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