, Major Kelly’s plans, and Lieut. Macgregor’s plan are all east elevations—that is, the observer is supposed to face the west, with the Peterborough Road to his left hand—whereas in the plan copied by Mr. Hill the figures and their references are all placed to be read as the observer looks east, with the Peterborough Road on his right hand; therefore the left-hand bottom corner (where the military hospital was situated) in Mr. Hill’s Plan is the right-hand upper corner in the three other plans.

The site was a right-angled oblong, with a small space sliced off at the north-west angle.  It measured in its long diameter from east to west 500 yards (1,500 feet)—that is, 60 yards more than a quarter of a mile—while across from north to south it was 412 yards (1,236 feet), or 28 yards short of a quarter of a mile.  The space enclosed was 42 acres, 7 poles, which is about six times the area of Lincoln’s Inn Fields, London, and about four times that of Trafalgar Square.  To the south it was bounded in its whole length by the Peterborough Road, on its other three sides it was surrounded with fields.  A strip of land (B B in Mr. Hill’s plan), crossed by a wide roadway leading to the West Barracks, and varying in depth from 125 yards at the Norman Cross corner to 40 yards at the north-west corner, intervened between the western boundary of the site and the North Road.  The prison itself occupied 22 acres in the centre of the space.  It was enclosed by an octagonal brick wall.  Originally the structure was a strong stockade fence, but about the year 1805 the fence was replaced by the brick wall, of which 30 yards are still standing.

The two east and two west sides of the octagonal space, which was the prison proper, were longer than the two north and two south sides; the long diameter of the octagon therefore ran across that of the site, extending almost to its north and south limits, while the short diameter stopping short of the boundary by 300 feet, left, east and west, ample room for the barracks of the military garrison and for other buildings.

In the very centre of the site, which is also the centre of the prison, was an octagonal block house, mounted with cannon.  This is represented in the illustration, a photograph of one of several models made by the prisoners.  This model is in the possession of Colonel Strong of Thorpe Hall, by whose grandfather Archdeacon Strong it was bought from its maker at the prison.

The frontispiece is from a sketch of the centre of the prison, by Captain George Lloyd of the Second West York Militia, taken in 1809.  The original is in the collection of the United Service Institution, Whitehall; it shows the accuracy of the model of the block house.  In describing the various courts and buildings, it is best to start from the centre, and to trace the arrangement of the parts of the Depot round this point.  Symmetrically arranged round this block house, and commanded by its guns, were four quadrangular courts, each strongly fenced by a high stockade fence.  The area of each of these courts was about 3½ acres; they were separated from one another by four cross roads, each about twenty feet wide.  These roads met in the centre, where the corners of the quadrangular courts were cut off to form the octagonal open space in which stood the block house.

Each quadrangle contained four wooden two-storied barracks, or caserns, 100 feet long and 22 feet wide, roofed with red tiles, the shallowness of their depth from back to front adding to their apparent height.  The sixteen buildings faced the east, eight with their outer ends to the south fence, and eight with their outer end to the north fence.  The four caserns in each square were placed one behind the other, leaving between each block and the next in front a space which was strongly fenced off at either end, forming an enclosure about 100 by 70 feet, in which the prisoners of each casern were confined when the gates opening into the quadrangle, or airing-ground, were locked at sunset.  Each casern was constructed to form the dwelling-place of about 500 prisoners, who slept in rows of hammocks, closely packed in tiers one above the other.  It is almost certain that each of the two floors in these caserns was divided by partitions into three chambers, as at the sale each of the sixteen was sold in three lots—the north end, the centre, and the south end.  The north end of the hinder block in the north-east quadrangle was bought on the 25th September 1816 by Mr. Dan Ruddle for £32. [13 - Auctioneer’s Catalogue, (Jacobs’ Peterborough, 1816).]  He re-erected it for workshops in his building-yard, where it still stands, and it is thus possible to-day, to look upon the north end of the casern (No. 13, or letter M), which stood behind the three blocks adapted for the prisoners’ hospital, and which in the second period of the war [14 - M. Foulley’s description of his model on Key Plan, Pl. xx., p. 251.] was occupied by the French petty officers and by civilians who were captured, and whose position did not entitle them to parole.

In the south-east quadrangle, which was on the right of the central south entrance to the prison from the Peterborough Road, there were, in addition to these four caserns and their necessary offices, the superintendent’s, or agent’s offices, a storehouse, a room set apart for the clerks and other officials, a cooking-house, and, as in each of the other quadrangles, two turnkeys’ lodges.

These smaller buildings in each quadrangle were in a court, cut off from the large space which formed the prisoners’ airing-ground by stockade fencing similar to that surrounding the whole quadrangle, the turnkeys’ lodges being immediately behind this fence.  The only exit from the part of the quadrangle occupied by the prisoners was through this court, the gate situated in the inner stockade fence being between the two turnkeys’ lodges, facing another in the main fence of the square, which opened into the road between the quadrangles.  There were in each quadrangle three wells, two in the airing-courts near the caserns, and one in the enclosed space in which were the accessory buildings.

In the south-western quadrangle, in addition to the caserns, the storehouse, and the cooking-house, there was a straw barn, from which, whenever necessary, fresh straw was served out for the prisoners’ palliasses.  In the enclosed court near the turnkeys’ lodges was the black hole, where prisoners were confined for gross offences.  This den of misery contained twelve cells, each secured by bars and padlocks, and had a cramped strongly fenced airing-court in front of it.

The north-eastern quadrangle was mainly given up to the hospital.  Of the four caserns in the early years of the Depot, two, but later three, were fitted up for the reception of the sick and wounded and for the accommodation of the surgeon and assistant surgeons, the matron sempstress and the hospital attendants.  Of the hospital blocks, one was set apart for the officers and other prisoners of similar social status.  In the enclosed court behind the turnkeys’ lodges were the special accessory buildings of the hospital, and in the corner behind the caserns was the mortuary, where, between their death and their burial, were laid the bodies of 1,770 unhappy men whose fate it was to end their captivity in a foreign grave.