A highland soldier

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;

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: