By July 18 such parts of the prison as were completed were very full, and in November the buildings were finished, and the sixteen blocks, each holding 400 prisoners, were crowded. The packing of the hammocks in these blocks was close, but not closer than in the men-of-war of the period, and not very much closer than in the machinery-crowded big ships of to-day. The blocks, or _casernes_ as they were called, measured 100 feet long by twenty-four feet broad, and were two stories high. On the ground floor the hammocks were slung from posts three abreast, and there were three tiers. In the upper story were only two tiers. As to the life at Norman Cross, it appears to me from the documentary evidence available to have been more tolerable than at any of the other great prisons, if only from the fact that the place had been specially built for its purpose, and was not, as in most other places, adapted. The food allowance was the same as elsewhere; viz., on five days of the week each prisoner had one and a half pounds of bread, half a pound of beef, greens or pease or oatmeal, and salt. On Wednesday and Friday one pound of herrings or cod-fish was substituted for the beef, and beer could be bought at the canteen. The description by George Borrow in _Lavengro_—‘rations of carrion meat and bread from which I have seen the very hounds occasionally turn away’, is now generally admitted to be as inaccurate as his other remarks concerning the Norman Cross which he could only remember as a very small boy. The outfit was the same as in other prisons, but I note that in the year 1797 the store-keeper at Norman Cross was instructed to supply each prisoner _as often as was necessary_, and not, as elsewhere, at stated intervals, with one jacket, one pair of trousers, two pairs of stockings, two shirts, one pair of shoes, one cap, and one hammock. By the way, the prisoners’ shoes are ordered ‘not to have long straps for buckles, but short ears for strings’. On August 8, 1798, Perrot writes from Stilton to Woodriff: