Smuggling in Essex

By Graham Smith

Essex has always been particularly suited to smuggling. It has over ninety miles of coastline bordering the North Sea, and an even greater length of navigable rivers, tidal creeks and backwaters. The county’s maritime trade has been based predominantly in its three major ports—Colchester, Maldon and Harwich—with Manningtree, Mistley, Brightlingsea, Burnham and Leigh-on-Sea operating as ‘sub ports’ in a more minor role.During the period from 1700 to the 1830s, known as the heyday of smuggling, there was a hugely profitable trade in smuggled luxuries including tea, tobacco, spirits, silks and lace, as well as less orthodox cargo. Despite the romantic associations passed down by history, in reality smuggling was a vicious, violent and bloody undertaking. In more recent times, improved transport and communications, more sophisticated methods and illegal imports such as drugs; pornographic material; firearms; and live animals and birds have made combating smuggling a challenging and daunting task.Graham Smith’s meticulously researched book describes the smuggling industry in detail along each section of the Essex coast, explaining the various methods used. He introduces the legendary characters involved, including Mrs Gregson, the female ‘Fagin’ of Barking who employed a gang of local boys to obtain smuggled tobacco to supply to London merchants; William Blyth of Pagglesham, dubbed ‘The King of the Smugglers’; and Michael ‘Micky’ Steele who landed a small Cessna aircraft at St Osyth in 1989 carrying £1 million worth of cannabis.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Countryside Books
• Release date: Sep 26, 2005
• ISBN: 9781846749025

Book preview

dedicated.

Chapter 1

‘Honest Thieves’ – Smugglers and their Trade

In the early 19th century Charles Lamb, the essayist, declared ‘I like the smuggler, he is the only honest thief. He robs nothing but the Revenue, an abstraction I never greatly cared about’. Such has been the general view of smugglers since they first appeared centuries ago, an opinion no doubt shared by many people both past and present. Two notable exceptions were Dr Samuel Johnson and John Wesley; Johnson’s Dictionary describes a smuggler as ‘A wretch who, in defiance of the laws, imports and exports goods without payment of the Customs’ and Wesley regularly preached against ‘the accursed thing smuggling’ and denounced the smuggler as ‘…a thief-general who picks the pockets both of the King and all his fellow subjects. He wrongs them all’. Even Adam Smith, the celebrated economist, felt some sympathy for the smuggler ‘… [he] would have been in every respect an excellent citizen had not the laws of the country made that a crime which nature never meant to be so’; and Adam Smith was a Scottish Excise Commissioner!

Smuggling – the very word – has a ring of drama to it and is redolent of excitement, danger, daring, intrigue and romance. Many writers and artists have perpetuated a most romanticised view of smuggling – moonlit nights, secret tunnels, lanterns flashing on lonely cliff-tops, lines of horses being led along ancient lanes laden with smuggled goods by bands of jovial and swaggering ‘gentlemen’; portrayed as bold, handsome and fearless men pitting their courage and skills, at land and sea, against the Revenue men and prepared to risk life and limb to evade the harsh and exorbitant duties and restrictions imposed on the few ‘luxuries’ of life of the common people – tea, geneva (gin) and tobacco.

A fine painting by George Morland (1763–1804) showing smugglers at work.

Thus smuggling has passed into history and folklore securely cloaked under a mantle of romance and respectable dishonesty, a cosy and fairly harmless activity imbued with an aura of righteousness as it was conducted for the general good of ordinary people. Writers such as Richard Cobbold, Richard Barham, Thomas Hardy, Maude Faulkner, Russell Thorndike and Daphne Du Maurier have all inculcated this comfortable and agreeable image, and artists as diverse as Thomas Rowlandson, George Morland, William Heath and Henry Parker have left a highly idealised gallery of the smugglers. However, Rudyard Kipling’s A Smuggler’s Song, published in 1906, is probably more responsible for preserving this romantic myth of smuggling, with his ‘Five-and-twenty ponies, trotting through the dark …’. Until recently most coastal towns almost proudly proclaimed their ‘typical smuggling bays’, ‘quaint old smuggling inns’, ‘smugglers’ lanes’ and ‘secret tunnels’. But however picturesque and fanciful such images appear, there was a far darker side to smuggling, which has been conveniently forgotten or ignored by those writers and artists of yesteryear.

