It may pardonably be allowed to refer to what little has been done by others in the same direction, both with regard to barracks and to prisons. A comparison with the following pages will show that earlier researches have been of a very superficial character. Matters have been left doubtful which a little further search would have made certain, and points, which tradition and writers with some claim to authority had left obscure, would have been cleared up. It would be invidious to go into further particulars, but it may be stated that Huntingdon, in which county Norman Cross is situated, although it has an important and eventful history, has as yet no exhaustive County History, and that the local guide books are of little value. The results of these researches through official documents, through old newspaper files, and topographical works, in the British Museum Library, are, in the following pages, incorporated with information obtained locally from persons who in their early youth knew the prison, from topical traditions, from printed narratives founded more or less on fact, from parish registers, and from old private letters and diaries. To the officials at the British Museum and the Record Office our thanks are due for valuable assistance courteously rendered. Unfortunately, for the completeness of this narrative, no record of the life at the Depot, written by a Norman Cross prisoner or by any official, is known to exist. Such sources of information exist in the case of at least one of the other prisons, and to fill a blank, which must have been left in this history, we are, by the kind permission of the author, Mr. Basil Thomson, enabled to include in this volume a reprint of Chapter V. from _The Story of Dartmoor Prison_, {0b} and to make other extracts which throw light on the life of Prisoners of War confined in Great Britain between the years 1793–1815. The Rev. E. H. Brown, Vicar of Yaxley, son of the late Rev. Arthur Brown, author of a tale _The French Prisoners of Norman Cross_, {0c} and Mr. A. C. Taylor have kindly taken photographs for the illustrations; Mr. C. Dack, the Curator, and Mr. J. W. Bodger, the Secretary, of the Peterborough Natural History and Scientific Society, have been assiduous in collecting information. Our thanks are also due to other friends too numerous to specify, who have given items of valuable information, or have communicated traditions the greater number of which have some foundation on fact.