In February 1813, very much to their surprise, Captain Cotgrave clapped a few of the most notorious food buyers into the _Cachot_, and kept them there for ten days, on two-thirds allowance. To their remonstrances he replied as follows: “_To the Prisoners in the Cachot for Purchasing Provisions_. “The orders to put you on short allowance from the Commissioners of His Majesty’s Transport Board is for purchasing the provisions of your fellow prisoners, by which means numbers have died from want of food, and the hospital is filled with sick not likely to recover. The number of deaths occasioned by this inhuman practice occasions considerable expense to the Government, not only in coffins, but the hospital filled with those poor unhappy wretches so far reduced from want of food that they linger a considerable time in the hospital at the Government’s expense, and then fall a victim to the cruelty of those who have purchased their provisions to the disgrace of Christians and whatever nation they belong to. “The testimony of your countrymen and the surgeons prove the fact.” But it was all to no purpose, and in the following month we find him appealing to the whole body of prisoners. “_Notice to the Prisoners in General_.” “The infamous and horrible practice of a certain number of prisoners who buy the provisions of some evil-conducted and unfortunate of their fellow-countrymen, thereby tearing away from them the only means of existence they possess forces me to forewarn the whole of the prisoners that on the first appearance of a recurrence of this odious and abominable practice I shall, without any exception prevent any person from keeping shops in the prison, and I will stop the market. “As it would be entirely against my wishes and inclination to have recourse to these violent measures, I strongly request of the well-conducted of the prisoners to use all their exertions to put a stop thereto.” The threat was an empty one; the well-conducted prisoners discountenanced the practice, but the Romans bought and sold among themselves.