Evening Talk by Paul Chamberlain
📅 Thursday 27th February, 2025
🕒 18.30
📍 The Kincaid Gallery, The Royal Green Jackets (Rifles) Museum
Discover the stories of the lives, treatment, and experiences of over 200,000 captured prisoners of war in Hampshire.
During the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars over 200,000 prisoners of war of many nationalities were brought to Britain, to be housed in the Prison Ship Depots of Portsmouth, Plymouth and Chatham; the Land Depots such as Portchester Castle, Dartmoor and Norman Cross; and the Parole Depots, these being towns and villages where captive officers were billeted upon the local inhabitants. Of the total, 122,440 of these men, women and children arrived in the country after 1803.
From 1803 there were a number of prisons in use in Hampshire, these being the prison ships in Portsmouth Harbour, the land depots of Portchester Castle and Forton, and the Parole depots of Alresford, Andover, Bishops Waltham, and Odiham.
This evening talk will tell the story of the war Prison system within Britain at the time; who the prisoners were; where they were captured; who administered the depots; the food, clothing and accommodation provided for the prisoners; and how they occupied their time in captivity. It also relates how prisoners got out of the system, not simply by escape or release at the end of the war.
In 2016 Paul retired from his profession as a Government Scientist working on viral vaccines and now concentrates on writing and lecturing on the Napoleonic era, with a specialist interest in prisoners of war of the period.
He has published in The Waterloo Journal, First Empire, Battlefields Review, Age of Napoleon and Who Do You Think You Are magazines. He is Editor in Chief of The Napoleon Series, and a member of the Committee of the Waterloo Association.
He has contributed to a number of books on the Napoleonic era, and in 2008 had Hell Upon Water: Prisoners of War in Britain 1793-1815 published, and The Napoleonic Prison of Norman Cross: The Lost Town of Huntingdonshire in 2018, both published by The History Press.
He was Vice-Chairman and Trustee of the Norman Cross Eagle Appeal that restored the memorial to French prisoners of war at Norman Cross near Peterborough, and is now Vice-Chairman of the Norman Cross Heritage Group. He conducts tours of the prison site for Heritage Open Days each year.
In 2009 he was a consultant for the Time Team investigation of the Norman Cross prison site which was screened in 2010 as Death and Dominoes: The first prisoner of war camp.
Doors open at 17.45 for light refreshments. Tickets will shortly be available on our online shop. Alternatively, they can be purchased over the phone from Monday to Friday between 10am and 4pm at 01962 828549.
If you’re unable to attend in the talk in person, you can also buy a ticket to watch the talk live online via Zoom. We will be able to take questions from Zoom during the Q&A section of the talk. If you wish to attend the talk via Zoom, simply select ‘Zoom’ under ticket price when checking out in our online shop. Serving Riflemen and RGJ Association members may claim free Zoom attendance by contacting the Museum directly.