Transcriber’s Note:
The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.
Frontispiece
Plait Merchants trading with the French Prisoners of War at Norman Cross
From a painting by A. C. Cooke in the Town Hall, Luton
PRISONERS OF WAR IN BRITAIN
1756 TO 1815
A RECORD OF THEIR LIVES, THEIR ROMANCE AND THEIR SUFFERINGS
PREFACE
Two influences have urged me to make a study ofthe subject of the prisoners of war in Britain.
First: the hope that I might be able to vindicateour country against the charge so insistently broughtagainst her that she treated the prisoners of war inher custody with exceptional inhumanity.
Second: a desire to rescue from oblivion a notunimportant and a most interesting chapter of ournational history.
Whether my researches show the foregoing chargeto be proven or not proven remains for my readersto judge. I can only say that I have striven to theutmost to prevent the entrance of any national biasinto the presentation of the picture.
As to the second influence. It is difficult to accountfor the fact that so interesting a page of our historyshould have remained unwritten. Even authors offiction, who have pressed every department of historyinto their service, have, with about half a dozenexceptions, neglected it as a source of inspiration,whilst historical accounts are limited to Mr. BasilThomson’s Story of Dartmoor Prison, Dr. T. J. Walker’sNorman Cross, and Mr. W. Sievwright’s Perth Depôt,all of which I have been permitted to make use of,and local handbooks.
Yet the sojourn among us of thousands of warivprisoners between the years 1756 and 1815 must havebeen an important feature of our national life—especiallythat of officers on parole in our countrytowns; despite which, during my quest in manycounties of England, Scotland, and Wales, I have beensurprised to find how rapidly and completely thememory of this sojourn has faded; how faintly even itlingers in local tradition; how much haziness thereis, even in the minds of educated people, as to who orwhat prisoners of war were; and how the process ofgathering information has been one of almost literalexcavation and disinterment. But the task has beena great delight. It has introduced me to all sorts andconditions of interesting people; it has taken me to allsorts of odd nooks and corners of the country; andit has drawn my attention to a literature which is notless valuable because it is merely local. I need notsay that but for the interest and enthusiasm of privateindividuals I cou