When the moon had risen, he duly mounted his pony and set out for Badenoch, where he gave out the news that the gaugers were coming.
The excisemen could not stir from the inn fora considerable time, for their boiled boots refused to be drawn on; and by the time they had been enabled to stretch them and to set out once more on their way, the Badenoch smugglers had made off with all their gear, leaving nothing but empty bothies for inspection. The local historian is silent as to what happened afterwards to the postmaster, the only possible author of this outrage.
A smuggler of Strathdearn was unfortunate in having the excise pouncing suddenly upon him in his bothy, and taking away his only cask of whisky. The hated myrmidons of a Sassenach Government went off with the cask, and were so jealous of their prize that they took it with them to the inn where they were to pass the night. All that evening they sang songs and were merry with a numerous company in an upper room; but even at their merriest they did not forget their capture, and one of their number sat upon it all the time.
It chanced, however, that among these merry fellows were some of the smuggler’s friends, who were careful to note exactly the position of the cask. They procured an auger and bored a hole from the room below, through the flooring and into the cask, draining all the whisky away. When the excisemen had come to the end of their jollification, they had only the empty cask for their trouble.
One of the brae-side distillers of Fortingal brought a cart laden with kegs of whisky intoPerth, by arrangement with an innkeeper of that town; but the innkeeper refused to pay a fair price.
“Wha will her sell it till, then?” asked the would-be vendor.
The innkeeper, a person of a saturnine humour, mentioned a name and a house, and the man went thither with his cart.
“What is it, my man?” asked the occupier, coming to the door.
“Well, yer honour, ’tis some o’ the finest whusky that iver was made up yon, and niver paid the bawbee’s worth o’ duty.”
“D’ye know who I am?” returned the householder. “I’m an officer of excise, and I demand to know who sent you to me.”
The smuggler told him.
“Now,” said the exciseman, “go back to him and sell him your whisky at his own price, and then begone.”
The man did as he was bidden; sold his consignment, and left the town. It was but a few hours afterwards that the innkeeper’s premises were raided by the excise, who seized the whisky and procured a conviction at the next Assizes, where he was heavily fined.
One of the last incidents along the Border, in connection with whisky-smuggling between Scotland and England, occurred after the duty had been considerably lowered. This was a desperate affray which took place on the night of Sunday, January 16th, 1825, at Rockcliffe Cross, five milesfrom Carlisle on the Wigton road. One Edward Forster, officer of excise, was on duty when he observed a man, whose name, it afterwards appeared, was Charles Gillespie, a labourer, carrying a suspicious object, and challenged him. This resulted in an encounter in which the excise officer’s head was badly cut open. Calling aid of another labourer, who afterwards gave evidence, he remarked that he thought the smuggler had almost done for him, but pursued the man and fired upon him in the dark, with so good an aim that he was mortally wounded, and presently died. It was a dangerous thing in those times for an excise officer to do his duty, and at the inquest held the coroner’s jury returned a verdict of “Murder”; the men who formed the jury being doubtless drawn from a class entirely in sympathy with smuggling, and possibly engaged in it themselves. Forster, evidently expectant of that verdict, did not present himself, and was probably transferred by his superiors to some post far distant. There the affair ends.
About the same time, on the Carlisle and Wigton road, two preventive men at three o’clock in the morning met a man carrying a load, which, when examined, proved to be a keg of spirits. Two other men then came up and bludgeoned the officers, one of whom dropped his cutlass; whereupon a smuggler picked it up, and, attacking him vigorously, cut him over the head. The smugglers then all escaped, leaving behind them two bladders containing eight gallons of whisky.
Some Smugglers’ Tricks and Evasions—Modern Tobacco-Smuggling—Silks and Lace—A Dog Detective—Leghorn Hats—Foreign Watches
Thetricks practised by smugglers other than those daring and resourceful fellows who risked life, limb, and liberty in conflict with the elements and the preventive service, may form, in the narration, an amusing chapter. Smugglers of this kind may be divided, roughly, into three classes. Firstly, we have the ingeniously evasive trade importer in bulk, who resorts to false declarations and deceptive packing and labelling, for the purpose of entering his merchandise duty-free. Secondly, we have the sailors, the firemen of ocean-going steamers, and other persons of like classes, who smuggle tobacco and spirits, not necessarily to a commercial end, in considerable quantities; and thirdly, there are those enterprising holiday-makers and travellers for pleasure who cannot resist the sport.
We read inThe Timesof 1816 that, among the many expedients at that time practised for smuggling goods into France, the following schemeof introducing merchandise into Dieppe had some dexterity. Large stone bottles were procured, and, the bottoms being knocked off, they were then filled with cotton stockings and thread lace. A false bottom was fixed, and, to avoid suspicion, the mouth of each bottle was left open. Any inquiries were met with the statement that the bottles were going to the spirit merchant, to be refilled.
Smugglers Attacked
This evasion was successfully carried on until a young man from Brighton ventured on too heavy a speculation. He filled his bottle with ten dozen stockings, which so weighted it that the bottom came off, disclosing the contents.
Ingenuity worthy of a better cause is the characteristic of modern types of smugglers. A constant battle of wits between them and the custom-house officers is in progress at all ports of entry; and the fortunes of either side may be followed with much interest.
One of the most ingenious of such tricks was that of the trader who was importing French kid-gloves. He caused them to be despatched in two cases; one, containing only right-hand gloves, to Folkestone, the other, left-hand only, to London. Being at the time dutiable articles, and the consignee refusing to pay the duty, the two cases were confiscated and their contents in due course sold at auction. No one has a use for odd gloves, and these oddments accordingly in each case realised the merest trifle; but the purchaser—who was of course the consignee himself—netteda very considerable profit over the transaction. The abolition of duty on such articles has, however, rendered a modern repetition of the trick unnecessary. Nor is it any longer likely that foreign watches find their way to these shores in the old time-honoured style—i.e.hung in leather bags round the persons of unassuming travellers.
Such an one, smuggling an unusual number across from Holland, calculated upon the average passage of twenty-four hours, and reckoned he could, for once in a way, endure that spell of waiting and walking about deck without lying down. He could not, as a matter of fact, on account of the watches, afford to lie down. To his dismay, the vessel, midway of the passage, encountered a dense fog, and had occasionally to stop or slow down; and, in the end, it was a forty-eight hours’ passage. The unfortunate smuggler could not endure so much, and was obliged to disclose his treasure. So the Revenue scored heavily on that occasion.
Tobacco is still largely smuggled, and is, in fact, the foremost article so treated to-day; the very heavy duty, not less than five times its value, forming a great, and readily understood, temptation. Perhaps the most notable attempt in modern times to smuggle tobacco in bulk was that discovered in 1881.
The custom-house staff in London had for some time before that date become familiar with warning letters sent anonymously, hinting that great quantities of tobacco were continually beingconveyed into England from Rotterdam without paying duty, but for a while little notice was taken of these communications; until at length they grew so definite that the officials had no choice but to inquire. Detective officers were accordingly despatched to Rotterdam, to watch the proceedings there, and duly observed the packing of two large marine boilers with tobacco, by hydraulic pressure. They were then shipped aboard a steamer and taken to London, whence they were placed upon the railway at King’s Cross, for delivery in the north. A great deal of secret manoeuvring by the custom-house officials and the police resulted in both boilers being seized in London and those responsible for them being secured. It was then discovered that they were only dummy boilers, made expressly for smuggling traffic; and it was further thought that this was by no means the first journey they had made. The parties to this transaction were fined close upon five thousand pounds, and the consignment was confiscated.
To conceal tobacco in hollow loaves of bread, especially made and baked for this purpose, was a common practice, and one not altogether unknown nowadays; while the coal-bunkers, the engine-rooms, and the hundred and one odd corners among the iron plates and girders of modern steamships afford hiding-places not seldom resorted to. The customs officers, who board every vessel entering port, of course discover many of thesecaches, but it is not to besupposed that more than a percentage of them are found.
Smuggled cigars are to-day a mere commonplace of the ordinary custom-house officer’s experience with private travellers, and no doubt a great quantity find a secret passage through, in the trading way. For some years there was a considerable import of broomsticks into England from the Continent, and little or no comment was made upon the curious fact of it being worth while to import so inexpensive an article, which could equally well be made here. But the mystery was suddenly dispelled one day when two clerks in a customs warehouse, wearied of a dull afternoon, set to the amusement of playing single-stick with two of these imported broomsticks. No sooner did one broomstick smite upon another in this friendly encounter than they both broke in half, liberating a plentiful shower of very excellent cigars, which had been secreted in the hollowed staves.
Silks formed an important item in the smugglers’ trade, and even the gentlemen of that day unconsciously contributed to it, by the use of bandana handkerchiefs, greatly affected by that snuff-taking generation. Huskisson, a thoroughgoing advocate of Free Trade, was addressing the House of Commons on one occasion and declaring that the only possible way to stop smuggling was to abolish, or at any rate to greatly reduce, the duties; when he dramatically instanced the evasions and floutings of the laws. “Honourablemembers of this House are well aware that bandana handkerchiefs are prohibited by law, and yet,” he continued, drawing one from his pocket, while the House laughed loud with delight, “I have no doubt there is hardly a gentleman here who has not got a bandana handkerchief.”
Lace-smuggling, of course, exercised great fascination for the ladies, who—women being generally lacking in the moral sense, or possessing it only in the partial and perverted manner in which it is owned by infants—very rarely could resist the temptation to secrete some on their way home from foreign parts. The story is told how a lady who had a smuggled lace veil of great value in her possession grew very nervous of being able to carry it through, and imparted her anxiety to a gentleman at the hotel dinner. He offered to take charge of it, as, being a bachelor, no one was in the least likely to suspect him of secreting such an article. But, in the very act of accepting his offer, she chanced to observe a saturnine smile spreading over the countenance of the waiter at her elbow. She instantly suspected a spy, and secretly altered her plans, causing the veil to be sewn up in the back of her husband’s waistcoat.
The precaution proved to be a necessary one, for the luggage of the unfortunate bachelor was mercilessly overhauled at every customs station on the remainder of the journey.
Among the many ruses practised upon the preventive men, who, as the butts of innumerable evasive false-pretences, must have been expertsin the ways of practical jokes, was that of the pretended drunken smuggler. To divert attention from any pursuit of the main body of the tub-carrying gang, one of their number would be detailed to stagger along, as though under the influence of drink, in a different direction, with a couple of tubs slung over his shoulders. It was a very excellently effective trick, but had the obvious disadvantage of working only once at any one given station. It was the fashion to describe the preventive men as fools, but they were not such crass fools as all that, to be taken in twice by the same simple dodge.
The solitary and apparently intoxicated tub-carrier would lead the pursuers a little way and would then allow himself easily to be caught, but would then make a desperate and prolonged resistance in defence of his tubs. At last, overpowered and the tubs taken from him, and himself escorted to the nearest blockade-station, the tubs themselves would be examined—and would generally be found to contain only sea-water!
The customs men, however, were not without their own bright ideas. The service would scarcely have been barren of imagination unless it were recruited from a specially selected levy of dunderheads. But it was an exceptionally brilliant officer who hit upon the notion of training a puppy for discovering those places where the smugglers had, as a temporary expedient, hidden their spirit-tubs. It would often happen that a successful run ended at the beach, and that opportunitiesfor conveying the cargo inland had to be waited upon. It would, therefore, be buried in the shingle, or in holes dug in the sands at low water, until a safe opportunity occurred. The customs staff knew this perfectly well, but they necessarily lacked the knowledge of the exact spots where these stores had been made.
Smugglers Defeated
The exceptionally imaginative customs officer in question trained a terrier pup to the business of scenting them by the cunning method of bringing the creature up with an acquired taste for alcohol. This he did by mixing the pup’s food with spirits, and allowing it to take no food that was not so flavoured. Two things resulted from this novel treatment: the dog’s growth was stunted, and it grew up with such a liking for spirits that it would take nothing not freely laced with whisky, rum, gin, or brandy.
The plan of operations with a dog educated into these vicious tastes was simple. When his master found a favourable opportunity for strolling along the shore, in search of buried kegs, the dog, having been deprived of his food the day before, was taken. When poor hungry Tray came to one of these spots, the animal’s keen and trained scent instantly detected it, and he would at once begin scratching and barking like mad.
The smugglers were not long in solving the mystery of their secret hoards being all at once so successfully located; and, all too soon for the Revenue, a well-aimed shot from the cliffs presently cut the dog’s career short.
“Perhaps the oddest form of the smuggling carried on in later times,” says a writer in an old magazine, “was a curious practice in vogue between Calais and Dover about 1819–20. This, however, was rather an open and well-known technical evasion of the customs dues than actual smuggling. The fashion at that time came in of ladies wearing Leghorn hats and bonnets of enormous dimensions. They were huge, strong plaits, nearly circular, and commonly about a yard in diameter; and they sold in England at from two to three guineas, and sometimes even more, apiece. A heavy duty was laid upon them, amounting to nearly half their value.
