The real history behind ‘Poldark’ series three: episode five

In the 1790s, reports began to filter back to England about what life was like inside Quimper’s walls.

“It would make your heart ache to see our poor sailors, without money, without clothes, worn down by sickness and emaciated to the last degree, fighting over the body of a dead dog, which they sometimes pick up and devour with the most voracious appetite,” wrote one prisoner in 1795. This letter made it to England and was published in the newspapers. “I am the only surviving midshipman of four”, he added, “I have lost all my hair by sickness but I live in hopes of seeing Old England and my friends again.”

Those who made it home also carried accounts of terrible conditions. One such man was a Liverpudlian shipwright who managed to escape from the prison in 1794 with six others. They sailed across the Channel in a stolen boat using their shirts to construct a makeshift sail, finally landing at Sidmouth in Devon.

Winston Graham used first-person reports of Quimper prison when researching the Poldark novels. In Poldark’s Cornwall – a companion to the Poldark novels – Graham recalls using a letter by one Lady Anne Fitzroy which outlined the conditions at Quimper. Sister of Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington, Lady Anne Fitzroy had been incarcerated at Quimper for around nine months, after a boat on which she was travelling from Lisbon was captured by the French near Falmouth.

On account of her sex, she was given different accommodation from the rest of prison population and was kept under guard at a house in the convent’s grounds. Contemporary reports, however, suggest that despite being better treated than others, Lady Anne Fitzroy worked fearlessly to improve the conditions of the prisoners, sourcing medicines, buying food, petitioning the French, and sending letters home to England to raise awareness of their fate. One prisoner later wrote in his memoirs: “her benevolence was unbounded [and] through her goodness and humanity the lives of more than three thousand poor distressed objects were preserved… She was, to us, a second Moses.”

Although her story is rarely told today, Winston Graham acknowledges Lady Anne Fitzroy in The Black Moon (the fifth novel in the Poldark series). Dwight reflects on the circumstances of his imprisonment and mentions her assistance, stating: “A Lady Anne Fitzroy, who has been recently released, was invaluable in the small aids she was able to obtain for us.” Although Graham’s Poldark characters are fictional, once again we are reminded of how closely he drew on his own research into the 18th century to inspire and inform his stories.

Hannah Greig is author of The Beau Monde: Fashionable Society in Georgian London (OUP, 2013) and is a historical advisor on the BBC One drama series Poldark.