#smugglers

On January 29th 1852 smugglers caves and bothies on Arran, numbering about a dozen, were discovered and demolished by revenue men.

Whisky was outlawed in Scotland for around 40 years in the late 18th and early 19th centuries after its growing popularity drew the beady eyes of the government, who wanted to benefit from its manufacture. But it created a huge backlash of underground smuggling, with families, women and children all involved in exporting the drink.

Soon after the government became aware of whisky’s increasing popularity, they attempted to control production and of course benefit financially by introducing tax on spirits, this led to an incentive to illicitly sell the produce of small private stills. The government then responded to this by outlawing private distilling completely in 1781. Overnight, distilling went from ‘private,’ to ‘illicit.’

Illicit distilling and smuggling were prevalent throughout Scotland but the activities were mainly associated with the Highlands. Speyside, Campbeltown and Islay were also hot-beds of illicit production but Arran, one of the main players in whisky export at the time, had been completely overlooked, until now.

After whisky was again made legal in the 1823 Excise Act, Arran was unable to transition from illicit to legal production due to its lack of infrastructure, which may suggest why it has been overlooked. The illicit distilling and smuggling formed a critical part of the island’s economy, ensuring rent payments and guaranteeing employment on the island. It was noted by a Kilmory minister (a village in Arran’s south end) that there were ‘”Few, if any, in the parish, who, at some period of their lives, were not engaged in some department of smuggling.”

One notable incident that involved a number of these Arran smugglers includes three islanders murdered by authorities in the name of illegal whisky export.

William and Donald McKinnon (father and son) and Isobel Nicol, were shot and killed by a heavily armed Excise crew near Shannochie in Arran’s south end.

The commander of the Excise party, John Jeffrey, was tried for murder at the High Court in Edinburgh and found not guilty despite opening fire on a group of unarmed islanders. The incident had a considerable impact on the island community and a memorial service was held near the site of the killings as late as the 1950s

A contemporary of Sir Walter Scott described illicit Arran as ‘the burgundy of all the vintages.

After 1823, the majority of illicit producers were barred from the whisky industry, lacking the finance and infrastructure to compete with large landowners and tenant farmers.

On Arran, the acts virtually wiped out whisky manufacture, and for over 150 years, the island’s illicit stills lay silent. In 1995, Arran’s first legal distillery in over a century was opened, and now, the new establishment at Lagg brings production firmly back to the traditional heartland of distilling in the south end of the island.

Illicit distilling has died out from lack of profitability, but rumours still persist in remote places of homemade moonshine like “Melvaig Mist”

Of course the troubles with the excise-man started long before the 19th century, Rabbie Burns, himself an excise-man for a time, wrote a poem, the end few lines are……..

Scotland, my auld, respected mither! Tho’ whiles ye moistify your leather, Till whare ye sit on craps o’ heather Ye tine your dam, Freedom and whisky gang thegither, Tak aff your dram!

The pics are of caves and remains of an Illicit Still on the Isla of Arran, and how an Illicit Still would have looked.

French customs officers arresting smugglers

CRAFTS — 213/262 — Smugglers

In the Middle Ages, smuggling was regarded as taking any goods in or out of a town without paying export or import duties. Smugglers had to know alternate routes and how to avoid the tax collectors. When smuggling through the gates, they made use of false-bottomed vehicles or baskets, or even resorted to climbing over the walls by night. Contraband included fabrics, spices, wine and other scarce goods subject to high taxation.

TRIVIA

— Smuggling could and did take place in different scales and social strata, and with all kinds of contraband. In late medieval Germany, when the invention of the printing press in 1450 caused an exploding demand of paper, old fabrics were so highly sought after, they became a scarcity. Despite cities strictly regulating the import and export of rags and encouraging their priests to give “rag sermons” in which they would urge their congregation to keep their old rags and only sell them to authorised rag collectors, the begging for and smuggling of rags still spread quickly. In 14th century England, a good with high demand was wool. English wool was considered one of the finest in all of Europe, and the trade with wool made a large part of the state's finance. It was therefore not only heavily taxed, but also well-regulated, bound to a royal license and only permitted to be sold at certain times to certain foreign ports. While individual merchants would circumvent these rules by hiding the sacks of wool under different cargo, stamping the sacks with forged seals, or secretly loading them further up the stream, away from port, larger and wealthier merchant groups would often use their money and influence to smuggle. With up to 10,000 sacks of wool on one ship, it was easy to hide a few of them from taxation. In the 1340s, a merchant group from York simply financed its own customs house in which they could trade more freely – and with the employed officials helping them to expand these freedoms even further. Throughout all of Christian Europe existed another prominent market, that for holy relics. With the remains of important saints holding all sorts of magical power, a city could benefit a lot from owning some. In 828, the city of Venice – in establishing its role as a power of trade and religion – thus sent two merchants to Alexandria to gather the bones of Saint Mark the Evangelist.

Legend has it that they were able to hide the body from the Muslim authorities by wrapping it in scraps of pork. Once it had arrived safely in Venice, a whole church – the Basilica di San Marco – was built around it. Newer historical studies, however, suggest that the bones might not actually stem from Saint Mark at all, but perhaps from Alexander the Great.