SMUGGLING, PAST AND PRESENT.
BY AN EXAMINING OFFICER.
In a recently issued, readable little volume by Mr W. D. Chester, H.M. Customs, London, entitled Chronicles of the Customs, there occurs a chapter on the tricks of smugglers, which suggests an interesting comparison of past and present methods of smuggling. The volume referred to treats of many matters connected with Customs’ work besides the prevention of smuggling; but we must confine our remarks to smuggling pure and simple, with a few examples of clever evasions of the Customs’ laws.
From the days of Ethelred, when it was enacted that ‘every smaller boat arriving at Billingsgate should pay for toll or custom one halfpenny, a larger boat with sails one penny,’ those who have had to carry out the collection of the revenue have been disliked by everybody who had to submit to taxation. It is not easy to understand this dislike. People who use coal, gas, water, or any of the necessities of existence do not, as a rule, view with very great disfavour the people whom they pay to supply these commodities. Why they should dislike those whose business it is to collect the funds which provide government with the wherewithal to insure protection for life, property, and trade, is an anomaly which it is difficult to comprehend. In olden days, the bold and daring smuggler was the darling of the coast, and the officers who endeavoured to prevent his depredations the most disliked of all government officials. Yellow-backed novels have portrayed his prowess in the most glowing colours. The word-pictures which represent him as a free-and-easy, good-natured soul, with gentlemanly manners and genteel exterior, have been read and admired wherever English novels of a seafaring type have been circulated; and no exciting ocean tale is considered sufficiently spicy unless a chapter or two is devoted to the daring thief who defies his country’s laws, and is rewarded with admiration for doing so; while ordinary thieves are spoken of with contempt, and obtain a far from acceptable recompense in the shape of jail ‘skilly.’
No longer ago than 1883, an amusing case, illustrative of this feeling, occurred in the neighbourhood of Sunderland. A party of officers had been away at Hull attending a departmental examination. On their return journey in the train, they met with a seafaring man, who, not knowing the profession of his fellow-passengers, entered into a long conversation on the comparatively easy methods by which he—the sailor—evaded detection. Growing eloquent on this theme, he further explained the modus operandi of his proceedings, and informed the officers that he had in his chest an ingeniously concealed receptacle for the very purpose of smuggling, and that he then had in it several pounds of foreign tobacco. Great was his consternation to find, on his arrival at Sunderland, that his fellow-passengers were Customs’ officers, who at once seized the man’s chest and confiscated the tobacco found therein, for the possession of which the loquacious seaman was subsequently fined. The moral of the story rests in the fact, that no sooner was the affair made known, than the local press went ablaze with denunciations of the unfortunate officers who had prevented the country’s pockets being pilfered of the amount of duty leviable on the quantity of tobacco found. The incident is one which proves that among a certain class of people the smuggler is a hero still. With the audience in a police court the smuggler is no end of a favourite. Only a few months ago, a case occurred at Whitby where a couple of fishermen were charged with smuggling about forty-four pounds of tobacco, the highest penalty for which being £42 with alternative imprisonment. The Bench, however, let the prisoners off with the mitigated fine of £30, and yet, on the announcement of the merciful decision, ‘there were,’ says the police-court reporter, ‘expressions of disapprobation in the crowded court.’
In contradistinction to the sympathising feeling which in the olden time and at the present day was and is extended to the smuggler, it is satisfactory to find that his nefarious transactions do not always shield him from ridicule. Not long ago, a friend of mine was crossing from the continent to one of the eastern English ports, and on the voyage was applied to by another passenger as to how he—the passenger—could most successfully evade paying the duty on two or three boxes of cigars which he had in his possession. My friend, who knew something of Custom House strictness, and had, besides, a conscientious respect for the laws of his country, advised his fellow-voyager either to throw the cigars overboard, or to ‘declare’ and pay duty upon them when he landed. This, it subsequently transpired, the passenger did not do, but rolled up the cigars in some soiled linen and placed the lot in a portmanteau. When it came to declaring baggage at the landing-stage or railway station, the smuggler, like many of his class, grew timid, and left his portmanteau in the hands of the Customs’ officials without owning it as his property. My friend declares that the scared look of the gentleman-smuggler as he hid back in the railway carriage while a Customs’ boatman walked up and down the platform with the unlucky portmanteau, and calling out stentoriously, ‘Claim your luggage! claim your luggage!’ was a sight, once seen, never to be forgotten. The unfortunate passenger of course lost his portmanteau, clothes, and cigars.
