The “Murders by Smugglers” continued—Trial and Execution of the Murderers—Further Crimes by the Hawkhurst Gang

Even in those times two men, and especially men who had set out upon official business, could not disappear so utterly as Chater and Galley had done without comment being aroused, and presently the whole country was ringing with the news of this mysterious disappearance. The condition of the country can at once be guessed when it is stated that no one doubted the hands of the smugglers in this business. The only question was, in what manner had they spirited these two men away? Some thought they had been carried over to France, while others thought, shrewdly enough, they had been murdered.

But no tidings nor any trace of either Galley or Chater came to satisfy public curiosity, or to allay official apprehensions, until some seven months later, when an anonymous letter sent to “a person of distinction,” and probably inspired by the hope of ultimately earning the large reward offered by the Government for information, hinted that “the body of one of the unfortunate men mentioned in his Majesty’s proclamation was buried in the sands in a certain place near Rake.” And, sure enough, when search was made, the body of Galley was found “standing almost upright, with his hands covering his eyes.”

Another letter followed upon this discovery, implicating William Steel in these doings, and he was immediately arrested. To save himself, the prisoner turned King’s evidence, and revealed the whole dreadful story. John Race, among the others concerned, voluntarily surrendered, and was also admitted as evidence.

One after another, seven of the murderers were arrested in different parts of the counties of Hants and Surrey, and were committed to the gaols of Horsham and Newgate, afterwards being sent to Chichester, where a special Assize was held for the purpose of overawing the smugglers of the district, and of impressing them with the majesty and the power of the law, which, it was desired to show them, would eventually overtake all evil-doers.

We need not enter into the details of that trial, held on January 18th, 1749, and reported with painful elaboration by the author of the “Genuine History,” together with the sermon preached in Chichester Cathedral by Dean Ashburnham, who held forth in the obvious and conventional way of comfortably beneficed clergy, then and now.

Let it be sufficient to say that all were found guilty, and all sentenced to be hanged on the following day.Six of them were duly executed, William Jackson, the seventh, dying in gaol. He had been for a considerable time in ill health. He was a Roman Catholic and the greatest villain of the gang, and, like all such, steeped in superstition. Carefully sewed up in a linen purse in his waistcoat pocket was found an amulet in French, which, translated, ran as follows:

Ye three Holy Kings,
Gaspar, Melchior, Balthasar,
Pray for us now, and in the hour of death.

These papers have touched the three heads of the Holy Kings at Cologne.

They are to preserve travellers from accidents on the road, headaches, falling sickness, fevers, witchcraft, all kinds of mischief, and sudden death.

His body was thrown into a pit on the Broyle, at Chichester, together with those of Richard Mills, the elder, and younger. The body of William Carter was hanged in chains upon the Portsmouth road, near Rake; that of Benjamin Tapner on Rook’s Hill, near Chichester, and those of John Cobby and John Hammond upon the sea-coast near Selsea Bill, so that they might be seen for great distances by any contrabandists engaged in running goods.

Another accomplice, Henry Shurman, or Sheerman, alias “Little Harry,” was indicted and tried at East Grinstead, and, being sentenced to death, was conveyed to Horsham Gaol by a strong guard of soldiers and hanged at Rake, and afterwards gibbeted.

In January 1749, a brutal murder was committed at the “Dog and Partridge” inn, on Slindon Common, near Arundel, where Richard Hawkins was whipped and kicked to death on suspicion of being concerned in stealing two bags of tea, belonging to one Jerry Curtis. Hawkins was enticed away from his work at Walberton, on some specious pretext, by Curtis and John Mills, known as “Smoker,” and went on horseback behind Mills to the “Dog and Partridge,” where they joined a man named Robb: all these men being well-known smugglers in that district. Having safely got Hawkins thus far, they informed him that he was their prisoner, and proceeded to put him under examination in the parlour of the inn. There were also present Thomas Winter (afterwards a witness for the prosecution), and James Reynolds, the innkeeper.

Hawkins denied having stolen the tea, and said he knew nothing of the matter, whereupon Curtis replied, “Damn you; you do know, and if you do not confess I will whip you till you do; for, damn you, I have whipped many a rogue and washed my hands in his blood.”

Reynolds said, “Dick, you had better confess; it will be better for you.” But his answer still was, “I know nothing of it.”

Reynolds then went out, and Mills and Robb thereupon beat and kicked Hawkins so ferociously that he cried out that the Cockrels, his father-in-law, and brother-in-law, who kept an inn at Yapton, were concerned in it. Curtis and Mills then took their horses and said they would go and fetch them. Going to the younger Cockrel, Mills entered the house first and called for some ale. Then Curtis came in and demanded his two bags of tea, which he said Hawkins had accused him of having. Cockrel denied having them, and then Curtis beat him with an oak stick until he was tired. Curtis and Mills then forcibly took him to where his father was, at Walberton, and thence, with his father, behind them on their horses, towards Slindon.

Meanwhile, at the “Dog and Partridge,” Robb and Winter placed the terribly injured man, Hawkins, in a chair by the fire, where he died.

Robb and Winter then took their own horses and rode out towards Yapton, meeting Curtis and Mills on the way, each with a man behind him. The men, who were the Cockrels, were told to get off, which they did, and the four others held a whispered conversation, when Winter told them that Hawkins was dead, and desired them to do no more mischief.

“By God!” exclaimed Curtis, “we will go through it now.” Winter again urged them to be content with what had already been done; and Curtis then bade the two Cockrels return home.

Then they all four rode back to the “Dog and Partridge,” where Reynolds was in despair, saying to Curtis, “You have ruined me.”

The whipping of Richard Rowland

Curtis replied that he would make him amends; and they all then consulted how to dispose of the body. The first proposition was to bury it in a park close at hand, and to give out that the smugglers had deported Hawkins to France. But Reynolds objected. The spot, he said, was too near, and would soon be found. In the end, they laid the body on a horse and carried it to Parham Park, twelve miles away, where they tied large stones to it, and sunk it in a pond.

This crime was in due course discovered, and a proclamation issued, offering a pardon to any one, not himself concerned in the murder, nor in the breaking open of the custom-house at Poole, who should give information that would lead to the capture and conviction of the offenders.

William Pring, an outlawed smuggler, who had heard some gossip of this affair among his smuggling acquaintance, and was apparently wishful of beginning a new life, determined to make a bid for his pardon for past offences, and, we are told, “applied to a great man in power,” informing him that he knew Mills, and that if he could be assured of his pardon he would endeavour to take him, for he was pretty certain to find him either at Bristol or Bath, whither he knew he was gone, to sell some run goods.

Being assured of his pardon, he set out accordingly, and found not only Mills, but two brothers, Lawrence and Thomas Kemp, themselves smugglers and highway robbers, and wanted for various offences; Thomas Kemp being additionally in request for having broken out of Newgate.

The informer, Pring, artfully talking matters over with these three, and observing that the cases of all of them were desperate, offered the advice that they should all accompany him towards London, to his house at Beckenham, where they would decide upon some plan for taking to highway robbery and house-breaking, in the same manner as Gregory’s Gang [66] used to do.

This they all heartily agreed to, and confidentially, on the journey up to Beckenham, spoke and bragged of their various crimes.

Arrived at Beckenham, Pring made a plausible excuse to leave them awhile at his house, while he fetched his mare, in exchange for the very indifferent horse he had ridden. It would never do, he said, when on their highway business, for one of the company to be badly horsed.

He left the house and rode hurriedly to Horsham, whence he returned with eight or nine mounted officers of excise. They arrived at midnight, and found his three guests sitting down to supper.

The two Kemps were easily secured, and tied by the arms; but Mills would not so readily submit, and was slashed with a sword before he would give in.

