Although the Fortune Prison, as it seems to have been very generally called, had been used for war-prisoners during the Seven Years’ War, its regular adaptation to that purpose was probably not before 1761, in which year 2,000 prisoners were removed thither from Portchester ‘guarded by the Old Buffs’. During the War of American Independence many prisoners of that nationality were at Forton, and appear to have been ceaselessly engaged in trying to escape. In 1777 thirty broke out, of whom nineteen were recaptured and were so harshly punished that they complained in a letter which somehow found its way into the London papers. The next year, the Westminster Militia, encamped on Weovil Common, attracted by alarm guns at Forton, marched thither, and found American and French prisoners escaping through a hole in the outer wall, but were too late to prevent five-and-twenty from getting away altogether. The attempt was supposed to be the sequel of a plot by which, a fortnight previously, eleven Americans had escaped. On the same day there was a mutiny in the prison hospital, provoked, it was alleged, by the neglect and the callous treatment of patients by the doctors and their subordinates. In the same year, 1778, another batch of no less than fifty-seven Americans made a desperate attempt to get out. The Black Hole at Forton was underneath part of the prisoners’ sleeping quarters. A hole large enough for the passage of a man was made in the floor of a sleeping room, being covered by a bed—that is, a mattress—and through this the earth from a tunnel which led from the Black Hole to beyond the prison walls, was brought and hidden in the chimney and in hammocks until opportunities came for its removal elsewhere. As no report was published of the recapture of these men, we may presume that they got away. In 1779 Howard made his report upon Forton. He found there 251 Americans and 177 Frenchmen. The condition of the former, he says, was satisfactory—probably a result of the generous public subscription of the previous year in aid of them. Of the French part of the prison he speaks badly. The meat was bad, the bread loaves were of short weight, the straw in the mattresses had been reduced to dust by long use, and many of them had been emptied to clear them of vermin. The floors of the hospital and the sleeping quarters, which were laid rough, were dirty and offensive. The prisoners complained to Howard, who told them to write to the Commissioners of the ‘Sick and Hurt’ Office. They replied that, as every letter had to be examined by the Agent, this would be of no good. Howard emphasizes severely the evident roguery of the contractors employed in the furnishing of provisions and clothing.