The appeal was useless, and he issued a proclamation a month later, threatening to stop the markets if the practice was persisted in. This was equally fruitless. Charitable people pitied the poor half-naked prisoners in winter, and supplied them abundantly with clothing; but when the same men were pointed out to them a few days later as naked as before, and it was represented to them that by their well-meant benevolence they were actually encouraging that which it was most desirable to check, they refused to believe it. Hence it became necessary to punish severely. The most efficacious form of punishment was to put an offender’s name at the bottom of the list for being exchanged against British prisoners to be sent from France or whatever country we happened to be at war with. But even this had no deterrent effect upon some, and the frenzy for gain was so remarkable that in all the prisons there was a regular market for the purchase and sale of places on the Exchange List, until the Government stopped the practice. The most common form of punishment was putting offenders on short allowance. For making away with hammock, bed, or blanket, the prisoner was put on short allowance for ten days; for making away with any two of these articles he was docked for fourteen days; for cutting or damaging bedding or clothes, he had half rations for five days and had to make the damage good. Acts of violence brought confinement in the _cachot_ or Black Hole. A prisoner who wounded a turnkey was to be kept handcuffed, with his hands behind him, for not less than twelve hours, and for not more than twenty-four! For murder and forgery the prisoners came under the civil law; death was the penalty for both, but until 1810 no prisoner-forgers, although convicted, had been punished with death in England, owing to a doubt in the minds of judges whether prisoners of war were answerable to municipal tribunals for this sort of offence, which is not against the law of nations.