It is a well-known concession, made by the custom-houses of various countries, that wearing-apparel in use is not liable to duty, and herein lay the opportunity of those who were financially interested in the import of Leghorn plaits. A dealer in them hired, at a low figure, a numerous company of women and girls of the poorest class to voyage daily from Dover to Calais and back, and entered into a favourable contract with the owners of one of the steamers for season-tickets for the whole band of them at low rates. The sight of these women leaving the town in the morning with the most deplorable headgear and returning in the evening gloriously arrayed, so far as their heads were concerned, was for some few years a familiar and amusing one to the people of Dover.
Another ingenious evasion was that longpractised by the Swiss importers of watches at the time when watches also were subject to duty. Anad valoremduty was placed upon them, which was arrived at by the importers making a declaration of their value. In order to prevent the value being fixed too low, and the Revenue being consequently defrauded, the Government had the right of buying any goods they chose, at the prices declared. This was by no means a disregarded right, for the authorities did frequently, in suspicious cases, exercise it, and bought considerable consignments of goods, which were afterwards disposed of by auction, at well-known custom-house sales.
The Swiss makers and importers of watches managed to do a pretty good deal of business with the customs as an unwilling partner, and they did it in a perfectly legitimate way; although a way not altogether without suspicion of sharp practice. They would follow consignments of goods declared at ordinary prices with others of exactly similar quality, entered at the very lowest possible price, consistent with the making of a trading profit; and the customs officials, noting the glaring discrepancy, would exercise their rights and buy the cheaper lots, thinking to cause the importers a severe loss and thus give them a greatly needed lesson. The watch-manufacturers really desired nothing better, and were cheerfully prepared to learn many such lessons; for they thus secured an immediate purchaser, for cash, and so greatly increased their turnover. Other folks incidentallybenefited, for goods sold at customs auctions rarely ever fetched their real value: there were too many keenly interested middlemen about for that to be permitted. Thus, an excellent watch only, as a rule, to be bought for from £14 to £15, could on these occasions often be purchased for £10. Naturally enough, the proprietors of watch and jewellery businesses were the chief bidders at these auctions; and, equally naturally, they usually found means to keep down the prices to themselves, while carefully ensuring that private bidders should be artfully run up.
Coast Blockade—The Preventive Water-Guard and the Coastguard—Official Return of Seizures—Estimated Loss to the Revenue in1831—The Sham Smuggler of the Seaside—The Modern Coastguard
Theearly coastguardmen had a great deal of popular feeling to contend with. When the coast-blockade was broken up in 1831, and the “Preventive Water-Guard,” as this new body was styled, was formed, officers and men alike found the greatest difficulty in obtaining lodgings. No one would let houses or rooms to the men whose business it was to prevent smuggling, and thus incidentally to take away the excellent livelihood the fisherfolk and longshoremen were earning. Thus, the earliest stations of the coastguard were formed chiefly out of old hulks and other vessels condemned for sea-going purposes, but quite sound, and indeed, often peculiarly comfortable as residences, moored permanently in sheltered creeks, or hauled up, high and dry, on beaches that afforded the best of outlooks upon the sea.
Very few of these primitive coastguard stationsare now left. Their place has been pretty generally taken by the neat, if severely unornamental, stations, generally whitewashed, and enclosed within a compound-wall, with which summer visitors to our coasts are familiar. And the old-time prejudice against the men has had plenty of time to die away during the eighty years or so in which the coastguard service has existed. There are still, however, some eleven or twelve old hulks in use as coastguard stations; principally in the estuaries of the Thames and Medway.
The Preventive Water-Guard, from which the existing coastguard service was developed, was not only the old coast-blockade reorganised, but was an extension of it from the shores of Hampshire, Sussex, Kent, and Essex, to the entire coast-line of the United Kingdom. It was manned by sailors from the Royal Navy, and the stations were commanded by naval lieutenants. Many of the martello towers that had been built at regular intervals along the shores of Kent and Sussex, and some few in Suffolk, in or about 1805, when the terror of foreign invasion was acute, were used for these early coastguard purposes.
That the preventive service did not prevent, and did not at first even seriously interfere with, smuggling, was the contention of many well-informed people, with whom the Press generally sided. The coast-blockade, too, was—perhaps unjustly—said to be altogether inefficient; and was further said, truly enough, to be ruinously costly. Controversy was bitter on these matters.In January 1825The Timesrecorded the entry of the revenue cutter,Hawke, into Portsmouth, after a cruise in which she had chased and failed to capture, owing to heavy weather, a smuggling lugger which successfully ran seven hundred kegs of spirits. To this item of news Lieutenant J. F. Tompson, of H.M.S.Ramillies, commanding the coast-blockade at Lancing, took exception, and wrote toThe Timesa violent letter, complaining of the statements, and saying that they were absolutely untrue. To thisThe Timesreplied, with considerable acerbity, on February 3rd, that the statement was true and the lieutenant’s assertions unwarranted. The newspaper then proceeded to “rub it in” vigorously: “There is nothing more ridiculous, in the eyes of those who live upon our sea-coasts, than to witness the tender sensibilities of officers employed upon the coast-blockade whenever a statement is made that a smuggler has succeeded in landing his cargo; as though they formed a part of the most perfect system that can be established for the suppression of smuggling. Now be it known to all England that this is a gross attempt at humbug. Notwithstanding all the unceasing vigilance of the officers and men employed, smuggling is carried on all along the coast, from Deal to Cornwall, to as great a degree as the public require. Any attempt to smugglethisFactmay answer the purpose of a party, or a particular system, but it will never obtain belief.
“It was only a few days since that a partyof coast-blockade men (we believe belonging to the Tower, No. 61) made common cause with the smugglers, and they walked off altogether!”
Exactly! The sheer madness of the Government in maintaining the extraordinary high duties, and of adding always another force to existing services, designed to suppress the smugglers’ trade, was sufficiently evident to all who would not refuse to see. When commodities in great demand with all classes were weighted with duties so heavy that few persons could afford to purchase those that had passed through His Majesty’s Custom-houses, two things might have been foreseen: that the regularised imports would, under the most favourable circumstances, inevitably decrease; and that the smuggling which had already been notoriously increasing by leaps and bounds for a century past would be still further encouraged to supply those articles at a cheap rate, which the Government’s policy had rendered unattainable by the majority of people.
An account printed by order of the House of Commons in the beginning of 1825 gave details of all customable commodities seized during the last three years by the various establishments formed for the prevention of smuggling: the Coastguard, or Preventive Water-guard; the Riding-officers; and the revenue cruisers and ships of war.
In that period the following articles were seized and dealt with:
Tobacco
902,684¼
lb.
Snuff
3,000
,,
Brandy
135,000
gallons.
Rum
253
,,
Gin
227,000
,,
Whisky
10,500
,,
Tea
19,000
lb.
Silk
42,000
yards.
India handkerchiefs
2,100
pieces.
Leghorn hats
23
Cards
3,600
packs.
Timber
10,000
pieces.
Stills
75
The cost of making these seizures, and dealing with them, was put as follows:
£
s.
d.
Law expenses
29,816
19
4¾
Storage, rent of warehouses, etc.
18,875
14
10½
Salaries, cooperage, casks, repairs, etc.
1,533,708
4
10
Rewards to officers, etc.
488,127
2
11½
£2,070,528
2
0¾
The produce of all these articles sold was £282,541 8s.5¾d.; showing a loss to the nation, in attempting during that period to suppress smuggling, of considerably over one million and three quarters sterling.
This return of seizures provides an imposing array of figures, but, amazing as those figures are by themselves, they would be still more so if it were possible to place beside them an exact return of the goods successfully run, in spite of blockadesand preventive services. Then we should see these figures fade into insignificance beside the enormous bulk of goods that came into the country and paid no dues.
Some very startling figures are available by which the enormous amount of smuggling effected for generations may be guessed. It would be possible to prepare a tabulated form from the various reports of the Board of Customs, setting forth the relation between duty-paid goods and the estimated value of smuggled commodities during a term of years, but as this work is scarce designed to fill the place of a statistical abstract, I will forbear. A few illuminating items, it may be, will suffice.
Thus in 1743 it was calculated that the annual average import of tea through the legitimate channels was 650,000 lb.; but that the total consumption was three times this amount. One Dutch house alone was known to illegally import an annual weight of 500,000 lb.
An even greater amount of spirit-smuggling may legitimately be deduced from the perusal of the foregoing pages, and, although in course of time considerably abated, as the coastguard and other organisations settled down to their work of prevention and detection, it remained to a late date of very large proportions. Thus the official customs report for 1831 placed the loss to the Revenue on smuggled goods at £800,000 annually. To this amount the item of French brandy contributed £500,000. The annual cost of protectingthe Revenue (excise, customs, and preventive service) was at the same time between £700,000 and £800,000.
An interesting detailed statement of the contraband trade in spirits from Roscoff, one of the Brittany ports, shows that, two years later than the above, from March 15th to 17th, 1833, there were shipped to England, per smuggling craft, 850 tubs of brandy; and between April 13th and 20th in the same year 750 tubs; that is to say, 6,400 gallons in little more than one month. And although Roscoff was a prominent port in this trade, it was but one of several.
So late as 1840, forty-eight per cent. of the French silks brought into this country were said to have paid no duty; and for years afterwards silk-smugglers, swathed apoplectically in contraband of this description, formed the early steamship companies’ most regular patrons.
The seaside holiday-maker of that age was an easy prey of pretended smugglers, cunning rascals who traded upon that most wide-spread of human failings, the love of a bargain, no matter how illegitimately it may be procured. The lounger on the seaside parades of that time was certain, sooner or later, to be approached by a mysterious figure with an indefinable air of mystery and a semi-nautical rig, who, with many careful glances to right and left, and in a hoarse whisper behind a secretive hand, told a tale of smuggled brandy or cigars, watches or silks. “Not ’arf the price you’d pay for ’em in the shops, guv’nor,” theshameless impostor would say, producing a bundle of cigars, “but the real thing; better than them wot most of the shops keep. I see you’re a gent. as knows a good smoke. You shall ’ave ’em”—at some preposterously low price. And generally the greenhorn did have them; finding, when he came to smoke the genuine Flor de Cabbage he had bought, that they would have been dear at any price. To that complexion of mean fraud did the old smuggling traditions of courage, adventure, and derring-do come at last!
The modern coastguard, known technically as the First Naval Reserve, is still under Admiralty control, but proposals are, it is understood, now afoot for entirely altering its status, and for reorganising it as a purely civil force, under the orders of the customs and excise authorities. At present the coastguard establishment numbers some 4,200 officers and men, and is understood to cost £260,000 a year. It is not, perhaps, generally understood that the coastguardman is really a man-o’-war’s man, attached to a particular ship, and liable at any moment of national emergency to be called to rejoin his ship, and to proceed on active service.
It is not really to be supposed that the coastguard succeed in entirely suppressing smuggling, even in our own times. Few are the articles that are now subject to duty, and the temptation is consequently not now very great. Also, the landing of such goods as tea, tobacco, and spirits in bulk would readily be detected; but smugglingof spirits and of tobacco in small quantities is commercially remunerative while the duties are as high as from 11s.to 17s.a gallon, and from 3s.6d.to 5s.a pound in respect of tobacco and cigars; while large quantities of that entirely modern article, saccharine, on which there is a duty of one shilling and threepence an ounce (with a minimum legal weight on import of eleven pounds, designed to render clandestine traffic in it difficult), must, in the very nature of things, be illegally introduced.
That there will be a phenomenal increase of smuggling when the inevitable happens and protection of the country’s trade against the foreigner is instituted, seems certain. It will seem like old times come again.
THE END
(Individual smugglers indexed only when mentioned at length.)
Acts of Parliament,7,14,17,23,27,34–6
Arundel, Conflict at,29
Barhatch,104
Beccles, Outrage at,113
Bedhampton Mill, near Havant,107–109
Beer,125,183,187,191–4,199
Blackwater, The,114
Blakeney,116
Bo-Peep, Fatal conflict at,98–100
— Conflict at,100
Borstal Hill (near Canterbury), Fatal conflict at,80
Bradwell Quay,114
Braemar,217
Branscombe, Epitaph at,125
Budleigh Salterton, Conflict at,198
Bulverhythe, Fatal conflict at,102
Burns, Robert,202
Caister,Conflict at,30,115
Camber Castle, Fatal conflict at,101
Canvey Island,113
Carter family, smugglers, of Prussia Cove,165–82
— Henry,169,172–83
— John,169–72,174
Carter, Wm., customs officer,15
Castle, Mr., excise officer, murdered,68
Chater, Daniel, Murder of,49-60
“Chop-backs,”78–80
Coastguard, The,239,246
Colchester, Outrage at,113
“Cruel Coppinger,”129–36
Cuckmere, Conflict at,29
Dalnashaugh,224
Diamond, John, smuggler,49,53,54
“Dog and Partridge,” Slindon Common,63–7
Dover, Fatal conflict at,98
Dymchurch, Conflict at,96
Eastbourne,Fatal conflict near,97
— at,101
Ewhurst, Smugglers’ hiding-places at,102–104
Export smuggling,2,12–23