In March 1797 M. Charretie, the French Commissary in England, enclosed a list of thirty-six British seamen to be released without exchange for their humanity in rescuing and aiding the crew of a French vessel bearing the appropriate name of _Les Droits de l’Homme_. Although it was a traffic strictly forbidden, some of the prisoners sold their turn of exchange to their more wealthy comrades, the purchaser assuming the name of the vendor, and vice versa. If detected, the vendor forfeited his rights of exchange, and was kept a prisoner until the end of the war. Notwithstanding this regulation, it was said that one man had contrived to carry on these transactions from 1797 to 13th January 1800 without detection. This voluntary prolongation of the imprisonment surely helps to prove the falsity of the statements of the French as to the treatment of the prisoners by the British. This practice of personating a fellow prisoner was carried out occasionally under more tragic conditions. In the course of the investigations to establish the facts of the epidemic of 1800–01, a certificate was found with the name François le Fevre crossed out, and the name of Bernard Batrille substituted, with a note that the name of François le Fevre was assumed by Batrille when he entered the hospital to die of consumption. This was, doubtless, not the sole instance of such practices among the prisoners. A prisoner high up in the list for exchange, who knew that he was dying, would, when about to enter the hospital, for a sum of money or from friendship, exchange his current number and his name with another man low down in the list, the dying man, if this was done for payment, thus securing a sum of money for his heirs in France, and the other increasing his chance of release by exchange. The case of Le Fevre and Batrille would have escaped detection, but for the special investigation made by Captain Woodriff to establish the identity of those who had died in the epidemic unrecognised. The investigation led to the identification among the living prisoners of François le Fevre, who had been personating Batrille, since he entered the hospital, and had died, and was buried in the name of the former man. During the first period of the war, 1793–1802, exchange went on, with interruptions from the causes mentioned. The prisoners passed in a sluggish stream through Norman Cross, but so sluggish that many of them were there, confined or out on parole, during the whole five years. Notwithstanding the exchange the prisons were at times greatly overcrowded, and in 1801, when the French army in Egypt surrendered to Abercrombie, such was the burden of prisoners that no attempt was made to claim the troops as captives, but they were transported in British ships to France.