Documents reveal the history of Kent's Smuggling Gangs of the 1800s

An uncovered story of shootouts and gunrunning, from Thanet to Maidstone is presented in the National Archives.   Finn Macdiarmid reports

Transcript

00:00It was 2 in the morning, the 2nd of September 1821, when shipman Washington Carr spotted

00:0840 men marching across the beach at Marsh Bay hauling kegs of spirits with rope. A gunfight

00:13followed across the beach, and Carr was even cut across the face by his own cutlass, one

00:18of the smugglers Daniel Fagg had taken off him. The gang, who were from Canterbury, got

00:22away into the Thanet marshland with most of their cargo, but would later be put to death

00:26for their crimes, and it's believed now to be the last execution of smugglers in the

00:31UK. Now, their story has been put on display at the National Archives, from researchers

00:35putting together legal and financial documents to tell the full story.

00:39Now I've travelled up to the National Archives here in West London, specifically Kew, and

00:43I want to see the document that details the last stand of the Margate smuggling gang.

00:48And I want to find out, was Margate particularly bad for smuggling?

00:52During the Napoleonic Wars, there were more taxes on foreign goods and plenty of sailors,

00:57with few other ways of making money, leading to a smuggling boom. Later, from a witness

01:01statement, a gardener saw a crowd gathered in Canterbury, surrounding several of the

01:05smugglers who were bragging that they had gotten away, with one even said to have made

01:09shooting gestures. The court documents later show how they were caught in groups during

01:14separate months of 1822.

01:16They identify 19 men and they arrest them, and they bring them to trial the following

01:22March. So this is March 1822, 19 men, all of them from Canterbury, most of them labourers,

01:29some of them shoemakers, all of them working class men from Canterbury.

01:34Originally of the 19 smugglers caught, they were all set to be executed, but this was

01:38reduced to just four of them, with the rest either sent to prison hulks or Australia.

01:43While their leader, Stephen Lawrence, had enough money to actually hire lawyers, who

01:47argued there was no way to identify him, he got away without punishment, but was later

01:51convicted of stealing his neighbour's furniture. Meanwhile, the unlucky four were publicly

01:56hanged on Penindonheath near Maidstone, in front of an unusually large crowd of 15,000

02:01people.

02:02Yeah, I think the execution at Penindonheath is a very interesting one for a couple of

02:08reasons. Firstly, executions generally draw a crowd, but the crowd outside of Maidstone

02:17in April 1822 was a very, very large one, 15,000 spectators according to the newspapers.

02:23One of the reasons for this is the number of smugglers being hanged, four of them at

02:27once.

02:28They're believed to be the last smugglers put to death, as only 10 to 15 years later

02:32taxes were reduced, making the crime far less profitable. Every month the National Archives

02:38change their display, but it does provide a unique look into what Kent's criminals

02:42were like back in the 19th century.

02:44Finn McDermid for KMTV.