Newcastle again wrote to
the Admiralty:
"The rebel prisoners now on board a
Transport at Woolwich are so straitened for room
as to be very sickly, which may make it unsafe to
land them. One or more empty transports (are) to
be sent to receive some of the said prisoners.
The Transports are to drop down to Tilbury where
the prisoners may be daily landed for air and may
be attended by the apothecary. Two Transports at
the Nore in a similar condition". [S.P. Dom.
Entry Book 226 - 131] These
prisoners were brought to Tilbury but were not
unloaded or attended and many died of typhus.
Indeed on 25th December 1746 when the Pamela was
with-drawn from Government service the survivors
were deliberately unloaded onto the other
transports and in to the Fort, thus spreading the
disease even further.
The Government now had the
problem of what to do with the 3470 prisoners. On
July 23rd 1746 an order was made reviving an
Order in Council of 1715 which had been made
after an earlier Jacobite uprising. This made
provision for the prisoners to draw lots; one in
twenty was to stand trial for his life and the
others were to be subject to the King's Mercy,
which was as follows;
Disposal |
Number |
Transportation
with Indenture |
866 |
Transportation without Indenture |
33 |
Banishment to
America |
37 |
Banishment "Outside
our Dominions" |
121 |
Pardon on
Enlistment |
92 |
Conditional
Pardons |
7 |
Unconditional
Pardons |
8 |
| |
|
The King's mercy
TOTAL |
1164 |
THE LOTTING AT TILBURY
To Tilbury came Captain Stratford Eyre who had
been Provost Marshall in Inverness. There he had
carried out the early examination of the
prisoners. Accompanied by Lieutenant William
Keere and Surgeon John Kirkes, he arranged the
stinking prisoners in regiments and proceeded
with the lotting. From 430 prisoners either in
the Fort or on the Transports "Pamela",
"James and Mary", "Liberty and
Property" and the hospital ship "Mermaid”,
he excluded 52 individuals who were already
"set apart for tryal and 20 as "Evidences
against their fellow prisoners". Three
ladies had already been transferred to the
custody of a messenger in London. Those lotted
were as follows:
In Tilbury Fort |
185 |
Hospital Ship Mermaid |
55 |
Pamela |
20 |
Liberty &
Property |
46 |
James and Mary |
49 |
TOTAL |
355 |
|