In reality smuggling was a vicious, violent and bloody undertaking even when judged against the brutal standards of the time. Intimidation, corruption, terror, treason, violence, and murder all played a part in the execution of this illegal trade. From 1700 to the 1830s smuggling was conducted on an immense scale and extended throughout the country, penetrating into every level of society, from the highest to the lowest. As Neville Williams maintained in Contraband Cargoes, ‘Down to the middle of the nineteenth century we were not so much a nation of seafarers and shopkeepers as a nation of smugglers.’ Never before or never again would the country suffer such a prolonged state of utter lawlessness; the enormity and violence of the smuggling trade surpassed any other form of illegal activity. In many coastal areas the whole countryside was virtually besieged by smuggling gangs. George Crabbe, the Suffolk poet and the son of a Collector of salt duties, lived through the height of the smuggling mania, and wrote that the smugglers had gained ‘a lawless passport through the land’.

So how did this illegal trade that was tolerated, condoned and carried out by otherwise respectable and generally law-abiding people of all classes and creeds originate? Smuggling can be traced back to the earliest imposition of Customs duties and the establishment of Customs officials at the various medieval ports to collect those duties. The name is probably derived from a Low German word Smukkeln, which corresponds closely to ‘smuckle’ the earliest English word used, and virtually meant ‘hide’ or ‘hiding hole’. The first recorded use was in a Royal Proclamation of 1661, ‘A sort of leud people called Smuckellors, never heard of before the late disordered times, who make it their trade … to steal and defraud His Majesty and His Customs.’

The earliest references to ‘frauds’, as smuggling was then described, can be traced to the late 13th century, as a result of the introduction, in 1275, of a new duty or ‘Custom’ on exported wool and woolfells. The wealth of England was founded on the excellence of its wool. This ‘Custom’, equivalent to about 40% by value, gave the necessary incentive to wool merchants to ship their wool and woolfells out of the country well away from the relatively few ‘approved’ ports. Continental merchants were eager to purchase the fine quality English wool, thus providing a lucrative and seemingly insatiable market; unlike later smuggling, the earliest ‘free-trade’ took the form of the illegal export of wool.

The honour, if it can described as such, of being the first recorded ‘smuggler’ falls to Henry of Arderne, an important London wool merchant; not only did he ‘free-trade’ in his own right but he also arranged shipments for other merchants. When pursued by Exchequer agents he escaped to Flanders but was later captured and brought to trial at the Exchequer Court in 1297. In order to gain his release from the Fleet prison he was required to pay £200, a paltry sum considering the enormous profit he had already made from the illegal trade. One charge brought against him related to ‘uncustomed wool’ shipped in the Fynch of Colchester.

Another important aspect of the smuggling trade – the payment of rewards for smuggled goods seized by Customs officers – first appears in the Exchequer records for 1374. The poet Geoffrey Chaucer, who was a Customs Comptroller of wool in London Port, received £71 as his share in the proceeds of the sale of wool forfeited by a merchant convicted of exporting it without duty. This was an appreciable sum as his annual salary was £16 13s 4d. The payment of seizure rewards to Revenue officers was always used as the over-riding incentive and motivation in the war against smuggling.

Over the next two centuries the references to ‘wool frauds’ are rather spasmodic; although no doubt the ‘free-trade’ continued, the exact extent is in doubt. This lack of evidence is explained by the fact that for long periods the collection of Customs duties was ‘farmed’. Under this system the King leased out the collection of duties at a port on an annual basis to financiers or local merchants; in return the King and the Exchequer received an agreed sum quarterly. By this procedure the Revenue was obtained in advance without the expense of providing officials to collect it. Thus smuggling did not directly affect the Exchequer but rather harmed the Customs farmers’ yield, hence the absence of such reports.

