‘I have seen at Norman Cross a plot of land where nearly four thousand men, out of seven thousand in this prison, were buried. Provisions were then dear in England, and our Government, it was said, had refused to pay the balance of an account due for prisoners. To settle this account all the prisoners were put on half-rations, and to make sure that they should die, the introduction of food for sale, according to custom, was forbidden. To reduced quantity was added inferior quality of the provisions served out. There was distributed four times a week, worm-eaten biscuit, fish and salt meat; three times a week black, half baked bread made of mouldy flour or of black wheat. Soon after eating this one was seized with a sort of drunkenness, followed by violent headache, diarrhoea, and redness of face; many died from a sort of vertigo. For vegetables, uncooked beans were served up. In fact, hundreds of men sank each day, starved to death, or poisoned by the provisions. Those who did not die immediately, became so weak that gradually they could digest nothing.’ (Then follow some details, too disgusting to be given a place here, of the extremities to which prisoners at Norman Cross were driven by hunger.) ‘Hunger knows no rules. The corpses of those who died were kept for five or six days without being given up by their comrades, who by this means received the dead men’s rations.’ This veracious chronicler continues: ‘I myself took a complaint to Captain Pressland. Next day, the officers of the two militia battalions on guard at the prison, and some civilians, arrived just at the moment for the distribution of the rations. At their head was Pressland who was damning the prisoners loudly. The rations were shown, and, as the whole thing had been rehearsed beforehand, they were good. A report was drawn up by which it was shown that the prisoners were discontented rascals who grumbled at everything, that the food was unexceptionable, and that some of the grumblers deserved to be shot, for an example. Next day the food was just as bad as ever.... Certainly the prisoners had the chance of buying provisions for themselves from the wives of the soldiers of the garrison twice a week. But these women, bribed to ruin the prisoners, rarely brought what was required, made the prisoners take what they brought, and charged exorbitant prices, and, as payment had to be made in advance, they settled things just as they chose.’ With reference to the medical attendance at Norman Cross, Pillet says: