HISTORY of SUSSEX
Smuggling Days: Page 1
One thinks of the old-time smuggler with a feeling of sympathy which
could never be bestowed upon any such modern adventurer. One thinks of him
as a person delighting in life, who found the contraband a cold thing compared
to the fun and adventure of running it by land and sea.
He loved his drop of " moonshine " (smuggled brandy) did the
smuggler, but he loved life and humour more. Better than anything he loved
his comrades, and in the whole history of smuggling his desertion of a wounded
comrade is unknown. The pure-bred smuggler was often a popular figure in
his native village and no one would willingly see him taken by the preventive
agents. In former times nearly everyone in the district of Sussex within
reach of the coast looked upon smuggling as a kind of dashing diversion,
or sport, which gave a spice of interest to the otherwise monotonous calendar
of rural events.
Even our old friend the Rev. W. D. Parish, as he sat in his great dim
library at Selmeston writing his Sussex dictionary could not help slipping
a kindly word here and there for the smugglers, and (oh! tut-tut!) he even
goes so far as to admit that he allowed his church to be used as a storehouse
for contraband tea, tubs, and silk stockings.
" Darks " is a word used by sailors and smugglers to indicate
moonless nights, and at those times when the moon did not shine, the "
boys " were out, all up and down the coast, to receive and run any
cargoes which were being landed. The Rev. W. D. Parish says :
"The labourer was always ready to help whenever the darks favour
' a run ' ; the farmer allowed his horses to be borrowed from his stable;
the parson (certainly at Selmeston) expressed no surprise at finding tea
and tubs buried in the churchyard vaults ; the squire asked no questions
; the excisemen compounded with the smugglers, and when a difficulty arose
as to price, and hard blows were struck, the doctor bound up the wounds
for nothing, and made no inquiry, as to the dallops of tea or kegs of French
brandy, which from time to time were found mysteriously deposited on his
doorstep at day-break."
Even the village dogs were well disposed towards the smugglers, refusing
to bark when they made their nocturnal visits to inland farms, and children
were put to bed with a strict injunction, " Now, mind if you hear the
' gentlemen ' riding along the lane, don't you go a-peeping out of the window
, . . just you watch the wall and say nothing. "
Peeping at the smugglers might lead to their identification and arrest
and so it was looked upon as a heinous offence.
The unwritten law of the village in regard to smugglers was to always
" disremember " them, or rather to deny their existence.
Even the word " smuggler " was taboo ; an unlucky word to speak
aloud, and old Sussexians, if they admitted to some evidence of a force
or energy which caused dallops of tea to gravitate to the village grocer
and tubs of contraband brandy to assemble in churchyard vaults, referred
vaguely to the " gentlemen," shrugged their shoulders, and then
became remarkably silent. It was the old principle of " no name, no
pack drill."
Kipling, in 'A Smuggler's Song', as usual sums up the whole situation
in a few vigorous lines :
If you wake at midnight, and hear a horse's feet,
Don't go drawing back the blind, or looking in the street,
Them that asks no questions isn't told a lie.
Watch the wall, my darling, while the Gentlemen go by !
Five and twenty ponies,
Trotting through the dark,
Brandy for the Parson,
'Baccy for the Clerk ;
Laces for a lady; letters for a spy,
And watch the wall, my darling, while the Gentlemen go by!
Running round the woodlump if you chance to find
Little barrels, roped and tarred, all full of brandy-wine ;
Don't you shout to come and look, or take 'em for your play;
Put the brushwood back again - and they'll be gone next day!
If the sport of smuggling was lucrative, it was also extremely hazardous,
and tombstone inscriptions in the Sussex churchyards tell many tales of
desperate encounters between the gentlemen and the preventive men. One smuggler
shot at sea by a revenue officer, both of them following their vocations
at the time, was buried in the churchyard of All Saints, Hastings, in 1783.
The defunct smuggler, removed from all worldly hatred, thus speaks from
his gravestone:
May it be known, tho' I am clay,
A base man took my life away ;
But freely him I do forgive
And hope in heaven we shall live,
Patcham churchyard also contains a grave to a smuggler, Daniel Scales,
who was unfortunately shot, November 7th, 1796 This is a polite version
of the affair, for this worthy smuggler was killed in fair fight by a revenue
officer ! I do not know if the tombstone is now recognizable, but the following
inscription was once to be seen on it :
Alas! swift flew the fatal lead Which pierced through the young man's
head,
He instant fell, resigned his breath,
And closed his languid eyes in death.
All ye who do this stone draw near,
Oh! pray let fall the pitying tear,
From the sad instance may we all
Prepare to meet Jehovah's call.
About the year 1720, Brighton was very heavily engaged in the smuggling
industry, indeed fish and contraband were the only staples of the town at
that time. The sea had continuously battered the houses on the shore, and
most of the important residents had moved to other towns, leaving property
to crumble and go to ruin. The deserted houses soon become infested with
smugglers, who welcomed the solitary and ruinous state of the whole seashore
and the absence of law and authority.
The old inhabitants were a very tough lot if we may credit John Burton
writing in 1751 :
A village on the sea coast, lying in a valley gradually sloping and yet
deep. It is not indeed contemptible as to size, for it is thronged with
people, though the inhabitants are mostly very needy and wretched in their
mode of living, occupied in the employment of fishing, robust in their bodies,
laborious, skilled in all nautical crafts, and, as it is said, terrible
cheats of the custom-house officers.
Departing therefore to the inn, like the heroes of Homer after a battle,
so did we perform our part most manfully, and then turned to bed, intending
to sleep ; but this sweet lulling of the senses was begrudged us by some
sailors arriving all night long, and in the middle of their drink, singing
out with their barbarous voices, clapping and making all manner of noises.
The women also disturbed us, quarrelling and fighting about their fish.
" Nor lacked there in the house Mud-footed Thetis with her briny
friends."
An earlier account of the town shows it as a ruinous no-man's-land. This
peep at the condition of Brighton in 1720 is from the pen of John Warburton
:
" I passed through a ruinous village called Hove, which the sea is
daily eating up. It is in a fair way of being quite deserted ; but the church
being large, and a good distance from the shore, may perhaps escape. A good
mile farther, going along the beach, I arrived at Brighthelmstead, a large,
ill-built, irregular market town, mostly inhabited by seafaring men, who
choose their residence here, as being situated on the main, and convenient
for their going on shore, on their passing and re-passing in the coasting
grade.
The town is likely to share the same fate with the last, the sea having
washed away the half of it ; whole streets being now deserted, and the beach
almost covered with walls of houses being almost entire, the lime or cement
being strong enough, when thrown down, to resist the violence of the waves.
The church is situated on the downs, at a furlong
distance from the town; it is large, but nothing about it worthy of remark;
or in the town; there not being any person of fortune in the town but one
Masters (or Morley ?) a gentleman of good birth."
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Smuggling in Sussex