During the 16th century large increases in all import duties created a climate where the smuggling of goods into the country also became an attractive and profitable proposition. However, the organisation of the Customs service had greatly improved and strict conditions were placed on the control of vessels. The limits of ports were clearly delineated, special ‘legal’ quays and ‘sufferance’ wharves were approved for the discharge and loading of goods and the hours permitted for these activities were carefully regulated. Masters of vessels – British and foreign – were compelled to report all their cargo at the Custom Houses before the discharge of cargo could commence, and similarly for loading. The effect of these new regulations as far as smuggling was concerned was that any vessel found landing or loading goods, which were not reported and at a time or place not approved by the Exchequer, was considered to be involved in smuggling ipso facto.

Allied to these new controls a far closer supervision of Customs staff was introduced; they were continually exhorted to be especially vigilant in ‘the conduct of their business’. During Tudor times when the country’s trade was expanding, there was evidence of collusion between local merchants and Customs officials; indeed many of these officials were trading in their own right. The Exchequer was forced to undertake searching investigations into reports and rumours of ‘divers frauds’ at the ports. In 1536 George Whelplay, a London merchant and known informer on his fellow traders, was sent to ports along the east coast to investigate the rumours of ‘considerable frauds’ in these ports. He singled out ‘Ipswich and the harbours of Essex’ as the chief culprits and even tried to implicate the Duke of Norfolk, then Lord Treasurer and responsible for the Customs service. Almost forty years later there was a large increase of Customs ‘deputies at the harbours and creeks of Essex’ as a result of another Exchequer inspection. Thus the Essex coast was considered as a prime area of collusion and smuggling even in those days.

From September 1671 the collection of Customs duties was finally taken out of the hands of the numerous ‘farmers’ and firmly placed under the control of a Board of six Customs Commissioners directly appointed by King Charles II under Royal Letters Patent; the Customs service had come of age as a Department of State. The Board was given wide powers in the supervision and control of shipping at all the ports throughout the country but the Commissioners were ultimately responsible to the Treasury and sadly they held little power over the appointment of senior officials at the ports. Customs officers could not be called upon to serve on juries or inquests nor could they act as parish constables, and later they were granted ‘protection’ from impressment into the Navy, a privilege that was always highly valued.

The Commissioners were based at the London Custom House on the Thames adjacent to the Tower of London. It was from here that these highly paid Commissioners sat in relative comfort and luxury, to make their decisions about anti-smuggling policy for their poor beleaguered officers, based at the ports and along the coasts, to administer and enforce.

The London Custom House built by Sir Christopher Wren in 1671. This is where the Customs Board sat and made their decisions about smuggling policy.

At the close of the century the illegal export of wool, or ‘owling’, was still the most pressing and urgent problem for Customs officials. This term, ‘owlers’ for wool smugglers, is said to be derived from their habit of operating by night, but more realistically the word is thought to be a corruption of ‘woolers’. ‘Owling’ had increased to quite massive proportions but was largely confined to Kent, Sussex and the eastern counties. An ominous sign for the future was the number of ‘fights and affrays between the owlers and Customs men’ presaging the violence of the next century. The owlers were described as ‘a militia that in defiance of all authority convey their wool to shallops [smaller boats] with such strength that the officers dare not defend them.’

‘The Glorious Revolution’ of 1688 led directly to war with France, which demanded a large Revenue to maintain the Army and Navy and brought about a vast increase of import duties on a wide range of goods, allied to the introduction of various trade embargoes and restrictions. Tobacco, silks, lace, spices, tea and brandy were now increasingly smuggled into the country. Inevitably the increase and success of the smuggling trade resulted in a lower Revenue yield, which provoked even higher rates of duties to make up the shortfall and this in turn offered even greater incentives to smuggling – a vicious circle that was replicated in the coming century.

