Chapter VIII: The Sick and the Hospital

Dangers stand thick through all the ground,
To push us to the tomb;
And fierce diseases wait around,
To hurry mortals home.

DR. WATTS.

THE general health of the prisoners was good, but occasional epidemics led to a temporary very heavy mortality, the miserable men who had sold their rations and clothes to provide money for gambling dying off so rapidly, and in such numbers, that no room could be found for them in the well-equipped hospital.

In November 1800 there broke out an appalling epidemic, which raged for five months and then began to abate; the daily average of deaths of the prisoners at this Depot during the four worst months of the pestilence was over eight. In this epidemic, 1800–01, during the six months with the heaviest mortality, 1,020 died. In the corresponding six months, 1801–02, when the mortality had been almost restored to what was normal, the deaths were only twenty. The staff could evidently not keep abreast of their work, the hospital was full to overflowing, and many of “Les Misérables” died in their hammocks in the caserns.

Enteric or typhoid fever was not known as a distinct disease until the last century was well advanced, and the epidemic was probably typhoid to which “Les Misérables” succumbed at the first shock, the cause of their death being registered as debility. It is a safe conjecture that some of the wells had been infected. That the authorities did not take this tragic visitation, without efforts to cope with it, is evidenced by short notes among the certificates of death; delicate prisoners and invalids were apparently sent to France, and others to special hulks. How inadequate was the meagre staff to meet an exceptional case such as this is proved by the fact that twenty-nine prisoners in the first four months of the year were taken out of their hammocks, dead or speechless, and could not be identified for entry in the register, of which a copy was regularly supplied to the French Government; they were buried unknown. It was not until the epidemic had abated, and a special investigation had been held, that Captain Woodriff was able to establish the identity of these twenty-nine persons; a special list of them is inserted in the register, and another list of five who were found to be alive in prison, and who had been returned as dead owing to mistaken identity.

In 1804 the total mortality among all the prisoners for the whole year was only eighteen. On 1st January 1801 nine died in one day, and to this day’s entry there is added the explanatory note, “These men being in the habit of selling their bedding and rations, died of debility in this prison, there not being room in the hospital to receive them.” This is a terrible indictment against someone, even though the victims were the lost bestial creatures whose fuller history was written at Dartmoor—prisoners ostracised by their comrades, banished to some one compartment of the prison, apparently No. 13, and left to die there by their compatriots who occupied the same quadrangle. This single day’s record justifies what was said in the introductory remarks as to the lot of prisoners of war, but—_Laus Deo_—the advance in humanity, and the consequent change of opinion as to the suitable treatment of prisoners of all kinds, and the progress of hygienic, medical, and other sciences, make it inconceivable that, under any circumstances, similar tragedies could now occur in any European country.

No exact percentage of mortality for the seventeen years during which the prison was occupied can be given, the records being incomplete, and the population of the prison changing continually from week to week and month to month, owing to the accession of fresh prisoners and the departure of others, due to death, transference to other prisons, or exchange. The reports to the Commissioners for the sick and hurt, except in the incomplete bundles of certificates, do not appear until the second period of the war, although the sick and hurt passed at once under the care of this Board as soon as they ceased to be prisoners in health. The actual number of deaths certified is 1,770, of which 1,000 occurred during the epidemic 1800–01, the remainder being distributed over the remaining fifteen years in which the prison was occupied.

It is possible that the original register kept at this prison before the Peace of Amiens, 1797–1802, might have been sent to France and may yet be found, but at present separate bundles of single certificates are for many years the only records from which these figures are obtained. The total number of deaths registered of French prisoners who died at Norman Cross in the second period of the war, 1803–14, was 559. The highest number recorded in any one year, was 98 in 1806. The lowest, in any complete year, was 18 in 1804. One of those whose death is recorded in that year is a boy of ten, a native of Bordeaux, captured on a privateer; he died of consumption. The diseases, phthisis, hæmoptysis, scrophula, which appear again and again under the heading “Cause of Death,” were all, as well as many of those entered as catarrh and debility, tubercular diseases, due to the condition so favourable to contagion in which the prisoners slept, herded together in closely packed chambers, ventilated very imperfectly. In all probability, in cold weather, every aperture by which fresh air could enter was closed by the inmates themselves, who would not be imbued with twentieth-century ideas as to the need of fresh air.

