Portchester was a veritable hive of industry. There were manufacturers of straw hats, stockings, gloves, purses, and braces. There were cunning artificers in bone who made tobacco boxes, dominoes, chessmen, models of all kinds, especially of men-of-war, one of which latter, only one foot in length, is said to have been sold for £26, as well as of the most artistic ornaments and knick-knacks. There were tailors, goldsmiths (so says St. Aubin), shoemakers, caterers, limonadiers, and comedians of the Punch and Judy and marionette class. There were professors of mathematics, of drawing, of French, of English, of Latin, of fencing, of writing, of dancing, of the _bâton_, and of _la boxe_. St. Aubin quotes as a strange fact that most of the prisoners who, on going to Portchester, knew neither reading nor writing, ‘en sont sortis la tête et la bourse passablement meublées.’ But the unique feature of Portchester industry was its thread lace manufacture. [Illustration: BONE MODEL OF H.M.S. _VICTORY_ Made by prisoners of war at Portsmouth ] The brilliant idea of starting this belonged to a French soldier prisoner who had been born and bred in a lace-making country, and had been accustomed to see all the women working at it. He recalled the process by memory, took pupils, and in less than a year there were 3,000 prisoners in Portchester making lace, and among these were ‘capitalists’ who employed each as many as from fifty to sixty workmen. So beautiful was this lace, and so largely was it bought by the surrounding families, that the English lace-makers protested, its manufacture within the prison was forbidden, and it is said that the work of suppression was carried out in the most brutal manner, the machines being broken and all lace in stock or in process of manufacture destroyed. Gambling, says St. Aubin, was the all-pervading vice of Portchester, as in the other prisons. For ‘capitalists’ there was actually a roulette table, but the rank and file gambled upon the length of straws, with cards or dominoes, for their rations, their clothes, or their bedding. The authorities attempted occasionally to check the mania among the most enslaved by placing them apart from their fellows, reclothing them, and making them eat their rations, but in vain, for they pierced the walls of their places of confinement, and sold their clothes through the apertures. Duels, as a consequence, were frequent, the usual time for these being the dinner hour, because all the prisoners were then temporarily in the _salles_.