Another factor that had a profound effect on the dramatic increase in smuggling was the introduction and development of fore-and-aft rigging, which revolutionised sailing techniques, especially as far as coastal waters were concerned. The dangers of strong tides, rock shallows, sandbanks, mudflats and the close proximity of the shore made the ability to tack and sail to the windward of vital importance. Previously, square-rigged vessels could only enter creeks on a favourable wind and they would have to remain there until the wind was in the right quarter to make their escape, thus making the chance of detection that much greater. Small fore-and-aft rigged vessels could now sail into any creek, land or load their illegal cargo and depart swiftly, irrespective of the wind direction. Vessels were now being specially constructed for the smuggling trade, their main features being speed, manoeuvrability and a shallow draught to enable them to come in very close to the shore to land their cargoes. Although invariably called ‘smacks’ their design owed much to the successful Dutch ‘yachts’, which were fast growing in popularity in the country, greatly stimulated by King Charles II and his various ‘Royal yachts’.

By the end of the 17th century another Revenue service – the Excise – had entered the smuggling fray. Although Excise duties had been first introduced in 1643, the Excise department came into being in 1683 with a Board of Commissioners appointed by the King. Indeed a prominent member of the Mildmay family of Moulsham, Chelmsford, Sir Benjamin, was an Excise Commissioner from 1720 to 1728. The Excise was a completely separate service to the Customs and really operated with different priorities. It remained strongly independent of the Customs until the amalgamation of the two services in 1909. Excise officers were primarily concerned with the collection of the duties on home-produced goods – beer, malt, spirits, candles, soap, and bricks. They first became directly concerned with smuggling when an additional Excise duty was placed on French brandy. However, in the coming decades as Excise duties (in addition to Customs duties) were placed on a variety of imported goods – tobacco, spirits, wines, tea, coffee and sugar – its officers became increasingly drawn more closely into the smuggling war, although not quite to the extent that many later writers have implied. The Excise service had their own cutters, the first one specifically employed to prevent French brandy being run on the coasts of Kent; they were never as numerous or as large as those of the Customs service but nevertheless they tended to be slightly more successful.

Revenue cutters were the most successful force in combating smuggling. Customs cutter chasing a smuggling vessel. Oil painting by Gilbert Geary.

The Customs Board, faced with the dramatic increase of smuggling, responded with the establishment of riding officers to patrol the coasts day and night. Additionally ten Customs ‘sloops’ were stationed at a number of ports mainly on the south and east coasts at first; hitherto the few ‘Custom-house smacks’ had been based mainly in the Port of London. One was placed at Harwich in 1685 and thirteen years later another was stationed at Wivenhoe. This really heralded the birth of the Revenue fleet of cutters, which for over a century was second in size to the Royal Navy. Thus the lines of battle had been drawn up for the desperate struggle to contain the smuggling trade. On land were the Customs riding officers and inshore boatmen, based along the coasts, with Excise officers usually stationed further inland. The Revenue officers could request the assistance of dragoons (armed mounted infantrymen) and the local militia, though such examples of co-operation tended to be fairly isolated. At sea the Customs and Excise cutters were helped infrequently and very grudgingly by Naval warships; in fact Revenue cutters were more often called upon to assist the Navy rather than vice-versa. Thus for the next 130 years or so these Revenue forces would be at a state of constant war with the smugglers, and had relatively little success despite all their earnest and brave endeavours.

The illegal trade blazed through the country like a forest fire, with the various Revenue forces seemingly powerless to contain it. No stretch of coastline was free of smugglers. The south coast right from the Thames Estuary to Land’s End was the most notorious area, its smugglers traded with conspicuous success from the French ports and the Channel Islands. The east coast from Scotland down to Essex was deeply involved in the free-trade with its smugglers mainly obtaining their goods from Holland and Denmark. It was not just coastal areas that were affected by the trade, smuggled goods penetrated far inland. In 1705 the Customs set up a force of ‘land carriage officers’, who were required to attend the coaching inns and examine the stagecoaches and wagons on arrival to ensure that no smuggled goods had been carried from the ports. They also had the authority to search storehouses and cellars. Such officers were stationed at the Bull Inn, Leadenhall Street and the Blue Boar at Aldgate, the termini for many Essex stagecoaches and carriers. Parliament continued to introduce new legislation and amend existing Acts in a vain attempt to combat and limit smuggling. Each new Act became more drastic and draconian and the penalties imposed far harsher, which effectively became self-defeating and brought about even greater opposition and violence from the smugglers to prevent their capture.

The first of several ‘Hovering’ Acts was introduced in 1718, which made any vessel under fifteen tons laden with tea, spirits, tobacco or French silks found hovering within two leagues (about six miles) of the coast liable to seizure. Three years later another Act increased the tonnage of vessels to forty and also included boats with four or more oars. Receivers of smuggled goods faced heavy fines or three months imprisonment and convicted smugglers up to seven years imprisonment or impressment into the Navy. To obviate any misunderstanding the term ‘smuggling’ was redefined: ‘running goods without the payment of duty, doing the same with more than five persons in a company, carrying offensive weapons, wearing any vizard, mask of other disguise or forcibly resisting Revenue officers when they were attempting to seize smuggled goods.’

A Brush with Smugglers: a party of dragoons attacking smugglers. From a painting by Bernard F. Gribble.

Even when smugglers were apprehended the Customs frequently failed to obtain a conviction. As a report in 1736 stated ‘… in some parts of the maritime counties the whole population is so generally engaged in smuggling that it is impossible to find a jury that will upon trial do justice to an officer of the Revenue in any case whatsoever.’ The perversion of justice was such that there were several instances of Customs officers finding themselves indicted for assault although they had in fact been merely trying to defend themselves from brutal attacks at the hands of the smugglers!

The first of an endless number of Parliamentary Inquiries into smuggling sat in 1736 under General Sir John Cope, a vociferous opponent of smuggling. His report revealed publicly for the first time the incredible extent and violent nature of the trade:

‘The smugglers being grown to such a degree of insolence, as to carry on their wicked practices by force and violence, not only in the country and the remote parts of the Kingdom, but even in the City of London itself, going in gangs armed with swords, pistols and other weapons, even to the number of forty or fifty, by which means they have been too strong, not only for the officers of the Revenue but for the civil magistrates themselves … The number of Custom House officers who have been abused and wounded since Christmas 1723 being no less than 250, besides six others who have been actually murdered in the execution of their duty.’

So much for the cosy and harmless activity! This lengthy report occasioned even sterner legislation, bringing in the death penalty for hindering or wounding Revenue officers. The Act did offer a free pardon for past smuggling offences, providing full details were disclosed and associates named. This was never likely to be successful because the retribution meted out to informers was violent in the extreme. One contemporary record maintained ‘all the clever young fellows of the country are employed by smugglers; from them they have a half-a-crown a day, whilst they wait upon the sea coast for the landing of the goods, and as soon as the goods are landed they mount on horseback to dispose of them for a guinea a day.’ The Gentleman’s Magazine of 1740 carried a complaint from ‘a gentleman from a market town in the country’:

‘Almost every young lady related how she was frighted by the smugglers, and declared they’d go to London next winter, so that young ladies will be very scarce and we country batchelors shall be left to despair and dye.’

Another social ill to lay at the door of smuggling?

For sheer brutality and mindless violence the gangs operating along the south coast were quite unsurpassed in the history of smuggling. They operated like small armies, maybe one hundred strong and heavily armed, terrorising the whole countryside, injuring and killing with a callous inhumanity and nothing appeared too dangerous or outrageous for them to tackle. Gaols were attacked to rescue accomplices, Custom Houses were broken into to recover seized goods – Poole in October 1747 followed six months later by Colchester. Customs officers were kidnapped and transported over to France to be imprisoned until the Customs Board could arrange their release.

