The “Murders by Smugglers” in Hampshire

The most outstanding chapter in the whole history of smuggling is that of the cold-blooded “Murders by Smugglers” which stained the annals of the southern counties in the mid-eighteenth century with peculiarly revolting deeds that have in them nothing of romance; nothing but a long-drawn story of villainy and fiendish cruelty. It is a story that long made dwellers in solitary situations shiver with apprehension, especially if they owned relatives connected in any way with the hated customs officers.

This grim chapter of horrors, upon which the historian can dwell only with loathing, and with pity for himself in being brought to the telling of it, was the direct outcome of the lawless and almost unchecked doings of the Hawkhurst Gang, whose daring grew continually with their long-continued success in terrorising the countryside.

The beginnings of this affair are found in an expedition entered upon by a number of the gang in September 1747, in Guernsey, where they purchased a considerable quantity of tea, for smuggling into this country. Unfortunately for their enterprise, they fell in with a revenue cutter, commanded by one Captain Johnson, who pursued and captured their vessel, took it into the port of Poole, and lodged the tea in the custom-house there.

The smugglers were equally incensed and dismayed at this disaster, the loss being a very heavy one; and they resolved, rather than submit to it, to go in an armed force and recover the goods. Accordingly a mounted body of them, to the number of sixty, well provided with firearms and other weapons, assembled in what is described as “Charlton Forest,” probably Chalton Downs, between Petersfield and Poole, and thence proceeded on their desperate errand. Thirty of them, it was agreed, should go to the attack, while the other thirty should take up positions as scouts along the various roads, to watch for riding-officers, or for any military force, and so alarm, or actively assist, if needs were, the attacking party.

It was in the midnight between October 6th and 7th that this advance party reached Poole, broke open the custom-house on the quay, and removed all the captured tea—thirty-seven hundredweight, valued at £500—except one bag of about five pounds weight. They returned in the morning, in leisurely fashion, through Fordingbridge; the affair apparently so public that hundreds of people were assembled in the streets of that little town to see these daring fellows pass.

. . breaking open the Customs House at PooleAmong these spectators was one Daniel Chater, a shoemaker, who recognised among this cavalcade of smugglers a certain John Diamond, with whom he had formerly worked in the harvest field. Diamond shook hands with him as he passed, and threw him a bag of tea.

It was not long before a proclamation was issued offering rewards for the identification or apprehension of any persons concerned in this impudent raid, and Diamond was in the meanwhile arrested on suspicion at Chichester. Chater, who seems to have been a foolish, gossiping fellow, saying he knew Diamond and saw him go by with the gang, became an object of considerable interest to his neighbours at Fordingbridge, who, having seen that present of a bag of tea—a very considerable present as the price of tea then ran—no doubt thought he knew more of the affair than he cared to tell. At any rate, these things came to the knowledge of the Collector of Customs at Southampton, and the upshot of several interviews and some correspondence with him was that Chater agreed to go in company with one William Galley, an officer of excise, to Major Battin, a Justice of the Peace and a Commissioner of Customs at Chichester, to be examined as to his readiness and ability to identify Diamond, whose punishment, on conviction, would be, under the savage laws of that time, death.

Chater, in short, had offered himself as that detestable thing, a hired informer: a creature all right-minded men abhor, and whom the smugglers of that age visited, whenever found, with persecution and often with the same extremity to which the law doomed themselves.

The ill-fated pair set out on Sunday, February 14th, on horseback, and, calling on their way at Havant, were directed by a friend of Chater’s at that place to go by way of Stanstead, near Rowlands Castle. They soon, however, missed their way, and calling at Leigh, at the “New Inn,” to refresh and to inquire the road, met there three men, George and Thomas Austin, and their brother-in-law, one Mr. Jenkes, who accompanied them to Rowlands Castle, where they all drew rein at the “White Hart” public-house, kept by a Mrs. Elizabeth Payne, a widow, who had two sons in the village, blacksmiths, and both reputed smugglers.

Some rum was called for, and was being drank, when Mrs. Payne, taking George Austin aside, told him she was afraid these two strangers were after no good; they had come, she suspected, with intent to do some injury to the smugglers. Such was the state of the rural districts in those times that the appearance of two strangers was of itself a cause for distrust; but when, in addition, there was the damning fact that one of them wore the uniform of a riding-officer of excise, suspicion became almost a certainty.

But to her remarks George Austin replied she need not be alarmed, the strangers were only carrying a letter to Major Battin, on some ordinary official business.

This explanation, however, served only to increase her suspicions, for what more likely than that this business with a man who was, among other things, a highly placed customs official, was connected in some way with these recent notorious happenings?

