In 1812 two prisoners fought with improvised daggers with such ferocity that both died before they could be carried to the hospital. In 1814, two fencing masters, hitherto great friends, quarrelled over the merits of their respective pupils, and fought with fists. The beaten man, Jean Vignon, challenged the other to a more real trial by combat, and they fought in the ‘cock-loft’ of No. 4 Prison—where are now the kitchen and chapel. Vignon killed his opponent while the latter was stooping to pick up his foil, was brought up before the civil court, and condemned to six months for manslaughter. Every day, except Sunday, a market was held from nine to twelve. Here, in exchange for money and produce, the prisoners sold the multifarious articles of their manufacture, excepting woollen mittens and gloves, straw hats or bonnets, shoes, plaited straw, obscene toys and pictures, or articles made out of prison stores. The chief punishment was relegation to the _cachot_ or Black Hole. At first this was a small building in the Infirmary Yard of such poor construction that it was frequent for the inmates to break out of it and mix with the other prisoners. But in 1811 the French prisoners built a new one, twenty feet square, arch-roofed, and with a floor of granite blocks weighing a ton each. Some escapes from Dartmoor were notable, one, indeed, so much so that I have given the hero of it, Louis Vanhille, a chapter to himself. Sevegran, a naval surgeon, and Aunay, a naval officer, observing that fifty men were marched into the prison every evening to help the turnkeys to get the prisoners into their respective _casernes_, made unto themselves Glengarry caps and overcoats out of odds and ends of cloth and blanket and, with strips of tin to look like bayonets, calmly fell in at the rear of the guard as they left the prison, and, favoured by rain and darkness, followed out of the prison, and, as the troops marched into barracks, got away. They had money, so from Plymouth—whither they tramped that night—they took coach to London. In order that they should have time to get well away, their accomplices in the prison at the call-over the next morning got up a disturbance which put the turnkey out of his reckoning, and so they were not at once missed. Next evening, three other prisoners, Keronel, Vasselin, and Cherabeau, tried the same trick. All went well. At the third gate, the keeper asked if the locking-up was finished, and as there was no reply he said: ‘All these lobsters are deaf with their caps over their ears.’ The men escaped. Dr. Walker quotes an attempt of a similar character from Norman Cross: