Barbarous Usage – A Murder Case that Shocked the Nation

By Chris Thorndycroft

In February of 1748, an elderly customs official named William Galley was escorting a witness called Daniel Chater from Southampton to Chichester to testify against a gang of smugglers who had broken into the customs house at Poole earlier that year. The pair stopped at the White Hart in Rowlands Castle for refreshment before the final leg of their journey. Unfortunately for them, the inn was a regular meeting point for members of the Hawkhurst Gang; the very smugglers whom the witness was to testify against. Once aware of the mission of the two men, the smugglers plied them with drink and spirited them away into the night. 

Galley’s body was later found shoved inside an enlarged foxhole at Harting Coombe. His arms were raised upwards as if shielding himself from being buried alive. Chater was found at the bottom of a well in Lady Holt Park, his body crushed by debris that had been pelted down on him. Both men had been cruelly tortured. The hunt for their killers began in earnest and the village of Rowlands Castle became the centre of a criminal investigation that shocked the nation. 

This was the village I was born to. 

The smugglers finish off Daniel Chater after throwing him
down a well at Lady Holt Park.

For the first eight years of my life I lived in a little cottage a mile down the road from where the White Hart once stood (it was torn down around 1853 to make room for the railway). Other than an old rumour that the track way past my terrace was once used by smugglers in the 18th century, this colourful chapter in the village’s history was wholly unknown to me until much later.

The gruesome events of February, 1748 were first described to me simply as a violent altercation between smugglers and customs men. Imagining some sort of Wild West gunfight occurring in my local village pub, I did a bit of digging. The truth was not hard to find. As well as the Old Bailey records and an entry in the Newgate Calendar, the whole nasty affair was recorded in a series of illustrated pamphlets entitled The Genuine History of the Inhuman and Unparalleled Murders of Mr. William Galley, a Custom-House Officer, and Mr. Daniel Chater, a Shoemaker. 

Written by ‘a gentleman of Chichester’, the pamphlets were published in 1758 and began by outlining the background to these appalling crimes. In September of 1747, a smuggling run organised by the notorious Hawkhurst Gang went awry when their cutter, the Three Brothers and its cargo of two tons of tea and thirty casks of spirits was seized by a revenue ship. The cargo was stored at the customs house at Poole. 

Incensed by this, the Hawkhurst Gang held council in Charlton Forest and, on the 6th of October, they raided the customs house and stole back the tea and spirits. Making their way back east, they passed through the village of Fordingbridge where a crowd tuned out to greet them as heroes. One of the smugglers - John ‘Dimer’ Diamond - shared a few words with Daniel Chater (an old acquaintance) and passed him a small bag of tea. This exchange did not go unnoticed. 

Frontispiece for the collected pamphlets
that sensationalised the case

Soon Dimer was arrested and put in irons at Chichester jail. The rest of the Hawkhurst Gang were thrown into a panic. If Dimer turned king’s evidence, he could name every last one of them. Fortune favoured the gang and, on the 14th February, customs officer William Galley and his charge Daniel Chater, wandered into the yard of the White Hart. 

The smugglers’ decision to remove this threat to them was unanimous although the means were a matter of heated debate. Should they kill them? Kidnap them and hold them until the trial had been held? Ship them to France? 

Whatever their decision it was clear that the two strangers had to be made as drunk as possible. Round after round of drinks was bought and, as the two inebriated men were escorted to their beds, a letter was pilfered from the pocket of William Galley. The contents of the letter – a request to the local Justice Battine to examine the witness – emphasised the danger to the smugglers. The most senior of them – William Jackson and his accomplice, William Carter – seized the men in their beds and dragged them out into the yard where they were put on horses, their legs tied underneath. 

The unfortunate men were horsewhipped for five miles in the direction of Lady Holt Park where the smugglers intended to dispatch them and toss their bodies down a well. William Galley begged for his life which drove Jackson (a sadistic villain even in these circles) to further savagery. 

The gang made a detour for Rake where Daniel Chater was chained up in a turf hut to await further punishment. William Galley, who was now presumed dead after sliding off his horse and having his skull kicked in by its hoof, was taken to Harting Coombe and buried, although not before regaining consciousness it seems.

After showing their faces at their respective employments the following week, the smugglers returned to the turf hut to finish off Chater. Ben Tapner, a smuggler who showed a nasty streak almost the equal of Jackson’s, slashed Chater twice across the face with his knife, severing his nose and nearly blinding him. The wretch was then taken to the well at Lady Holt Park where, after failing to hang him (the rope was too short) the gang threw him into the well and hurled rocks and bits of timber down on him until his screaming stopped. 

William Galley’s coat was found on the road, torn and bloody, but of the two unfortunate men, no further trace could be found.

Charles Lennox, the 2nd Duke of
Richmond was instrumental in
bringing the smugglers to heel.

Enter Charles Lennox, the second Duke of Richmond. This local aristocrat, whose seat was Goodwood House (now famous for its racetracks), hated smugglers with a passion. He was a staunch anti-Jacobite (he served under the king’s son against the ’45 rebellion) and the support smugglers often lent the Catholic cause only fuelled his wish to see them destroyed. The mysterious disappearance of a customs official and his witness while travelling through the duke’s domain would likely have roused his personal interest. 

Somebody clearly counted on this for an anonymous letter was sent to the duke, telling where Galley’s body was buried. A second letter even named one of the smugglers – William Steele – as an accomplice in the murders and he quickly joined his comrade Dimer at Chichester jail. A confession was wrung out of him along with thirteen other names. The manhunt began and in January, 1749, the villains went on trial for the murders of Galley and Chater.

The case was sensational for its time, no doubt helped by the series of illustrated pamphlets written by our anonymous ‘gentleman of Chichester’ (widely believed to have been the Duke of Richmond himself). The sadistic violence of the smugglers shocked the public and dispelled the belief that smuggling was a harmless crime committed by heroic types brave enough to flaunt King George’s harsh tax laws. The trial and media coverage turned the public’s opinion against smuggling and the days of its golden age were numbered. 

The Duke of Richmond died the following year and is perhaps better remembered for his patronage of cricket, but his contributions to stamping out smuggling in Hampshire and Sussex cannot be ignored. The trial effectively broke up the Hawkhurst Gang and various other leaders of the group were apprehended, tried and executed shortly after. The life of the duke and his relationship with his four rebellious daughters formed the basis of Stella Tillyard’s book Aristocrats and the 1999 BBC miniseries of the same name. 

The Castle Inn at Rowlands Castle stands on the same site
the White Hart once did.

Having learned the details of what I had previously thought of as a quick battle between smugglers and excise men in my local area, I knew that I had to work them into a novel somehow. The Hawkhurst Gang and its practice of murdering witnesses and intimidating judges smacked of an 18th century English mafia that extended from Kent to Dorset and was a thrilling piece of local history I had been wholly unaware of before my investigations. 

The White Hart, sadly gone, is remembered in the bricks and mortar of the Castle Inn which was built very nearby purportedly using the same materials. Rowlands Castle now has a railway station, at least three other pubs, countless shops and small businesses and a housing estate. It looks little different from any other village in the south of England but it will always have this dark chapter in its history that recalls casks of brandy deposited on shingle beaches, shadowed types leading packhorses down moonlit country lanes, and murder, torture and violence employed to ensure that people kept their mouths shut.  

Chris Thorndycroft’s new novel The Rebel and the Runaway is told from the point of view of Alice Sinclair; a young girl who runs away from home and winds up as a barmaid at the White Hart. In love with one of the smugglers, she becomes embroiled in the dreadful events surrounding the murders of Galley and Chater. On the run, in peril and torn between family and love, Alice’s story is one of passion and defiance, entwined with one of England’s most shocking murder cases.

Chris Thorndycroft is also the author of the Hengest and Horsa Trilogy and the ghost story novella The Visitor at Anningley Hall (a prequel to M. R. James’s ‘The Mezzotint’). He also writes Steampunk and Retropulp under the pseudonym P. J. Thorndyke.

Visit his blog here.  

The Newgate Calendar, or, The Malefactors' Bloody Register

by Catherine Curzon

"Genuine and Circumstantial Narrative of the lives and transactions, various exploits and Dying Speeches of the Most Notorious Criminals of both sexes who suffered Death Punishment in Gt. Britain and Ireland for High Treason, Petty Treason, Murder, Piracy, Felony, Thieving, Highway Robberies, Forgery, Rapes, Bigamy, Burglaries, Riots and various other horrid crimes and misdemeanours on a plan entirely new, wherein will be fully displayed the regular progress from virtue to vice interspersed with striking reflexions on the conduct of those unhappy wretches who have fallen a sacrifice to the laws of their country."

An execution at Newgate

The concept of bestsellers, sensation literature and thrillingly sordid tales masquerading as morality pieces is hardly a new one, and one of the most popular of such works came into being in the 18th century, quickly establishing itself as the go-to literature for vice, virtue and villainy. In one form or another, The Newgate Calendar, or, The Malefactors' Bloody Register, had been in monthly publication for many years but, with a collected edition hitting the shelves in 1774, it swiftly became one of the most popular books in Georgian England.

In fact, there was never a single definitive first edition of The Newgate Calendar; instead, the first collected editions were made up of reprinted chapbooks and broadsides of the kind that had been printed for many years beforehand. They were sold at public executions to those who had gathered to watch the spectacle and wanted a little something to remember the event by, let alone a reminder of the crimes that were behind the malefactors on the scaffold. These disposable and scandalous works did were not content to stick to factual reporting and spared no gruesome detail as they recounted some of the most violent and infamous crimes in history.