To make sure, Mrs. Payne sent privately one of her sons, who was then in the house, for William Jackson and William Carter, two men deeply involved with smuggling, who lived near at hand. In the meanwhile Chater and Galley wanted to be gone upon their journey, and asked for their horses. Mrs. Payne, to keep them until Jackson and Carter should arrive, told them the man who had the key of the stables was gone for a while, but would return presently.

As the unsuspecting men waited, gossiping and drinking, the two smugglers entered. Mrs. Payne drew them aside and whispered her suspicions; at the same time advising Mr. George Austin to go away, as she respected him, and was unwilling that any harm should come to him.

It is thus sufficiently clear that, even at this early stage, some very serious mischief was contemplated.

Mr. George Austin, being a prudent, if certainly not also an honest, man, did as he was advised. Thomas Austin, his brother, who does not appear to have in the same degree commanded the landlady’s respect, was not warned, and remained, together with his brother-in-law. To have won the reader’s respect also, she should, at the very least of it, have warned them as well. But as this was obviously not a school of morals, we will not labour the point, and will bid Mr. George Austin, with much relief, “goodbye.”

Mrs. Payne’s other son then entered, bringing with him four more smugglers: William Steel, Samuel Downer, alias Samuel Howard, alias “Little Sam,” Edmund Richards, and Henry Sheerman, alias “Little Harry.”

After a while Jackson took Chater aside into the yard, and asked him after Diamond; whereupon the simple-minded man let fall the object of his and his companion’s journey.

While they were talking, Galley, suspecting Chater would be in some way indiscreet, came out and asked him to rejoin them; whereupon Jackson, with a horrible oath, struck him a violent blow in the face, knocking him down.

Galley then rushed into the house, Jackson following him. “I am a King’s officer,” exclaimed the unfortunate Galley, “and cannot put up with such treatment.”

“You a King’s officer!” replied Jackson, “I’ll make a King’s officer of you; and for a quartern of gin I’ll serve you so again!”

The others interposed, one of the Paynes exclaiming, “Don’t be such a fool; do you know what you are doing?”

Galley and Chater grew very uneasy, and again wanted to be going; but the company present, including Jackson, pressed them to stay, Jackson declaring he was sorry for what had passed. The entire party then sat down to more drink, until Galley and Chater were overcome by drunkenness and were sent to sleep in an adjoining room. Thomas Austin and Mr. Jenkes were by this time also hopelessly drunk; but as they had no concern with the smugglers, nor the smugglers with them, they drop out of this narrative.

When Galley and Chater lay in their drunken sleep the compromising letters in their pockets were found and read, and the men present formed themselves into a kind of committee to decide what should be done with their enemies, as they thought them. John Race and Richard Kelly then came in, and Jackson and Carter told them they had got the old rogue, the shoemaker of Fordingbridge, who was going to give an information against John Diamond the shepherd, then in custody at Chichester.

They then consulted what was best to be done to their two prisoners, when William Steel proposed to take them both to a well, a little way from the house, and to murder them and throw them in. Less ferocious proposals were made—to send them over to France; but when it became obvious that they would return and give the evidence after all, the thoughts of the seven men present reverted to murder. At this juncture the wives of Jackson and Carter, who had entered the house, cried, “Hang the dogs, for they came here to hang us!”

Another proposition that was made—to imprison the two in some safe place until they knew what would be Diamond’s fate, and for each of the smugglers to subscribe threepence a week for their keep—was immediately scouted; and instantly the brutal fury of these ruffians was aroused by Jackson, who, going into the room where the unfortunate men were lying, spurred them on their foreheads with the heavy spurs of his riding-boots, and, having thus effectually wakened them, whipped them into the kitchen of the inn until they were streaming with blood. Then, taking them outside, the gang lifted them on to a horse, one behind the other, and, tying their hands and legs together, lashed them with heavy whips along the road, crying, “Whip them, cut them, slash them, damn them!” one of their number, Edmund Richards, with cocked pistol in hand, swearing he would shoot any person through the head who should mention anything of what he saw or heard.

From Rowlands Castle, past Wood Ashes, Goodthorpe Deane, and to Lady Holt Park, this scourging was continued through the night, until the wretched men were three parts dead. At two o’clock in the morning this gruesome procession reached the Portsmouth Road at Rake, where the foremost members of the party halted at what was then the “Red Lion” inn, long since that time retired into private life, and now a humble cottage. It was kept in those days by one Scardefield, who was no stranger to their kind, nor unused to the purchase and storing of smuggled spirits. Here they knocked and rattled at the door until Scardefield was obliged to get out of bed and open to them. Galley, still alive, was thrust into an outhouse, while the band, having roused the landlord and procured drink, caroused in the parlour of the inn. Chater they carried in with them; and when Scardefield stood horrified at seeing so ghastly a figure of a man, all bruised and broken, and spattered with blood, they told him a specious tale of an engagement they had had with the King’s officers: that here was a comrade, wounded, and another, dead or dying, in his brew-house.

