The day after Morgan’s murder Hugh Pigot, the captain of the Ramillies wrote to the Admiralty, requesting that they send two of the best officers from Bow Street to catch Morgan’s killer. Principal Officers Daniel Bishop and James John Smith were hastily dispatched to Dover, staying at the Packet Boat Inn whilst they carried out their investigations. After 1815, many Bow Street officers were employed assisting with prosecutions outside of London (more than 70% occurring in the south), their fees and expenses being met by the clients for whom they worked. Cases could be expensive and last many days or even weeks, with fees going well over £50. The officers were not uniformed and often wore disguises to aid their efforts in crime detection. The types of cases referred to in this story were typical of those investigated by Principal Officers from Bow Street.
By October 1826, Bishop and Smith had gathered sufficient evidence to arrest the principal members of the Aldington Gang. On the night of 16th October, they, along with Lieutenant Hellard from the Blockade Service, marched from Fort Moncrief in Hythe the nine miles to Aldington, arriving there around 3am. Sentinels were positioned around the homes of seven of the smugglers, whilst Hellard and the two Principal Officers led troops to arrest George Ransley. They arrived unannounced, cut down the dogs and arrested Ransley in his bedroom, before moving on to arrest Samuel and Robert Bailey, Charles Giles, Thomas Denard, Thomas Gillham and Richard and William Wire. The prisoners were marched to Fort Moncrief, then, because of fears that they might be broken out of gaol, if they remained locally, they were immediately escorted on the Industry to HMS Ramillies. The following day, they were transferred to a gaol in Deptford, where the men were interrogated individually before being transferred to Newgate Prison. Weeks later, came further arrests by Hellard and his men, bringing the total arrested to twenty.
The trial of the Aldington Gang took place before Mr Justice Park at the Maidstone Special Assizes on the 12th January 1827. Richard Wire was charged with the murder of Richard Morgan, with the rest of the group being charged as accessories to the crime. All the defendants pleaded not guilty and, after plea-bargaining between counsels, the charges were amended to smuggling and shooting at Revenue Officers: in all, a capital offence for which the men could still have been hanged. Two men were released and the remaining fourteen pleaded guilty to the new charges. The men were sentenced to death by hanging on 5th February 1827. However, just days prior to the execution, the Governor of Maidstone County Gaol, Mr Agar, received a letter from the Secretary of State informing him that the sentence had been commuted to transportation for life to Van Dieman’s Land (now Tasmania). The £500 reward for the men’s capture was shared between the three smugglers who had turned King’s evidence: James Bushell, Edward Horne, and William Marsh.
The convicted men left Portsmouth on the 3rd April 1827 on board the Governor Ready, arriving in Hobart Town on 31st July. Two years later, Ransley’s wife and some of their children joined him in Van Dieman’s Land. He was pardoned in 1838 and spent the remainder of his life farming in River Plenty, New Norfolk. He died there in 1856.
The story surrounding the movement of large quantities of gold guineas from England to France is true. At the time of the Napoleonic Wars, gold guineas were shipped to France in order to pay Wellington’s troops, and, alongside this, an exchange rate crisis in England led to a rise in gold speculation, where, after purchase in London with bank notes, gold guineas were sailed across the Channel and sold on the Continent for a much higher price, with up to twenty percent profit.
I had the idea of Ann Fothergill using the poison, strophanthin after reading about the death of the ‘Unknown Man’ in Adelaide, Australia. Having died in mysterious circumstances in 1948, the police suspected the use of this drug as it decomposed very soon after death, leaving no trace. When the case reached the courts, the coroner thought the poison so dangerous that he would not say the name aloud, instead writing it on a piece of paper.
The research for this book has been comprehensive, with visits to many churches, archives, pubs, libraries and museums. Some of the most useful were: the National Archives, Dover Library, Ashford Museum, Folkestone Library, Rye Castle Museum, the Walnut Tree Inn and the Kent History and Library Centre. All of the public-domain records, which Morton uses, are real but with sometimes fictitious content, with the exception of the records for the Bow Street Magistrate’s Court. Sadly, most records for this period have not survived, although some other later records are held at the London Metropolitan Archives and the National Archives.
Among the books which I found useful in the research for this book were the following:
Beattie, J.M., The First English Detectives (OUP, 2012)
Clark, K.M., Smuggling in Rye and District (Rye Museum, 2011)
Cox, D.J., A Certain Share of Low Cunning (Routledge, 2012)
Douch, J., Smuggling: Flogging Joey’s Warriors (Crabwell Publications, 1985)
Finn, R., The Kent Coast Blockade (White, 1971)
Howe, I., Kent Dialect (Bradwell Books, 2012)
Hufton, G. & Baird, E., Scarecrows Legion: smuggling in Kent and Sussex (Rochester Press, 1983)
Major, A., Kentish As She Wus Spoke (SB Publications, 2003)
May, T., Smugglers and Smuggling (Shire Publications, 2014)
Parish, W.D., A Dictionary of the Kentish Dialect and Provincialisms (Forgotten Books, 2015)
Philp, R., The Coast Blockade: The Royal Navy’s War on Smuggling 1817-31 (Compton Press, 2002)
Platt, R., Smuggling in the British Isles (The History Press, 2011)
Townsend, T., Kent Smugglers’ Pubs (Pixz Books, 2014)
Waugh, M., Smuggling in Kent & Sussex 1700-1840 (Countryside Books,
