Some Smugglers’ Tricks and Evasions—Modern Tobacco-Smuggling—Silks and Lace—A Dog Detective—Leghorn Hats—Foreign Watches

The tricks 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 in The Times of 1816 that, among the many expedients at that time practised for smuggling goods into France, the following scheme of 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—netted a 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 being conveyed 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 these caches, but it is not to be supposed 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. “Honourable members 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 experts in 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 opportunities for 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 long practised by the Swiss importers of watches at the time when watches also were subject to duty. An ad valorem duty 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 incidentally benefited, 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.