The Dorset County Express and Agricultural Gazette.
Dorchester, Dorset, England, 1876-02-01 00:00:00

A TALE OF SMUGGLERS.

On Sunday, October 4th, 1747, the smugglers of Sussex
and Kent met in force in Charlton Forget (the Duke of
Richmond's hunting ground, near ('hichester), and re-
solved, upon Perin's suggestion, to attack and break open
the Poole Custom House. A portion of the gang, under
the same Thomas Kingsmill as headed the attack on Poole,
had shortly before attacked Goudhurst in Kent, and
only been repelled by a regular force of militia, after
having three of their men killed and several others
wounded. Othens were taken and executed; but Kings-
mill escaped, and acted as leader in the attack on Poole.
Assembling at Rowland'a Castle, in Hampshire, armed
with swords and firearms, they marched on Poole, which
they reached at eleven at night, and, rexiving intelligence
that owing to the ebb-tide the sloop lying off the town
could not bring her guns to bear, they proceeded to the
Custom House, broke it open, loaded their horses with
their goods, and rode off, first to Fordingbridge and thence
to Brook, where they divided their booty and dispersed.
Now follows the tragic part of this affair. A reward was
offered for the apprehension of the perpetrators of this
daring act, but for some months with no avail. At length
a man named Diamond *as captured and lodged in
Chichester Gaol. The chief witnesses against this man
were a Custom House MS. er, named Galley, and • shoe-
maker of Fordiogbridge, named Clutter. On the lith of
I February these two were on their way to Major Batten's,
' a magi-trate at Stanstead, to have their evidence taken,
when they were induced to stop at the White Hart, at
Rowlands Cattle, for refreshment and here something
fell from them which led the landlady to suspect the
business they were travelling on. It shows how general
I the feeling MU in those days with the smugglers that
this woman should have sent for two of the men engaged
in the late outrage, named Jackson and Carter, and com-
municated her suspicions to them. They sent for others
of the gang, and Galley and Chater being made drunk
they were put to bed, and then, in the middle of the night,
were woke up to be placed on • horse, their feet tied
under its helly, and a journey commenced which, perhaps,
is unparalleled for barbarity in a civilised country. As
they rode along the smugglers lashed the unfortunate
men with their long whips until in their agony they fell
with their heads under the horse's belly, and so the
journey was continued, until Lady Holt Park was reached,
and here Galley was taken from the horse in order to be
tLrovrn down • well. Changing their purpose, however,
the brutes replaced the wretched man on the horse, and
then, re-commencing their torture of him, whipped him
to death on the Downs, and there dug a hole and buried
him. Chater was still alive, and was reserved for further
suffering. Being taken from the horse and chained in •
turf house, he was here brutually cut about the eyes and
nose with • knife; and then, in the dead of night, he was
taken to Harris's Well, a noose tied round his neck by
Tanner (a native of Aldrington, near Brighton), and he
wasp ordered to get over the palings to the well. Having
done so, his murderers tied one end of the rope to the
pales, and pushed the miserable man into the weli The
rope, however, was too short to strangle him to after
hanging 401110 time and being still alive, he was silrawn up,
untied, and then thrown head-foremost down the well.
Still he was not killed. iii, groans were audible, and to
stifle these and finish the horrible deed, the smugglers
tore up the rails and gateway round the well and threw
them and large stones upon their victim till he expired.
The murderers were not long undiscovered. thong's the
discovery of them was by accident. Whilst a gentleman
Wailed Stone was hunting on the Downs. his dogs un-
earthed the body of Galley, and six miles off, in the well,
was found the corpse of Chater. Such a crime as this
could not go unpunished. Seven of the fourteen men
engaged in it were captured before Christmas (1748), end •
Special Commission was issued for their trialat Chichester
in January, 1749. The whole of them were convicted,
either as principals or accessories in the murders, and six
of them (namely, Termer, two men named Mills, father
and son, John Cobby, and John Hammond- all Sussex
men—and William Carter, a native of Hampshire) were
executed—some of them in chains, as Termer, on Rock's
Hill, near Chichester, and Cobby and Hannuond on Selsey
Island. The seventh convict, Jackson, eocaped a similar
fate by dying in prison.
The daring character of these men, and the danger
which travellers ran, is illustrated by • circumstance in
connection with these trials. One of the executed,
Richard Mills, had another son besides the one suffered
with him, and this worthy actually proposed to his
associates to stop the judges as they were travelling over
Hind Heath and to rob them I In company with the
Judges were officers of the Court and Counsellors, alto-
gether enough to fill six coaches, each drawn by six hale%
so that the smugglers thought the risk was too great; and
the Judges escaped this clanger and the country • very
great
.scandal.

So far, however, from the execution of these men, act-
ing as an example, the very same crime was, shortly after-
wards, repeated, with the same, circumstances of brutality, ,
and almost on the same ground. The son of Mills above ,
referred to. nte.eting with one Hawkins, whom Mills and • I
party of fellow-smugglers accused of stealing two hags of I
tea, on his denying it they dwied and kicked him to
death, and then, carrying his body to • pond in Parham
Park, twelve miles off, sunk it there. Mills—the third of
the family so suffering—was hung in chains on Slindon
Common, and others of the gang were convicted at the
same assizes, as highwaymen, and executed.
Still there were some of the leaders in the attack on
Poole at large—amodgst them Perin, the concocter of it,
and Kingsniill, the leader. Both of them were, however,
betrayed by one of their gang, and captured and convicted,
with two others, named Grover and Fairhall. Their be.
haviour at the trial was moat insolent. Farhat
threatened one of the witnesses, and when Perin whose
body was directed to be riven up to his friends, was
lamenting the fate of his other associates—not so favour-
ably treated—Fairhall exclaimed:—" We shall be hanging
up in the sweet air when you are rotting in your grave."
The night before his execution, Fairhall kept smoking
with his friends till he was ordered by his keeper to go to
his cell, when he exclaimed "Why in such • hurry 1 can-
not you let me stay a little longer with my friends! I
shall not be able to drink with them to-morrow night."
Kiugsmill was only 2S, and Fairhall only 15 years of age,
at the time of their death.