Sir Beaumont Joseph Dixie

• General Notes
  • This man was a first cousin once removed of the previous holder of the title and was born at Newton Blossomville on 6th July 1769. Burke, Nichols and the Complete Baronetage all state that he was in the Navy, but no confirmation of this has been found. He is not in the Navy Lists nor in “Commissioned Officers of the R.N., 1650-1815”, and both the Admiralty index of Passing Certificates for Lieutenants and the Pay Register of Sub-Lieutenants have been searched without result. He may of course have been a Warrant Officer or lower deck seaman, but not knowing the name of any ships he served in, cannot refer to the appropriate Muster Book in which particulars of the whole crew of the vessel would be given. There remain the possibilities that he was employed by the Admiralty in some civilian capacity or that his sea service was not with the Royal Navy, but with in a merchantman.
    
    At all events, it is a fact that Beaumont Dixie was in captivity in France from about 1803 until 1814. The G.E.C. Complete Baronetage says that he was an officer in the R.N. and was "taken prisoner in France in 1802" but Professor Michael Lewis in "Napoleon and his British Captives” makes it abundantly clear that Beaumont was a civilian détenu, not a prisoner of war.
    
    It seems then, that, whatever Dixie's previous occupation may have been, he left it either before 1802 or when the Treaty of Amiens was signed in March of that year. One may perhaps suggest that he was visiting France as a private individual during those few months of peace and was trapped there on the resumption of hostilities. Miss Carola Oman in "Ayot Rectory" tells us that, when Britain reopened the War in May 1803, Napoleon, in an excess of fury, decreed that all Englishmen in France between the ages of sixteen and sixty should instantly be arrested and flung into captivity.
    
    From this point we may rely upon Professor Lewis's narrative.
    To start with, Beaumont was confined at Verdun and it was from there that he made an ingenious attempt to escape. He went down to the river Meuse, ostensibly to bathe, and left his clothes on the bank having previously hidden a second outfit some way downstream. He hoped to slip quietly away while the authorities, noting his failure to return and finding the discarded clothing, would assume that he had drowned – as indeed at first they did. Unfortunately, however his plan failed because, in the eyes of his fellow captives, he had violated the code that was held to apply to prisoners who had given their parole and were thus not kept under lock and key. A British naval officer chanced to witness his actions and reported them to the senior officer among the prisoners, one Brenton, who in his turn informed the Commandant. Consequently Dixie was recaptured before he had gone very far. He was ostracised because of violating a parolee's code – assuming he was an officer.
    
    It certainly appears to have been accepted by the British prisoners at Verdun that Beaumont Dixie had been in the Navy, for Professor Lewis tells us that the attempted escape caused considerable controversy among them and was complicated by the fact that Dixie, although a civilian détenu, "had once been a Naval Officer".  Some thought that a détenu, illegally detained ex hypothesi, should not be expected to conform to the strict officer convention. Brenton, however, maintained that a gentleman's word was, or should be, his bond even among détenus and that since Dixie had once been an officer he was all the more culpable; the very fact that he could go out and bathe in the river showed that he was not under lock and key at the time and therefore, by virtue of his parole, was not entitled to try to escape.
    
    As a consequence of this offence Beaumont was moved to Bitche, a prison of evil reputation. He appears, however, to have been a Grade I prisoner there; that is to say, he was treated reasonably well and his rooms were above ground level. Only two others were equally lucky: Colonel Edward Stack who was probably a political prisoner, and a wild but influential Irish Colonel named Whaley.  From Bitche Sir Beaumont was sent to Sarre Libre and eventually was privileged to return to Verdun where he spent the rest of the war. He had apparently become reconciled to his fate and was not again tempted to break his parole, for he is heard of in the summer of 1812 making the best he can of the town's amenities and even running a couple of horses in the races. He was liberated in July 1814 and returned to England. It comes as something of a shock to learn that he died only six days after his homecoming and was buried at Bosworth on 26th July. Neither his Will nor a Grant of Administration has been found.