The “Dog and Partridge,” Slindon Common

John Mills was a son of Richard Mills, and a brother of Richard Mills the younger, executed at Chichester for the murder of Chater and Galley, as already detailed, and he also had taken part in that business. Brought to trial at East Grinstead, he said he had indeed been a very wicked liver, but he bitterly complained of such of the witnesses against him as had been smugglers and had turned King’s evidence. They had, he declared, acted contrary from the solemn oaths and engagements they had made and sworn to among themselves, and he therefore wished they might all come to the same end, and be hanged like him and damned afterwards.

He was found guilty and duly sentenced to death, and was hanged and afterwards hung in chains on a gibbet erected for the purpose on Slindon Common, near the “Dog and Partridge.”

Curtis, an active partner in the same murder, fled the country, and was said to have enlisted in the Irish Brigade of the French Army. Robb was not taken, and Reynolds was acquitted of the murder. He and his wife were tried at the next Assizes, as accessories after the fact.

The “Dog and Partridge” has long ceased to be an inn, but the house survives, a good deal altered, as a cottage. In the garden may be seen a very capacious cellar, excavated out of the soil and sandstone, and very much larger than a small country inn could have ever required for ordinary business purposes. It is known as the “Smugglers’ Cellar.”

At the same sessions at which these bloodstained scoundrels were convicted a further body of five men, Lawrence and Thomas Kemp, John Brown, Robert Fuller, and Richard Savage, were all tried on charges of highway robbery, of housebreaking, and of stealing goods from a wagon. They were all members of the notorious Hawkhurst Gang, and had been smugglers for many years. All were found guilty and sentenced to death, except Savage, who was awarded transportation for life. The rest were executed at Horsham on April 1st, 1749. One of them had at least once already come near to being capitally convicted, but had been rescued from Newgate by a party of fellow-smugglers before justice could complete her processes.

These rescuers were in their turn arrested on other charges, and brought to trial at Rochester Assizes, with other malefactors, in March 1750. They were four notorious smugglers, Stephen Diprose, James Bartlett, Thomas Potter, and William Priggs, who were all executed on Penenden Heath, on March 30th.

Bartlett, pressed to declare, after sentence, if he had been concerned in any murders, particularly in that of Mr. Castle, an excise officer who had been shot on Selhurst Common by a gang of smugglers, would not give a positive answer, and it was therefore supposed he was concerned in it.

Potter described some of the doings of the gang, and told how, fully armed, they would roam the country districts at night, disguised, with blackened faces, and appear at lonely houses, where they would seize and bind the people they found, and then proceed to plunder at their leisure.

In the short interval that in those days was allowed between sentence and execution Potter was very communicative, and disclosed a long career of crime; but he declared that murder had never been committed by him. He had, it was true, proposed to murder the turnkey at Newgate at the time when he and his companions rescued their friends languishing in that doleful hold: but it had not, after all, been found necessary.

This, it will be conceded, was sufficiently frank and open. The official account of that rescue was that Thomas Potter and three other smugglers came into the press-yard at Newgate to visit two prisoners, Thomas Kemp and William Grey, also of the Hawkhurst Gang, when they agreed at all hazards to assist in getting them out. Accordingly the time was fixed (Kemp having no irons, and Grey having his so managed as to be able to let them fall off when he pleased), and Potter and the other three went again to the press-yard and rang the bell for the turnkey to come and let them in. When he came and unlocked the door Potter immediately knocked him down with a horse-pistol, and cut him terribly; and Kemp and Grey made their escape, while Potter and his companions got clear away without being discovered. Three other prisoners at the same time broke loose, but were immediately recaptured, having irons on.All these men were, in fact, originally smugglers, and had, from being marked down as criminals for that offence, and from being “wanted” by the law, found themselves obliged to keep in hiding from their homes. In default of being able to take part in other runs of smuggled goods, and finding themselves unable to get employment, they were driven to other, and more serious, crimes.

On April 4th of the same year four other members of the terrible Hawkhurst Gang—Kingsmill, Fairall, Perrin, and Glover by name—were together brought to trial at the Old Bailey, charged with being concerned in the Poole affair, the breaking open of the custom-house, and the stealing of goods therefrom. They had been betrayed to the Government by the same two ex-smugglers who had turned King’s evidence at the Chichester trial, and their evidence again secured a conviction. Glover, recommended by the jury to the royal mercy, was eventually pardoned; but the remaining three were hanged. Fairall behaved most insolently at the trial, and even threatened one of the witnesses. Glover displayed penitence; and Kingsmill and Perrin insisted that they had not been guilty of any robbery, because the goods they had taken were their own.

