i. STRAWPLAITING.

” The Life of George Borrow,” by Mr. Herbert Jenkins (1912), contains, on page II, a description of the extensive prison erected by the English Government, in 1796, at Norman Cross, in Huntingdonshire, covering forty acres of ground, in which to confine some six thousand of the prisoners made during the Napoleonic wars. There, for fifteen months, George Borrow’s father, Captain Borrow, and his regiment, remained in charge of the prisoners on “prison duty and straw-plait destroying.” In a note on page 13 we read: “ The prisoners occupied much of their time in straw-plait making; but the quality of their work was so much superior to that of the English that it was forbidden, and consequently destroyed when found.“

In “Lavengro,” chapter iv., George Borrow refers to his experiences as a boy at Norman Cross, and to the ruthless inroads, called in the slang of the place straw-plait hunts, when in pursuit of a contraband article which the prisoners, in order to procure themselves a few of the necessaries and comforts of existence, were in the habit of making, red-coated battalions were marched into the prisons, and at the bayonet’s point seized the straw-plait and carried it off to be cast on the “ accursed bonfire and burnt beneath the view of the glaring eyeballs of the despairing prisoners.”

There is a tradition in Luton that the Luton straw hat manufacturers and plait-dealers used to visit Norman Cross for the purpose of doing business with the prisoners. Mr. John C. Kershaw commissioned Mr. Arthur C. Cooke to paint a picture representing Luton manufacturers purchasing plait of the French prisoners. The picture was presented to the town by Mr. Kershaw, and it hangs in the Public Library.

I should be glad of any information as to the truth or otherwise of the Luton tradition.

About 1840 the late Mr. Edward Chilwell Williamson (Lawyer Williamson) gave my mother a lady’s fancy work box, covered both inside and out with varicoloured split-straws depicting houses, trees, animals, etc. The box had been purchased by Mr. Williamson of the prisoners at Norman Cross early in the century.