SHAKESPEARE, _Macbeth_. THE prototypes of the self-styled “Romans” of Dartmoor were the prisoners of Norman Cross, known and mentioned, ten years before Dartmoor was built, in various official documents as “Les Misérables.” It has already been stated that the absence of any description of the internal life of the Norman Cross Prison, written by an inmate, renders it impossible to give details which in the case of Dartmoor can be gathered from accounts published by French and American prisoners who were there incarcerated. The author has, therefore, gladly availed himself of the permission given by Mr. Basil Thomson, to reproduce here the chapter of his book in which he describes “Les Misérables” of Dartmoor. The incidents in their life presented by Thomson are not, of course, _identical_ with those of the same class at Norman Cross. The Norman Cross prisoners were not banished to a cockloft, and, although they may have been confined to one floor in one block, probably No. 13, they still retained the hammocks, in which many (during the awful epidemic of 1801) died before they could be removed to the hospital, succumbing at once to the malady owing to the debility resulting from their nakedness and starvation. The description of the sleeping arrangements of the “Romans” does not therefore apply to “Les Misérables” of Norman Cross. Similar vices and similar conditions of life produce similar results, but the impression left after reading Thomson’s graphic and terrible picture of the “Romans” of Dartmoor is only more intense, in consequence of its details, than that left after reading the laconic statements contained in the letters and reports of Captain Woodriff, Commissioner Serle, and others as to the same class at Norman Cross. The authorities at both prisons were equally powerless to put down the gambling and the usury with all its attendant miseries. It is somewhat singular that the “Romans” appear to have withstood disease, while in the epidemic at Norman Cross, which was probably enteric fever, a disease at that date not differentiated from other conditions, such as debility, diarrhoea, simple fever, etc., “Les Misérables,” as evidenced by the surgeon’s notes, succumbed. {113} * * * * *