Sheffield Daily Telegraph – Friday 06 December 1918

“Black Hole of Lille.”

Private Walter Sutton, S.W.B., Queen Street, Swinton, who was captured last spring, has returned from Germany.

He speaks of cruelty inflicted upon a number of prisoners at Lille. Three hundred and sixty of them were flung room with accommodation for only fifty, and they remained there for some weeks.

They were given half an hour in the open-air every day, and for the rest of the time were herded in this dungeon, and suffered the utmost torture.

They slept, when they could, in an erect position, and the heat and stench were unbearable, most of the men being almost in a constant fainting condition. Many of them, owing to the heat, took off their clothes and stood for hours naked.