Smuggling
Amanda hears the voices of smugglers and the gallant customs officers who fought them in bloody battles.
The Old Bailey was the most important court of the English speaking world. It was a great theatre of humanity - with victims, witnesses and the accused. Many of them were illiterate, but thanks to the court shorthand writers, scribbling down all the evidence, we have records of their voices - the closest thing we have to a tape-recording of the past.
In this series, Professor Amanda Vickery uses dramatic court cases to explore 18th century social history, hearing the voices of ordinary people who have otherwise left no trace.
This first programme is recorded on location in Rye, Sussex, and we hear the voices of smugglers - and the gallant customs officers who fought them in bloody battles.
Smuggling was a trade in the 18th century - sprawling from the brutal criminal underworld, to shops, to chic drawing rooms - brandy, tobacco, pepper, lace, French silks. But one commodity above all was worth killing for and facing the noose - tea.
In fact two thirds of the tea which was drunk in Britain was smuggled in along the Southern coastline of Britain. Every single inhabitant of coastal ports like Rye would have known what was going on, probably most were drawn into it - and many ended up in the Old Bailey in London.
Listening to the voices from the Old Bailey are historians Professor Peter King from Leicester University, a leading historian of crime; cultural historian Professor Judith Hawley from Royal Holloway, University of London; and Richard Platt who has written many books on smuggling and spent a lifetime collecting smuggling stories.
Produced by Elizabeth Burke
A Loftus production for Â鶹Éç Radio 4.
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Smugglers exact revenge on customs officers in 1747
Duration: 03:44
Getting started on the Old Bailey Site
You can find details of all these cases on the website Old Bailey Online. The site includes a video tutorial with search tips and further advice to help you navigate this rich source of archive.
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Case 1: The Trial of a smuggler known as 'Poison'
Peter Tickner, and James Hodges, commonly called and known by the name of Poison, were indicted for unlawfully and feloniously assembling themselves together on the 22d of Dec
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Case 2: Revealing how the smugglers distribute tea across London, using an organised system involving grocers
George Watson otherwise Yorkshire George , was indicted for assaulting Samuel Alexander.
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Case 3: The smugglers seize back their goods from the Customs House at Poole
Thomas Kingsmill, alias Staymaker, William Fairall, alias Shepherd andÌýRichard Perin, alias Pain, alias Carpenter were indicted for being concerned, with others, to the number of 30 persons, in breaking the King's Custom-house , at Poole , and stealing out thence thirty hundred weight of tea
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Amanda Vickery
Professor Amanda Vickery is the prize-winning author of The Gentleman's Daughter (Yale University Press, 1998) and Behind Closed Doors: At Home in Georgian England (Yale University Press, 2009). She is Professor of Early Modern History at Queen Mary, University of London. She lectures on British social, political and cultural history.Ìý
Amanda reviews for The Guardian, The Times Literary Supplement, and Â鶹Éç Radio 4's Saturday Review, Front Row and Woman’s Hour. Her TV series At Home with the Georgians aired on Â鶹Éç2 in December 2010. She was a judge of the 2011 Â鶹Éç Samuel Johnson Prize.
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London Lives
is the sister site to Old Bailey Online. It makes available, in a fully digitised and searchable form, a wide range of primary sources about eighteenth-century London, many of which concern the same individuals who appeared at the Old Bailey.Ìý
The site includes over 240,000 manuscript and printed pages and over 3.35 million names.
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Contributors
Ìý- Leicester University
- Royal Holloway, University of London
- author
Broadcasts
- Thu 14 Aug 2014 09:00Â鶹Éç Radio 4
- Thu 14 Aug 2014 21:30Â鶹Éç Radio 4