Putting on one side the tubercular cases and the rare epidemics, there was comparatively little sickness among the prisoners. When an epidemic occurred, “Les Misérables,” whose powers of resistance had been lowered by the semi-starvation which they had brought upon themselves, naturally sickened and in too many instances succumbed.

Owing, doubtless, to three causes—the absence of facility for getting drink, the spare but sufficient diet, and the regulation which appointed that the prisoners should, unless in bad weather, live through the day in the open air [“They have free access to the several apartments from the opening of the prisons in the morning, until they are shut up on the approach of night, with the exception only of the times when they are fumigating, or cleansing for the preservation of health” (Commissioner Serle, Appendix D, No. 31)]—the rate of mortality among the prisoners in confinement was lower than that among those on parole, and, as far as it has been possible to come approximately to the percentage rate of mortality, than that also of the British soldiers who constituted the garrison. The absurd statements of Mr. Charretie, the falsehood of which he had to acknowledge, and Colonel Lebertre’s lie, that at Norman Cross 4,000 out of 10,000 died, {166} gave rise to an impression which, once made, has not been easily effaced. Of those who read these statements in France, few read the statement of facts which prove them false. Taking the total number of those who had been imprisoned at the Depot, up to 1813, as at least 30,000, and the deaths at 1,800 (these figures being approximate only), the actual proportions of deaths would be 6 per cent., instead of 40 per cent. as affirmed by Lebertre. A return showing the total number of prisoners and the number of sick in every Depot or other place of confinement for prisoners of war, called for on 10th April 1810, and a similar return presented in the following year, show the extraordinary healthiness of the prison at Norman Cross, and of all the other prisons in Great Britain on each of those days. {167a}

In August 1812, in answer to the calumnies in the columns of the _Moniteur_, a return was obtained as to the health of the prisoners in the prison ships in Herne Bay and at the Dartmoor Depot. In the former there were 6,100 in health, 61 sick; in the latter, 7,500 well, 70 sick. The proportion of sick was less than in other prisons not of war. {167b}

This was at a time when the influx of prisoners from the Peninsula and elsewhere had caused the prisons to be so crowded, that it had become necessary to again spend large amounts in building new prisons. At the time of the return in 1810, £130,000 was being expended on a new prison at Perth; Norman Cross contained 272 more than the highest number for whom it was calculated to provide accommodation, and there must have been 2,000 men in each quadrangle, except that for the sick.

In these two years the number of deaths at Norman Cross was respectively only forty-one and thirty-three. When a prisoner fell ill, and was admitted into the prison hospital, he was treated as well as, or better than, the soldiers in the military hospital outside the prison walls.

We have already dealt with the reckless statement of the French while dealing with Mr. Pillet. They are wicked calumnies, which, even on a casual examination, carry with them their own contradiction. The British Government expended an enormous sum on the prisoners, and in 1817 made a claim on the French for the maintenance of French prisoners in England. {168} The correctness of that claim was never questioned; whether it was settled is another matter. According to Alison, the British Government generously forgave the debt.

The prisoners in each quadrangle were visited daily by the surgeons, and any prisoner complaining of illness, and found by the doctors to have good ground for his complaint, was removed at once to the hospital, where he was, according to the sworn evidence of the French surgeons themselves, carefully and liberally treated. From the pay-sheets accompanying the hospital accounts, the earliest of which at the Record Office is for the year 1806, the staff of the hospital appears to have been at that time, the surgeon (Mr. Geo. Walker), two assistant-surgeons (M. Pierre Larfeuil and Mr. Anthony Howard), a dispenser, an assistant-dispenser (prisoner), dispensary porter (do) and messenger (do), two hospital mates and clerk, a steward of victualling, a steward of bedding, with two assistants (prisoners), two turnkeys, matron, and seamstress (the two last named and the wives of the married turnkeys being, up to the advent of the surgeon’s bride in 1808, the only women within the prison walls), a messenger, and the following thirteen, who were all prisoners, two interpreters, one tailor, one washerman, one carpenter (who made bed-cradles and other appliances for the ward and did odd jobs), an assistant lamplighter (a more important post than it sounds, as it would be very convenient for any prisoner or prisoners wanting to escape to find a careless lamplighter, who would forget to light, or supply with sufficient oil, one or two of the numerous lamps which lighted the prison and its environs), two stocking-menders, two labourers, one barber for the infirm and itchy, and two nurses—in all, thirteen British and twenty French prisoners, the staff of nurses being, of course, increased if necessary. {169} The hospital was evidently conducted on a liberal scale. The dietary was ample; it was as follows:

ESTABLISHED DIET

1_st_. _Full Diet_

Tea, or water-gruel with salt, for breakfast; the same for supper.
Meat 12 oz., with potatoes or greens, and 1 pint of broth, for
dinner. Bread 14 oz., sugar 2 oz., beer 2 pints (of beer at 16_s._
the 38 gallons), and if any other drink is wanted, water, or toast
and water.

