To pass from the discomforts of the prison to the luxurious life of the hospital was a temptation which favoured malingering, especially in the case of one of “Les Misérables,” who, having nothing left wherewith to gamble, needed a bed and food. The agent had in 1801, to issue a special order as to the precautions necessary to prevent prisoners shamming illness in order to obtain admission into the hospital. This was the year of the epidemic, when the hospital had been in the earlier months overcrowded, and we can only trust that no mistake was ever made, and that no prisoner sickening for the fatal disease was dealt with as a malingerer and denied admission into the wards. As stated in an early chapter, the prisoners passed out of the agent’s charge when they fell sick, and the order of Captain Woodriff may have been the result of friction between himself and the surgeons. The excellent arrangements made by the Government department for the care of the sick and wounded gave the sick prisoners the best chance of recovery. It was, nevertheless, the cruel fate of nearly 1,800 of those incarcerated at Norman Cross between 1797 and 1814 to end a captivity which had endured for a period varying from a few days to eleven years, without the solace of a glimpse of their native land, away from relatives, friends, and home, by death in the prison hospital, whence their bodies were borne to be laid in the prisoners’ cemetery, where they still lie, unknown and unhonoured. {171} The succeeding chapter deals with this cemetery and cognate matters. CHAPTER IX THE CEMETERY—RELIGIOUS MINISTRATIONS—BISHOP OF MOULINS No column high-lifted doth shadow their dust, And o’er their poor ruin no willow trees wave; Yet their honour is safe in the thought of the Just, And their agony fireth the hearts of the Brave Unto deeds that shall shine through Oblivion’s rust. NORMAN HILL, _Père Lechaise_. FOR a short period after the occupation of the Depot, the prisoners who died were buried outside the prison wall, in the north-east corner of the site. The discovery of human skeletons by workmen engaged in excavating gravel in this locality gave rise to tales of violent deaths in duels and of surreptitious burials, tales which have to be dismissed as idle since our researches have brought to light the fact that the spot was for a brief period—the exact length of which cannot be determined—the burial-place of the prisoners. It is certain that very few burials took place in this corner. Early in the history of the prison, as mentioned in a previous chapter, the Government bought a portion of a field on the opposite—the western—side of the North Road for use as the prisoners’ cemetery, and in this field rest the remains of at least 1,770 of the captives taken by us in that long war.