During the 18th century, smuggling in England’s Southeastern counties, especially Kent and East Sussex, grew to epic proportions. High taxes and excise duty on overseas goods created an opportunity for entrepreneurial types to bypass the authorities and supply the cheaper goods to meet the demand.
Heavy import duties had been imposed on many goods, to supplement government income, often to raise the revenues a government ‘needed’ to fight a long succession of expansionist wars (England being at war with European powers, or in imperial expansion, for pretty much all of the century, and most of the nineteenth too). All that slaughter costs hard cash.
England’s “close proximity to continental Europe, good roads to London, and a poor domestic economy at the end of 17th century” created ideal conditions for organised smuggling to flourish. As London was a huge metropolis by the standards of the time, where large numbers of people with varying degrees of disposable income lived, it was inevitably a huge market for smuggled goods.
Smuggling didn’t always involve the mythical “huge volumes of contraband channelled to local beaches”. Diverting parts of legitimate shipments, or bribing officials to turn a blind eye to cargoes, played a large part in the trade.
However, it also true that hundreds of illegal trades were engaged in transporting underhand goods between the coast and London. Brandy, tea, coffee, tobacco, textiles like wool, lace and silk, jewellery, and other high excise items provided an enticing opportunity
Smuggling was at its peak in the years 1700 to 1840; it was estimated that in 1773 15,000 men were engaged in smuggling in Kent alone, with an average of 1,500 gallons of Geneva (gin), 450 gallons of brandy and 4 ½ tons of tea being smuggled through Kent and Sussex per day, by 1783.2
It wan’t just gangs of crims, either.
People of all classes cocked a snook at the excise laws, and partook of contraband if they could afford it. Much as would later happen with prohibition in the US, defiance of customs duties became something of a badge of honour in an edgy thrill seeking way, besides the purely economic desire to pay less for goods that otherwise were hugely expensive, often to enrich monopolies granted to the already wealthy by a hugely corrupt government. And as with prohibition, gangs emerged to carry out the actual work of shipping in goods clandestinely and carting it to London. Other methods were also found though – bribing the numerous customs officials to turn a blind eye, ‘underweighing’ of goods on ships arriving at the dock which would then be siphoned off. And some groups decided that short-cutting the process was the most efficient, and began raiding customs/dockside warehouses to steal imports already in the country…
This was organised crime on a massive scale. Government figures from 1782 estimated that a quarter of all the vessels engaged in smuggling nationwide were based in Kent and Sussex. Half the gin smuggled into England was landed here.
“Kentish smuggling first grew from the illegal exportation of wool. The government imposed restrictions on the trade, and by 1700 up to 150,000 ‘packs’ of wool a year were being shipped from the area days after shearing. From these beginnings the Huguenot families who controlled the trade grew into the first smuggling gangs. As import taxes on luxury items were imposed, gangs, large and small, adapted and by 1720 the emphasis was on bringing in tea, spirits, tobacco and other goods. The black economy pervaded all social levels and it has been claimed that Sir Robert Walpole (Whig Prime Minister) amassed much of his fortune from the trade. Smugglers soon became involved in other enterprises, including the Jacobite rebellion, international espionage, military campaigns (Nelson employed smugglers from the town of Deal as pilots due to their experience) and highway robbery. Conflicts with the French throughout the late 1700s made smuggling harder, but despite the efforts of William Pitt and the Napoleon, ‘classic’ smuggling continued in the southeast until the 1830s.”
“… Many of the gangs operated in towns and villages miles from the sea. Kent’s coastline encompasses muddy tidal creeks in the north, sandy coves and chalk cliffs to the east, and long shingle beaches and brooding marshes to the south. These differences in terrain led to the development of different techniques for landing and hiding good. Even so, the gangs could not have operated without significant financial backing; some shipments required an initial outlay of more than £10,000.”
Smuggling routes evolved, trails and established routes running through Kent, Sussex and other coastal counties, along which contraband could be reasonably safely shifted to London. Safehouses and friendly inns acted as stopover points; even whole villages became complicit – Stockwell in South London was sometimes described as a “smugglers village” in the early 1700s. The village at this time was the main depot south of the river for smuggled goods coming into London… It was handy for the horse ferry at Lambeth. Goods would be brought up the old routes from the south coast, through Croydon or Peckham Rye. So many of its inhabitants were said to be involved in the moving of goods from shore to the capital, it was described around 1700 as “a community outside the rule of law.” (This may have meant that smuggling gangs were living there, or paying people off, or intimidating people into silence, or a combination of all three.) Teams of horses were stabled here by various smuggling gangs.
Various smuggling outfits operated in Kent in the early 18th century, with a wide range of approaches, from quiet transportation of contraband to blatant and open defiance of the authorities. Some, like a gang based in Mayfield, led by Gabriel Tomkins, a Tunbridge Wells bricklayer, would tie up customs men who attempted to thwart pickups and throw them in a ditch. They earned the trust of locals and officials and when two of his men were captured, Gabriel Tomkins stormed the prison where they were being held, firing pistols and injuring himself in the process of freeing his colleagues. Tomkins also cheekily took a job as a mounted customs man – a Riding Officer – combining this with smuggling on the side. (Presumably he could ensure the seizure of rivals gangs’s goods while his own got through).
Lee Green, near Lewisham, stood on one of the smuggling routes into London; close enough to the capital to act as a final staging post from where goods could be filtered in to the capital. Customs officers were ordered to try to seize smuggled cargoes at all points of the trade, from on the sea, in the country lanes and the small villages where such ‘safehouses’ operated, and in London’s streets. One episode briefly mentioned in the Gentleman’s Magazine as taking place on December 1st 1734, was probably typical, and illustrates the preparedness of the gangs to resist both the seizure of their wares and arrest: “Mr Riggs, and another Custom-house officer, seized a parcel of run Goods at Lee in Kent, but two Smugglers attempting to take it from them, the Officers fired, and shot one of them dead, and the other rode off.”
Such firefights were commonplace; armed smugglers would also often attempt to seize back impounded cargoes.
Later in the same month, for instance, custom officers seized “Above 5000 Weight of Smuggled Tea, with a quantity of Silks and Velvets… in a barn near Ashford in Kent, by the Help of a Party of Soldiers… The Smugglers being above 50, and armed, exchanged 3 Fires with the Soldiers, but having two killed of their Number, thought fit to retire, having first attempted to fire the Barn.”
Smuggling continued to be associated with Lee: in 1744 a man at Lee was charged with smuggling goods to the value of £15,000, showing that it was a significant trade. And situated at the eastern end of Lee High Road, the old Tiger’s Head pub, in the original centre of Lee, was built in 1766; it later became notorious as a haunt of smugglers.
Here’s an interesting site on Kent’s smuggling trails.
Another traditional smuggling route from the south coast ran along suburban green lanes, along modern Park Lane, in Croydon, up through Croydon Common, to Norwood, and down to the ‘smuggler’s village’ at Stockwell.
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An entry in the
2017 London Rebel History Calendar – check it out online.
LONDON RADICAL HISTORIES 
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