2_nd_. _Reduced Diet_

Tea, or water-gruel with salt, for breakfast; the same for supper.
Meat 6 oz., with potatoes or greens, and 1 pint of broth, for dinner.
Sugar 2 oz. The same quantity and quality of bread and beer as on
full diet.

3_rd_. _Low Diet_

Water-gruel or tea for breakfast. Water-gruel or barley-water for
dinner. The same or rice-water for supper. Bread 7 oz. Patients on
low diet are supposed to require no stated meal, drinks only being
allowable, or even desirable; a small quantity of beer may be given
when anxiously wished for and permitted by their surgeon. The bread
is supposed to be chiefly for toast and water, or, should the patient
incline, a bit of toasted bread without butter, with a little of his
gruel or tea. Sugar 2 oz.

4_th_. _Milk Diet_

Milk, 1 pint, for breakfast. Rice-milk, 1 pint and a half (sweetened
with sugar when desired), for dinner. Milk, 1 pint, for supper.
Bread 14 oz. Drink—water, barley-water, or rice-water. Sugar 2 oz.

5_th_. _Mixed Diet_

Milk, 1 pint, for breakfast. Meat 4 oz., with potatoes or greens,
and 1 pint of broth, for dinner. Milk, 1 pint, for supper. Bread 14
oz. Drinks as on milk diet. Sugar 2 oz. Beer 1 pint.

_Notes_

The meat mentioned in the different diets to be beef and mutton
alternately. Should any patient particularly require a mutton-chop
or beefsteak, instead of either the beef or mutton boiled and made
into broth, the surgeon may direct it accordingly.

The matron is allowed to purchase ripe fruit, or any other article
not comprehended in the several diets, by permission and direction of
the surgeon.

Sago, when particularly ordered by the surgeon, will be furnished in
the quantity equal to the value of one day’s ordinary diet, but then
for that day the matron is to supply nothing else, save toast and
water, water-gruel, or barley-water, and any bread which may be
ordered by the surgeon.

No beer is to be issued to any patient in the hospital until after
dinner, unless particularly ordered by his surgeon, and no patient is
allowed to give his allowance of beer to another, for when he does
not choose the whole, or any part of it, it is to remain with the
matron.

In fact, when we look to the sanitary condition of the hospital, its staff, its furnishing, the diet, the arrangements for the admission, the retention, and the treatment of the patients, we find in the records sufficient evidence that the provision for the care of the sick prisoners was at Norman Cross equal to, if not superior to, that offered by any civil institution of that date.

To pass from the discomforts of the prison to the luxurious life of the hospital was a temptation which favoured malingering, especially in the case of one of “Les Misérables,” who, having nothing left wherewith to gamble, needed a bed and food. The agent had in 1801, to issue a special order as to the precautions necessary to prevent prisoners shamming illness in order to obtain admission into the hospital. This was the year of the epidemic, when the hospital had been in the earlier months overcrowded, and we can only trust that no mistake was ever made, and that no prisoner sickening for the fatal disease was dealt with as a malingerer and denied admission into the wards.

As stated in an early chapter, the prisoners passed out of the agent’s charge when they fell sick, and the order of Captain Woodriff may have been the result of friction between himself and the surgeons.

The excellent arrangements made by the Government department for the care of the sick and wounded gave the sick prisoners the best chance of recovery. It was, nevertheless, the cruel fate of nearly 1,800 of those incarcerated at Norman Cross between 1797 and 1814 to end a captivity which had endured for a period varying from a few days to eleven years, without the solace of a glimpse of their native land, away from relatives, friends, and home, by death in the prison hospital, whence their bodies were borne to be laid in the prisoners’ cemetery, where they still lie, unknown and unhonoured. {171}

The succeeding chapter deals with this cemetery and cognate matters.