Illegal Activity on the Holderness Coast in the Nineteenth Century 

Preferred Contraband

Although the typical smuggled cargo that springs most easily to mind is alcohol, tea and tobacco smuggling was equally as common.  John Wesley is said to have refused to drink tea and denounced smugglers as ‘thieves who picked the pockets both of the King and all his fellow subjects’.

One report from 1832 describes the Excise men chasing men pushing handcarts containing smuggled tobacco down Holderness Road in Hull. In 1843 the Collector of Excise admitted that he had ‘no doubt that there were landings of large quantities of tobacco’.

The Holderness coast appears to be among the last bastions of the traditional style of smuggling. The broad, straight, sweep of the coastline from Bridlington down to Spurn Point, despite having no rocky inlets with suitable smugglers’ coves, would appear to have been commonly in use for the landing of contraband up to the middle of the nineteenth century.

Hornsea’s smuggling ring is particularly notable – it’s believed that in 1836 fifty to sixty tubs of geneva (a gin-like spirit from Holland) were thought to have been landed at Hornsea. The Coastguard did however manage to recover 20 tubs from a store found on the beach.  The last known smuggling run at Hornsea was in July 1846, when a fishing coble from Hull was seized with its cargo of sixty bales of tobacco.

In November 1807 a sloop called the James was wrecked and driven ashore near Waxholme with all hands drowned.  Its cargo was extremely varied with goods ranging from ale and wine to domestic furniture, books and gunpowder Although the cargo was secured by Mr Baron, the bailiff, there were rumours that the mob had staved in a ‘pipe of rum’ and drunk its contents.

Smuggling at Burton Constable?

At the beginning of April 1829 there was a case of illegal activity which involved several local men and premises belonging to the Burton Constable estate.  A wrecked ship had been found on the beach at Sand le Mere and carts traced to Burton Constable, in particular to the water engine house which was about ¼ mile from the Hall. This contained a horse-drawn wheel which drew up water from a well to be pumped to the Hall. 

The hidden goods consisted of 318 gallons of brandy, 184 gallons of geneva spirits, and 4084 pounds weight of tobacco.  Although many local men appear to have been involved in transporting the goods in carts from the coast, only three were caught in the act of trying to retrieve them from the water engine house, and were convicted at court in Brandesburton.  They were Robert Graham, Edward Hall and John Thompson and they were each fined £100.  As with all cases of this type, it was the local carters who were prosecuted, and not the principals in the transactions. 

The Constable family’s lawyer William Iveson wrote a letter to Mr Howard, the Collector of Excise at Bridlington, to explain the situation on the Holderness Coast.

‘…the high duties and consequent high prices which the fair traders must necessarily charge for these articles [means that] if a thief comes away with any articles of private property, the sympathies of the people are with the loser of the goods and (with few exceptions) will assist in catching the thief; but the case is the reverse towards the smuggler.’