The proposal to build a prisoner of war depot at Princetown on Dartmoor was made in 1805 by Sir Thomas Tyrwhitt, a Dartmoor landowner, who owned granite quarries, and who was one-time private secretary to the Prince Regent. The need for the prison was driven by two associated imperatives. First was the increasing numbers of French captives who were being held in overcrowded conditions on hulks at Portsmouth and, second, the proximity of the large number of prisoners to HM Dockyard Portsmouth which was considered a security risk.
The chosen site was windswept, bleak and remote, in the middle of approximately 360 square miles of moorland with a cool and wet climate producing up to 83 inches of rain annually. Communication to ports of embarkation were good; situated in the County of Devon in southwest England, local industries comprised quarrying, farming and animal husbandry, which could provide the materials to build the depot and sustain a large prison population. In short, an ideal place for prisoners of war who would 'never have a nice day'.
Prisoners were put to work clearing the site in late 1805 and the foundation stone was laid in March 1806. It took three years to complete and was immediately occupied by French prisoners who were marched from the hulks at Portsmouth, some 140 miles away.
The depot was circular, built of granite from Tyrwhitt's quarries, and comprised an outer wall enclosing an area of approximately thirty acres. Inside the outer wall was a second inner wall, topped with a trip wire and bells, and within that a twelve foot iron palisade. The prison comprised three distinct parts; the accommodation area where prison staff and officials lived and included the main entrance, the support area including a hospital and guard's barracks, and finally the prison area, which occupied half the entire site, comprising seven large rectangular prisoners' barrack blocks and a punishment block (called the cachot or dungeon by the French prisoners).
As the French prisoners marched up from Portsmouth in that autumn of 1806, the first view of the prison they would see was the 18 foot grey granite perimeter wall, a mile in circumference. Marching through the main gate, they passed between the two houses of the senior prison officials, the surgeon's on the left and the governor's on the right, and into a large courtyard containing staff quarters.
Ahead of them were two further gates, the second flanked by two guard towers. These gates gave access to the 30 yards wide walk-way between the outer and inner walls surrounding the support and prison areas. Passing between the two guard towers into the support area, the prisoners found themselves in another courtyard between two 'H' shaped buildings. The one to their left was the hospital and to their right the barracks for the guards, who were drawn from the Militia.
Ahead of them was another wall beyond which was the prison area containing the prisoners' barrack blocks, numbered clockwise one to seven, and the punishment block or cachot capable of holding up to sixty men. Block No 4 was separated from the other barrack blocks in the prison area by its own walled yard. This block was later used to hold black American prisoners.
Conditions in the barrack blocks were harsh. Each block was three storeys high and designed to accommodate up to 1500 prisoners, who slept in rows of hammocks. Each storey comprised a single large dormitory, with small unglazed barred windows which were closed by wooden shutters. The prisoners froze in winter and baked in summer.
Prisoners of officer rank were allowed parole, if they chose to give it, and these lived in the community, in designated local towns and villages. Other prisoners worked outside the prison where they cleared land for agriculture, worked in quarries or as labourers on nearby farms. Prisoners arrived at the depot wearing the uniforms and clothing they were captured in and were issued a coarse yellow woolen jacket and trousers bearing a broad government arrow and the letters 'TO' for 'Transport Office' (all prisoner of war depots were administered by the Transport Board), a woolen waistcoat (red according to records from Norman Cross Prisoner of War Depot), a woolen conical hat, two cotton shirts, two pairs of stockings and a pair of wooden shoes.
Daily rations are recorded as being one and a half pounds of bread, half a pound of beef, a third of an ounce of salt, half a pound of vegetables and one ounce of barley per prisoner. On Wednesdays and Fridays the vegetables and meat could be replaced by one pound of potatoes and one pound of fish, usually herring, if available. This is similar to the rations provided at Norman Cross prisoner of war depot near Peterborough in 1800, where the vegetables were served as a soup, each prisoner receiving two pints. This diet was actually a rather better than that which most civilians subsisted on, for whom meat and fish was virtually unknown. A problem for the prisoners, however, was that corrupt agents often stole a proportion of the rations and sold them to local tradesmen, and the prisoners often did not receive their full entitlement.
Prisoners were able to supplement their diet by means of a market that was held six days a week between 1100 and 1400, where the prisoners sold or exchanged 'prison art', baskets, ornaments, carvings, paintings and so on, for money, food, clothing and other necessities.
The cold and damp conditions in winter and the hot and humid conditions in summer, combined with overcrowding, resulted in a variety of illnesses, including influenza, pneumonia, tuberculosis, dysentery, smallpox, measles and typhoid. Approximately 1750 prisoners died of disease in Dartmoor between 1806 and 1815 and were buried in communal pits beyond the walls. Their remains were discovered in 1852 when a prison farm was being developed. They were exhumed and reburied in two cemeteries. In contrast, Norman Cross Prisoner of War Depot had 1770 deaths from disease, amongst 7000 prisoners, between 1797 and 1814, approximately 1000 of which died in a typhoid outbreak in 1800-1801.
In April 1813 American prisoners started to be moved to Dartmoor from the hulks at Plymouth, Chatham, and Portsmouth. Between April 1813 and March 1815 approximately 6500 American prisoners, almost entirely sailors from privateers and merchantmen, were sent to Dartmoor. One in seven of these sailors were free negroes. American prisoners were not separated from the French at first but as French prisoners were released at the end of the wars in 1814, Americans occupied five of the seven barracks. Black and white prisoners were mixed together initially but in early 1814 the white American prisoners petitioned the governor to segregate the black prisoners into separate quarters. At first they were segregated into the upper stories of Barrack No4 but by September 1814 Barrack No4 was occupied entirely by negro prisoners.
With the signing of the Treaty of Paris in April 1814 the French prisoners started to be repatriated and soon the depot was occupied only by Americans. The Treaty of Ghent was signed in December 1814, which ended the so-called War of 1812, but American prisoners continued to be held at the depot into 1816. The reason for this was the negligence of the American government and the incompetence of its London agent, Rueben G. Beasley. Beasley had a history of neglect where the interests of the American prisoners were concerned and now neither the American government nor Beasley demonstrated any urgency in providing the vessels necessary to transport prisoners back to the United States. In the meantime, in March 1815, the prisoners demonstrated; “at Noon we had the Effigy of Mr. Beasley hung and then burnt for his kind attention to the American prisoners of war.”, and in April there was a riot which resulted in the deaths of seven prisoners and the wounding of another 31.
The British government concluded that the best course was to ignore the procrastination of the American authorities and prisoners with means of support were released immediately, the remainder transported home on British, later American, ships. There was, however, a further delay when black prisoners refused to be repatriated on ships bound for southern US ports, for fear that they would be sold into slavery on arrival.
Dartmoor Prisoner of War Depot closed in 1816 and was unused for the next 34 years. In 1850 it was largely rebuilt and re-opened as a civilian prison, for particularly dangerous or hardened criminals whose sentences included hard labour. It is a Category C training prison today.
JC