Kingsmill had been leader in the ferocious attack on Goudhurst in April 1747, and was an extremely dangerous ruffian, ready for any extremity.Fairall was proved to be a particularly desperate fellow. Two years earlier he had been apprehended, as a smuggler, in Sussex, and, being brought before Mr. Butler, a magistrate, at Lewes, was remitted by him for trial in London.

Brought under escort overnight to the New Prison in the Borough, Fairall found means to make a dash from the custody of his guards, and, leaping upon a horse that was standing in Blackman Street, rode away and escaped, within sight of numerous people.

Returning to the gang, who were reasonably surprised at his safe return from the jaws of death, he was filled with an unreasoning hatred of Mr. Butler, the justice who, in the ordinary course of his duty, had committed him. He proposed a complete and terrible revenge: firstly, by destroying all the deer in his park, and all his trees, which was readily agreed to by the gang; and then, since those measures were not extreme enough for them, the idea was discussed of setting fire to his house and burning him alive in it. Some of the conspirators, however, thought this too extreme a step, and they parted without coming to any decision. Fairall, Kingsmill, and others, however, determined not to be baulked, then each procured a brace of pistols, and waited for the magistrate, near his own park wall, to shoot him when he returned home that night from a journey to Horsham.

Fortunately for him, some accident kept him from returning, and the party of would-be assassins, tired of waiting, at last said to one another, “Damn him, he will not come home to-night! Let us be gone about our business.” They then dispersed, swearing they would watch for a month together, but they would have him; and that they would make an example of all who should dare to obstruct them.

Perrin’s body was directed to be given to his friends, instead of being hanged in chains, and he was pitying the misfortunes of his two companions, who were not only, like himself, to be hanged, but whose bodies were afterwards to be gibbeted, when Fairall said, “We shall be hanging up in the sweet air when you are rotting in your grave.”

Fairall kept a bold front to the very last. The night before the execution, he smoked continually with his friends, until ordered by the warder to go to his cell; when he exclaimed, “Why in such a hurry? Cannot you let me stay a little longer with my friends? I shall not be able to drink with them to-morrow night.”

But perhaps there was more self-pity in those apparently careless words and in that indifferent demeanour than those thought who heard them.

Kingsmill was but twenty-eight years of age, and Fairall twenty-five, at the time of their execution, which took place at Tyburn on April 26th, 1749. Fairall’s body was hanged in chains on Horsenden Green, and that of Kingsmill on Goudhurst Gore, appropriately near the frighted village whose inhabitants he had promised the vengeance of himself and his reckless band.

When G. P. R. James wrote his romance, “The Smuggler,” about the middle of the nineteenth century, reminiscences of the smuggling age were yet fresh, and many an one who had passed his youth and middle age in the art was still in a hale and hearty eld, ready to tell wonderful stories of bygone years. James therefore heard at first hand all the ins and outs of this shy business; and although his story deals with the exploits of the Ransley Gang (whom he styles “Ramley”) of a much earlier period, the circumstances of smuggling, and the conditions prevailing in Kent and Sussex, remained much the same in the experiences of the elderly ex-smugglers he met. What he has to say is therefore of more than common value.

Scarcely any one of the maritime counties, he tells us, was without its gang of smugglers; for if France was not opposite, Holland was not far off; and if brandy was not the object, nor silk, nor wine, yet tea and cinnamon, and hollands, and various East India goods, were duly estimated by the British public, especially when they could be obtained without the payment of custom-house dues.

As there are land-sharks and water-sharks, so there were land-smugglers and water-smugglers. The latter brought the objects of their commerce either from foreign countries or from foreign vessels, and landed them on the coast—and a bold, daring, reckless body of men they were; the former, in gangs, consisting frequently of many hundreds, generally well-mounted and armed, conveyed the commodities so landed into the interior and distributed them to others, who retailed them as occasion required. Nor were these gentry one whit less fearless, enterprising, and lawless than their brethren of the sea.