In order to present to the reader the unromantic aspect of present-day smuggling in a comparative light, the writer is induced to quote one or two cases mentioned by Mr Chester. By perusing these selected instances, and comparing them with the methods adopted in our own day, it will be seen that smuggling in former times was surrounded with an adventurous atmosphere which certainly does not obtain in a matter-of-fact age like the present. One of the cases quoted by Mr Chester is a characteristic one. It occurred at the time when duties were levied on laces, silks, gloves, &c. These were mostly French manufactures, and, consequently, Dover and other southern ports were the most convenient localities in which the smuggling fraternity exercised their calling. At that time, well-horsed spring vans were used to convey the goods from Dover to London, and at intervals on the journey, particular houses were used as storage places for the booty until it could be safely conveyed to the metropolis. ‘On one occasion,’ says Mr Chester, ‘the Customs’ officers at Dover were sent on a fool’s errand. A van loaded with silk and lace left the town at night; and to insure it a successful journey, an accomplice informed the officers of its departure, the venture being suspected. Forthwith they went in pursuit in a postchaise. The parties in the van, after going about four miles, drew into a side-road, extinguished the lights, and remained quiet. The officers soon rushed by in hot haste; and when they had passed, the smugglers betook themselves in another direction, and got safely off with their booty.’
At a time when goods were subjected to ad valorem duties, there were no end of tricks practised by which an importer, whose goods were seized, obtained his own importations for the veriest trifle, and thus made a handsome profit by his cleverness. Mr Chester relates an instance of an importer, more shrewd than honest, who imported into Folkestone a case of gloves on which he declined to pay duty. The goods, of course, were seized. Into London, the same gentleman imported a similar case with a like result. When the goods were offered for sale at the two places, it was found that the Folkestone case contained all right-hand gloves, while those in London were all left-hand gloves. Being considered valueless, they were knocked down to the buyer for a mere trifle. It is needless to add that the buyer in each case was the importer, who paired the gloves and pocketed a respectable profit by the transaction.
Another instance from the same authority illustrates the stratagems which were resorted to for the purpose of evading Customs’ duties on watches, when such imports were in vogue. A foreigner, it appears, had made up his mind to realise a small fortune at the expense of his comfort; so, taking a passage from Holland, he secreted a large number of watches round his body in leathern receptacles. The weight was so great that the unfortunate smuggler was unable to lie down. He had calculated on a voyage of twenty-four hours, but, being a foreigner, he little knew the density or the stopping powers of a Thames fog. The fog detained the ship for another twenty-four hours; and when the vessel arrived in London, the strain on the smuggler’s system had been so enormous that he was completely exhausted; his courage oozed out with his strength; and at last he gave himself up to the Customs’ officials, who had had a watchful eye on his suspiciously distressed-looking features.
Since the so-called ‘good old days’ of the novelist, smuggling has lost much of its attractiveness. The abolition of duty on watches, silks, lace, gloves, &c., has done a great deal to lessen an illicit traffic, and wholesale attempts at smuggling are now of comparatively rare occurrence. Of course, now and again a case crops up in which the old spirit seems to have revived; but such cases are comparatively few. Yet, though petty smuggling is, in the main, the special offence with which Customs’ officers have now to deal, wholesale smuggling has not yet become a thing of the past. In 1881, a daring attempt to defraud the revenue took place in London. The writer happened to be stationed there at the time, and can well remember the excitement caused in official circles by the discovery, and can recollect the crowds of officers who used daily to visit the quayage front of the Custom House, where lay a pair of marine boilers in which five tons of tobacco had been conveyed to this country from Rotterdam. The history of the attempted fraud is an interesting one. An anonymous writer, it appears, had been giving continuous hints to the officials in London that extensive smuggling was being carried on between Rotterdam and England. Such anonymous communications being far from uncommon in Lower Thames Street, but little attention was paid to them, till at last the writer grew so persistent in his efforts, and gave such plausible and detailed information, that a detective officer was sent to Rotterdam to watch the ingenious proceedings.