Page:Memoirs of Vidocq, Volume 1.djvu/230

 to the harbour, they never went to labour. Always fettered to the 'banc,' lying on the bare plank, eaten up by vermin, and worn out by brutal treatment and want of nourishment and exercise, they presented a most lamentable appearance.

What I have already said concerning the abuses of every kind, of which the Bagne at Brest was the theatre, precludes the necessity of making any remarks on that at Toulon. Here, was the same mixture of convicts; the same inhumanity of argousins; the same pilfering of the government property; only the importance of the armaments afforded more scope for plunder to the galley-slaves, who were employed in the arsenals or magazines. Iron, lead, brass, hemp, pease, beans, oil, rum, smoked beef, and biscuit, disappeared daily; and the men easily found receivers, as the convicts had very active auxiliaries in the marines and free workmen of the dock-yard. The rigging procured by these means served to equip a multitude of boats and fishing smacks, whose owners got them very cheaply, and were borne out, in case of inquiry, by saying that they had bought them at a sale of refuse stores.

A convict of our ward, who being a prisoner in England, had worked as a carpenter in the dock-yards of Chatham and Plymouth, told us that the plunder was there very great. He assured us that in all the villages along the banks of the Thames and Medway, there were persons perpetually occupied in untwisting the cordage of the royal navy, to take out the marks and stamps put in to make it known; others were employed in effacing the 'broad arrow' stamped on all the metal materials used in the arsenals. These thefts, however considerable, are not at all comparable to the robberies on the river Thames, so very injurious to trade. Although the establishment of a river police has in great measure repressed these abuses, I think it will not be uninteresting to give some details