Salt Lake Tribune | 1917-03-25 | Page 17 | Convicts to Leave Dartmoor Prisons

CONVICTS TO LEAVE DARTMOOR PRISONS Structures Will Be Used as Barracks for Conscientious Objectors to Active Ac-tive Military Service. PLYMOUTH, England, March 2-1. The famous Dartmoor prisons at Princeton, Prince-ton, on the Prince of Wales Duchy estate, es-tate, are to be emptied of their convict inhabitants and turned over to the war department as barracks for a regiment of conscientious objectors, who will ho employed on some ambitious agricultural agricul-tural schemes which the Prince of Wales is to institute on his property. Dartmoor prisons are of j k-c i: lia r interest in-terest to Amorirans, for they were built just more than a century ago to accommodate accom-modate American war prisoner captured cap-tured in the war of 1S12, as noil ns a few French prisoners from N.'ipoleunie campaigns. The American prisoners, chiefly sailors captured .-it :i, u ere landed at Plymouth !md iiiemed at Princetown uiilil the end of the war. Twice in their history as a war establishment estab-lishment the Dartmoor prisons were the scone of serious mutinies, one hv lho French and another by I he A uiei ii ;i u prisoners. Both were due to complaints about the brend rations i.-sue.t to the prisoners, and in the more serious (nil-break (nil-break by the Americans seven of the mutineers were shot down and a grout many more wounded. No reopening of the prisons as a plm e of criminal detention is contemplated, as the isolation and climatic conditions are not considered favorable.