BOOKBUSTER REVIEW
Hawkhurst: Murder, Corruption, & Britain’s Most Notorious Smuggling Gang
By Joseph Dragovich
Published by The History Press, 2023 rrp £16.99
REVIEW BY TIM BARTON
In the middle of the eighteenth century existed a smuggling gang, out of Hawkhurst, described by the author as being ‘to Kent and Sussex what the Krays are to London, Al Capone is to Chicago, or John Gotti is to New York’. Such gangs today appear to become celebrities, with as many fascinated onlookers regarding them as some kind of cultural heroes as there are those aghast at their often terrifying actions. To an extent, an unhealthy obsession with, frankly, scum is not new, though modern media does amplify the numbers of people exposed to news of their crimes and, I suspect, magnify the effect. Surely, any sane observer could only wish, for example, that the Krays had been gifted concrete boots rather early in their ‘career’?
Dragovich’s book, however, is not a romanticised memoir from the criminal underground, but an engagingly scary and well researched history of one of our locally based criminal cartels. This motley crew were powerful, terrorising whole towns, and shifting smuggled goods all around the country. Where today’s drug barons shift cocaine, cannabis, and heroin, nearly two-hundred years ago illegally imported camellia sinensis was the drug of choice – tea!
THE PELHAM FAMILY AGAINST THE POOR
In order to evade taxes, tea was smuggled into the country and naturally towns like Hastings, and beaches around the east and south-east coasts, were a common location for smugglers to base themselves. The book opens with a customs raid, impounding smuggled goods near Hastings, and the subsequent ambush of the customs men by the Hawkhurst Gang. The murder of Thomas Carswell, customs officer, as he attempted to transport the tea to a Hastings customs house, set off a national manhunt. The gang’s reputation for bloodthirstiness went national. It took a decade to catch up with the murderers.
The author gives an interesting account of the political and economic context for the Hawkhurst gang’s activities. Smuggling was dangerous, but highly lucrative. By the mid-seventeenth century the Cinque ports were famous, but in decline. Enclosure had increased, as the wool trade expanded. This pitched the very rich and corrupt local political forces, led by the Pelham family, against the poor, the desperate, unenfranchised and landless peasants, and ex-sailors and soldiers, as, like tea, sheep too were a catch worth stealing, despite the vindictive punishments meted out by those in power.
BRIBERY, CORRUPTION AND MURDER, A MICROCOSM OF THE ENGLISH STATE
Transportation to the colonies or hanging, to many a Hobson’s choice, were typical punishments around the time of the 1736 ‘law and order bill’. ‘Simply loitering by the coast without a good reason earned you a month’s hard labour’. The degree of poverty and desperation, as well as the size of returns possible to those who would risk smuggling, were high enough that the gangs flourished. Alongside this, the law was extended to give customs men more powers.
The Gang were powerful enough that they effectively declared war on the customs men. The smugglers’ trade was by mid-century taking place ‘on an industrial scale’ with huge numbers of men, and alongside them many teams of horses. Hiding smuggling became a game of bribery, corruption and murder, a microcosm of the English state under the Whigs. Secrecy was no option, force was necessary. The gangs were acting as ‘paramilitary organisations’, and ‘by the mid-1740s their bludgeoning and intimidation had managed to eliminate nearly all government resistance to their business’, with the Hawkhurst Gang controlling much of the coastal smuggling trade from Hastings to Folkestone.
ONE HOPES THE ‘COUNTY LINES’ GANGS ACTIVE TODAY NEVER GET SO POWERFUL
Eventually, when war broke out between England and France, those in power took the opportunity to class smugglers as not ‘just criminals, they were possible enemy agents’. Chapters 7 and 8 in the book are titled ‘War’ and ‘Escalation’, and Chapter 10, ‘Mafia’. The latter relates, amongst other atrocities, military confrontations in towns like Bexhill with 100 smugglers against a detachment of 20 soldiers. Naturally, the smugglers beat them silly then proceeded to the customs house, tortured one officer, and destroyed the house of customs ‘riding officer’ Philip Bailey. By 1745 ‘they were the law, and they knew it’. Hawkhurst itself was, by now, a no-go zone for any state authorities or those perceived as such.
A more edifying story told by Dragovich concerns the residents of Goudhurst, who, as a community, fought back. There, in 1747, the town had raised a militia to combat the lawless gangs. The battle saw two smugglers dead, including one of those involved in Carswell’s murder. Dragovich sees this event as the start of the gang’s downfall, and the last third of the book follows their demise: it is a fascinating bit of history, well told. One hopes the ‘county-lines’ gangs active today never get anything like so powerful as the Hawkhurst Gang, and are defeated more readily. Nevertheless, as in the seventeenth century, today’s venal and corrupt politicians risk as significant levels of disrespect and alienation as existed two centuries back.
Available from Bookbusters, 39 Queens Road, Hastings TN34 1RE
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