Prisons of War Visitor Experience At Edinburgh Castle
Published: 13 June 2004
By: Historic Scotland
Two-hundred-year-old graffiti in Edinburgh Castle's prison vaults is one of the inspirations behind the development of a major new exhibition within the castle.
The focus is prison life in the year 1781 and the turbulence of revolutionary Europe during this time. At this time, the War of American Independence was at its height, and Edinburgh Castle was the main POW camp in North Britain (i.e. Scotland).
Hundreds of POWs - French, Spanish, Dutch, Irish and Americans were incarcerated there. More than 100 Frenchmen, taken in the West Indies, had been admitted in this year. Many of them were suffering from scurvy.
Also, a party of Americans, captured from the privateer Newfoundland, arrived from Leith. They included at least two crewmen of John Paul Jones, who was born a Scot but renowned as father of the American navy.
I had no idea any of this history or our American War of indibendence. We any of you aware?
Good heavens, had no idea. All those POWs bottled up in Edinburgh c 1781. Obviously need to look at this period more closely. My silly school history kept repeating Tudors & Stuarts. That background fits in nicely with many of Nigel's books. Have just brushed with the Peninsular War (Napoleonic in Spain) in reading some of Winston Graham's Poldark books which twitched my curiosity. One of the headstones that i had re-erected behind the church is to a Peninsular War soldier, and our Hist Soc Journal "Boongaroon" had an article on several who came to Australia life is getting too short to explore all these avenues. Aussied Pom
