410 plugin is not working

I have loaded in all of the pages I need to 410, but when I go to the URLs, it gets delivered as a 404, and NOT the 410.

I spoke to my host (blackchickenhost) and they said the following:

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My guess is the plugin is supposed to do some kind of code change to the theme so that the 404s are redirected to a 410. If this is the case, the plugin is not working as expected and you need to contact their developers to find out what is going on.

You’ve mentioned server cache many times and I’m sorry if I was not clear enough, but we don’t have any kind of server level caching that would cache your site without you configuring something on your end, such as W3TC, WPRocket, or some other caching plugin. That information along with the testing I have done seems to prove that the issue is not cache. I also took a look at the theme files for references to a redirection to 410.php but did not see anything. I’m unsure if that’s what was to be added to your site code to make the 404s redirect to 410, but I figured I’d take a look.’

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Do you know why this plugin is not working to deliver 410 to the browser but instead sends a 404?