The ramifications of this vast and magnificent league extended themselves to almost every class of society. Each tradesman smuggled, or dealt in smuggled goods; each public-house was supported by smugglers, and gave them in return every facility possible; each country gentleman on the coast dabbled a little in the interesting traffic; almost every magistrate shared in the proceeds, or partook of the commodities. Scarcely a house but had its place of concealment, which would accommodate either kegs or bales, or human beings, as the case might be; and many streets in seaport towns had private passages from one house to another, so that the gentleman inquired for by the officers at No. 1 was often walking quietly out of No. 20, while they were searching for him in vain. The back of one street had always excellent means of communication with the front of another, and the gardens gave exit to the country with as little delay as possible.

Of all counties, however, the most favoured by nature and art for the very pleasant and exciting sport of smuggling was the county of Kent. Its geographical position, its local features, its variety of coast, all afforded it the greatest advantages, and the daring character of the natives on the shores of the Channel was sure to turn those advantages to the purposes in question. Sussex, indeed, was not without its share of facilities, nor did the Sussex men fail to improve them; but they were so much farther off from the opposite coast that the chief commerce—the regular trade—was not in any degree at Hastings, Rye, or Winchelsea to be compared with that carried on from the North Foreland to Romney Hoy. At one time the fine level of the Marsh, a dark night, and a fair wind, afforded a delightful opportunity for landing a cargo and carrying it rapidly into the interior; at another, Sandwich Flats and Pevensey Bay presented harbours of refuge and places of repose for kegs innumerable and bales of great value; at another, the cliffs round Folkestone and near the South Foreland saw spirits travelling up by paths which seemed inaccessible to mortal foot; and at another, the wild and broken ground at the back of Sandgate was traversed by long trains of horses, escorting or carrying every description of contraband articles.

The interior of the county was not less favourable to the traffic than the coast: large masses of wood, numerous gentlemen’s parks, hills and dales tossed about in wild confusion; roads such as nothing but horses could travel, or men on foot, often constructed with felled trees or broad stones laid side by side; wide tracts of ground, partly copse and partly moor, called in that county “minnises,” and a long extent of the Weald of Kent, through which no highway existed, and where such a thing as coach or carriage was never seen, offered the land-smugglers opportunities of carrying on their transactions with a degree of secrecy and safety no other county afforded. Their numbers, too, were so great, their boldness and violence so notorious, their powers of injuring or annoying so various, that even those who took no part in their operations were glad to connive at their proceedings, and at times to aid in concealing their persons or their goods. Not a park, not a wood, not a barn, that did not at some period afford them a refuge when pursued, or become a depository for their commodities, and many a man, on visiting his stables or his cart-shed early in the morning, found it tenanted by anything but horses or wagons. The churchyards were frequently crowded at night by other spirits than those of the dead, and not even the church was exempted from such visitations.

None of the people of the county took notice of, or opposed these proceedings. The peasantry laughed at, or aided, and very often got a good day’s work, or, at all events, a jug of genuine hollands, from the friendly smugglers; the clerk and the sexton willingly aided and abetted, and opened the door of vault, or vestry, or church for the reception of the passing goods; the clergyman shut his eyes if he saw tubs or jars in his way; and it is remarkable what good brandy-punch was generally to be found at the house of the village pastor. The magistrates of the county, when called upon to aid in pursuit of the smugglers, looked grave and swore in constables very slowly, dispatched servants on horseback to see what was going on, and ordered the steward or the butler to “send the sheep to the wood”: an intimation not lost upon those for whom it was intended. The magistrates and officers of seaport towns were in general so deeply implicated in the trade themselves that smuggling had a fairer chance than the law, in any case that came before them; and never was a more hopeless enterprise undertaken, in ordinary circumstances, than that of convicting a smuggler, unless captured in flagrante delicto.

“For our Parson”