At sea the situation was equally desperate. By 1750 the smuggling vessels were so large, heavily armed and manned and commanded with such verve and panache that they easily repelled any seizure attempts by the Revenue cutters. Some Revenue vessels were destroyed by the smugglers, but a few were captured, the crews set adrift and then the captured vessels were used in the smuggling trade. Even when Naval vessels were engaged in the smuggling ‘battle’, the smugglers treated them in the same insolent manner. In fact the Royal Navy made scant impact on the smuggling trade at least until the 1820s; they were probably more of a problem to the Customs than any material help, with many instances of Naval officers and seamen being caught smuggling. Relations between the Navy and the Customs service were never very cordial; it should be borne in mind that many Naval seamen were ex-smugglers, impressed into the Navy.

The brutality of the smuggling trade; the murder of William Galley, Customs Officer, and Daniel Chater, informer, in 1748. Etching by Phiz.

It is virtually impossible to quantify the amount and value of goods smuggled and the ruinous effect on the country’s legal trade and the disastrous loss of revenue. Although Customs Collectors were frequently requested to provide estimates of smuggling along their coasts, they were reluctant to furnish reports of large-scale smuggling in their ports (even if they were aware of the extent, which was most unlikely), because such accounts might well be construed as an admittance of a lax and ineffective control. But, in 1729, the Yarmouth Collector reckoned that 49,000 half-ankers of brandy (roughly equivalent to 180,000 gallons) were landed each year on the Suffolk and Essex coasts. It is probably safe to surmise that goods in excess of £3 million in value were being smuggled annually at a time when the legal trade of the country amounted to some £12 million. The Treasury was thus losing at least a quarter of its annual revenue and this figure might well be even higher. This was one of the main reasons why duties were continually increased in an attempt to redress this alarming deficit. Customs and Excise duties formed the major part of the country’s revenue for most of the 18th century; only in 1799 was income tax introduced, originally as a temporary wartime measure. The enormity of the smuggling trade seriously endangered the financial stability of the country and greatly damaged the legal trade quite irrespective of all the mayhem created by its lawless nature.

For most of the century the staple commodity of the smuggler was tea. In 1738 Thomas Gray, the poet, referred to ‘run tea’ as if it was the most normal and commonplace feature of everyday life. Legal tea was an expensive and fashionable luxury only enjoyed by comparatively few; the East India Company had a monopoly of its import into the country and all the tea sold legally passed through its tea auctions in the City of London. Thus the combination of a trade monopoly and high Customs and Excise import duties made tea smuggling a most profitable enterprise. It was almost the ideal commodity to smuggle; easily obtainable on the Continent, light to transport packed in oilskin bags specially made in Holland, and with a high resale value relative to its weight and bulk – a ‘dollop’ (the usual smuggling package) weighed about 10 pounds. Tea could be obtained on the Continent for as little as 6d to 1s per pound depending on quality and could be sold in this country for anything from 4s 6d to 10s per pound or more, when the cheapest and most inferior legal tea cost 5s per pound. In 1777 Rev James Woodforde at his Norfolk vicarage recorded in his diary that he had paid ‘Andrews the honest smuggler’ 10s 6d a pound for his smuggled tea. Even greater profits could be achieved by the addition of dyed herb leaves, of which rosemary was a favourite adulterant. By 1750 it was estimated that over three million pounds of tea were being smuggled annually, more than three times the legal trade, and just twenty years later the smuggled figure was thought to be in excess of seven million pounds.

In 1784 one of William Pitt’s first actions on becoming Prime Minister was to reduce the duties on tea from an equivalent of 125% down to 12½%. In one stroke he made tea smuggling virtually unprofitable. The success was immediate, legal sales of tea increased almost threefold. Pitt was highly praised for his efforts: ‘There never was, or will be, most likely, a Minister that laboured harder to prevent the fair trader from being hurt by