The “Red Lion,” Rake

Chater they presently carried to an outhouse of the cottage of a man named Mills, not far off, and then returned for more drink and discussion of what was to be done with Galley, whom they decided to bury in Harting Combe. So, while it was yet dark, they carried him down from the ridge on which Rake stands, into the valley, and, digging a grave in a fox-earth by the light of a lantern, shovelled the dirt over him, without inquiring too closely whether their victim were alive or dead. That he was not dead at that time became evident when his body was discovered eight months later, hands raised to his face, as though to prevent the earth from suffocating him.The whole of the next day this evil company sat drinking in the “Red Lion.” Richard Mills, son of the man in whose turf-shed Chater lay chained by the leg, passing by, they hailed him and told him of what they had done; whereupon he said he would, if he had had the doing of it, have flung the man down Harting Combe headlong and broken his neck.

On this Monday night they all returned home, lest their continued absence might be remarked by the neighbours; agreeing to meet again at Rake on the Wednesday evening, to consider how they might best put an end to Chater.

When Wednesday night had come this council of murderers, reinforced by others, and numbering in all fourteen, assembled accordingly. Dropping into the “Red Lion” one by one, it was late at night before they had all gathered.

They decided, after some argument, to dispatch him forthwith, and, going down to the turf-shed where he had lain all this while, suffering agonies from the cruel usage to which he had been subjected, they unchained him. Richard Mills at first had proposed to finish him there. “Let us,” said he, “load a gun with two or three bullets, lay it upon a stand with the muzzle of the piece levelled at his head, and, after having tied a long string to the trigger, we will all go off to the butt-end, and, each of us taking hold of the string, pull it all together; thus we shall be all equally guilty of his death, and it will be impossible for any one of us to charge the rest with his murder, without accusing himself of the same crime; and none can pretend to lessen or to mitigate his guilt by saying he was only an accessory, since all will be principals.”

Chater being kicked and cut

Thus Richard Mills, according to the story of these things told in horrid detail (together with a full report of the subsequent trial) by the author of the contemporary “Genuine History.” The phraseology of the man’s coldly logical proposals is, of course, that of the author himself; since it is not possible that a Sussex rustic of over a hundred and sixty years ago would have spoken in literary English.

Mills’s proposition was not accepted. It seemed to the others too merciful and expeditious a method of putting an end to Chater’s misery. They had grown as epicurean in torture as the mediÆval hell-hounds who racked and pinched and burnt for Church and State. They were resolved he should suffer as much and as long as they could eke out his life, as a warning to all other informers.

The proposal that found most favour was that they should take him to Harris’s Well, in Lady Holt Park, and throw him in.

Tapner, one of the recruits to the gang, thereupon inaugurated the new series of torments by pulling out a large clasp-knife, and, with a fearful oath, exclaiming, “Down on your knees and go to prayers, for with this knife I will be your butcher.”

Chater, expecting every moment to be his last, knelt down as he was ordered, and, while he was thus praying, Cobby kicked him from behind, while Tapner in front slashed his face.

The elder Mills, owner of the turf-shed, at this grew alarmed for his own safety. “Take him away,” he said, “and do not murder him here. Do it somewhere else.”

They then mounted him on a horse and set out for Lady Holt Park; Tapner, more cruel, if possible, than the rest, slashing him with his knife, and whipping him with his whip, all the way.

It was dead of night by the time they had come to the Park, where there was a deep dry well. A wooden fence stretched across the track leading to it, and over this, although it was in places broken and could easily have been crawled through, they made their victim climb. Tapner then pulled a rope out of his pocket and tied it round Chater’s neck, and so pushed him over the opening of the well, where he hung, slowly strangling.

But by this time they were anxious to get home, and could afford no more time for these luxuries of cruelty, so they dropped him to the bottom of the well, imagining he would be quite killed by the fall. Unfortunately for Chater, he was remarkably tenacious of life, and was heard groaning there, where he had fallen.

They dared not leave him thus, lest any one passing should hear his cries, and went and roused a gardener, one William Combleach, who lived a little way off, and borrowed a ladder, telling him one of their companions had fallen into Harris’s Well. With this ladder they intended to descend the well and finally dispatch Chater; but, seeing they could not manage to lower the ladder, they were reduced to finding some huge stones and two great gateposts, which they then flung down, and so ended the unhappy man’s martyrdom.

The problem that next faced the murderers was, how to dispose of the two horses their victims had been riding. It was first proposed to put them aboard the next smuggling vessel returning to France, but that idea was abandoned, on account of the risk of discovery. It was finally decided to slaughter them and remove their skins, and this was accordingly done to the grey that Galley had ridden, and his hide cut up into small pieces and buried; but, when they came to look for the bay that Chater had used, they could not find him.