Captain Woodriff held the post of agent at Norman Cross from his appointment in 1799 to the Peace of Amiens in 1802, having previously from 2nd September 1796, when he was appointed agent of the Transport Office at Southampton, been engaged in duties associated with the care of prisoners of war. In July 1808 he was appointed agent for prisoners of war at Forton, holding office until 1813. He thus spent, in all, eleven years of his long services as a naval officer, assisting the Transport Board in their important work as the custodian of the prisoners. In the Appendix will he found a short biography of Captain Woodriff, collated by Mr. Rhodes. It gives an insight into the adventurous and uncertain career which, during the epoch with which this history has to do, might be that of a naval officer of distinction, and shows that the custodian of the prisoners at Norman Cross and Forton was himself at one time an English prisoner at Verdun. {46} On the 24th March the troops who were to form the garrison had marched into their quarters, this event being noted in his diary by John Lamb, a farmer and miller living at Whittlesey, about seven miles from Norman Cross—“24th March 1797 the soldiers came to guard the Barracks. The Volunteers did not much like it; they liked drinking better.” All arrangements being sufficiently advanced, the prisoners sent from Falmouth, who for several days had been waiting, cooped up in the Transports at Lynn, were disembarked and put into lighters, to be brought by water to Yaxley and Peterborough, and the first prisoners passed through the prison gates on 7th April 1797, just four months from the commencement of the building. [Picture: Plate VIII, Fig. 1.—Wooden Tea-caddy richly decorated with “Paper Mosaic,” the Work of the Prisoners of War at the Falmouth Depot. The Specimen is in the Collection of Miss Lilley Paull, of Truro. Fig. 2. Tea-caddy similarly decorated in the possession of the Countess of Lindsey, Uffington Park (v. p. 133)] CHAPTER III ARRIVAL AND REGISTRATION OF THE PRISONERS A prison is a house of care, A place where none can thrive; A touchstone true to try a friend, A grave for one alive; Sometimes a place of right, Sometimes a place of wrong, Sometimes a place of rogues and thieves, And honest men among. _Inscription in Edinburgh Tolbooth_.