The Calendar was considered improving literature as it made sure to point out in each case where the criminal's (and often the victim's) moral fibre had been found wanting, lamenting that, with more attention paid to moral purity, these unfortunates might not have found themselves in such a sorry state. The authors often paid little heed to the facts of the case or the veracity, and the biographies of the condemned criminals  were often imaginatively enhanced but the public, fired by sensation, lapped it up. Of course, it did no harm to sales of the Calendar that the cases included therein were the most violent or notorious and soon it was a confirmed bestseller, beaten only by the Bible and Foxe’s Book of Martyrs. Very few households would have been without a copy of the Calendar, with its ready access to stories of good girls gone bad and gentlemen who should have known better.

A crime broadside of the sort that the Calendar collected together

Within the pages of the Newgate Calendar lurk some of the most feared and famous names in the English criminal history, but the starring roles are not reserved for the likes of Dick Turpin or Jack Sheppard. Here you will also find murderous clerks and wanton women, every crime detailed in gruesome, ghoulish language though of course, only for the sake of moral education. I am often lured away from my work by the Calendar and spend many happy hours immersed in it. In fact, in the future I hope to share some of its tales with the readers here, so be prepared for all manner of things!

The Calendar has been reprinted in numerous, heavily edited editions and texts are freely available across the internet so, next time you feel like a little moral outrage, why not delve in and lose yourself in a world of dark deeds? Take care to absorb the morals of the stories though, lest you end up in the Calendar yourself!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Glorious Georgian ginbag, gossip and gadabout Catherine Curzon, aka Madame Gilflurt, is the author of A Covent Garden Gilflurt’s Guide to Life. When not setting quill to paper, she can usually be found gadding about the tea shops and gaming rooms of the capital or hosting intimate gatherings at her tottering abode. In addition to her blog and Facebook, Madame G is also quite the charmer on Twitter. Her first book, Life in the Georgian Court, is available now, and she is also working on An Evening with Jane Austen, starring Adrian Lukis and Caroline Langrishe.

A Cautionary Tale for all Highwayman - the Sad Story of Sixteen String Jack

by Mike Rendell

I am not quite clear why some villains manage to capture the public's imagination as heroes while others are treated as a thieving menace. Take highway robbery -- there is nothing very subtle, clever or brave about brandishing a gun and threatening to blast somebody’s head off if they don’t hand you their watch (or whatever) and yet Georgian society seemed willing to treat some of these robbers as having a heroic quality, simply because they swaggered and boasted and liked to be seen around town with a pretty girl on each arm, while dressed in fine clothes which they had either stolen or bought using the proceeds of crime.

No more so than one John Rann, whose distinguishing “trademark” was that he liked to stand out from the crowd by wearing eight brightly coloured ribbons tied around each knee – hence his moniker of “Sixteen String Jack”.

Why sixteen? One story was that each ribbon represented a time when he had been acquitted of highway robbery…On one occasion he was charged with breaking and entering – but it turned out that he had an assignation with the girl who lived there; she had fallen asleep and rather than give up and go home, he decided to clamber up to her window on the first floor and “help himself”. He was apprehended by the watchman and dragged before Sir John Fielding. On hearing the evidence from the girl that she would have freely admitted the young man had she not been asleep, the judge had no choice but to dismiss the case.

The Road to Ruin, © The Trustees of the British Museum, showing John Rann  at Bagnigge Wells.

You might think that John Rann would count his blessings and keep a low profile.  But no, far from it. He headed out to the fashionable spa at Bagnigge Wells, disporting himself in what the Newgate Calendar described as "a scarlet coat, tambour waistcoat, white silk stockings, laced hat, &c", and publicly declared himself to be a highwayman.

He became quarrelsome, and somewhat drunk, and started to chat up one of the young ladies in the ballroom. This led to a spate of minor scuffles – someone prised a gold ring from his finger, at which he remarked that he cared not, for it cost but a hundred guineas, and why, he could make that amount in one evening’s work!

Not surprisingly, some of the assembled company at the Wells grew weary of his tiresome behaviour and gave him a right going over, and for good measure chucked him out the first floor window when he declined to make himself scarce. The River Fleet presumably provided him with a soft landing, and the Newgate Calendar remarks that “Rann was not much injured by this severe treatment; but he complained bitterly against those who could so affront a gentleman of his character.”

Ancestor Richard Hall's cut-out of a highway robber at work.

It had all started very differently. He was born in a village outside Bath into a very poor family. He had no formal education and for a while eked a living selling goods from the back of a donkey as he toured the streets. When he was 12 he came to the attention of a “lady of distinction” who no doubt was impressed by his barrow-boy chutzpah and way with words.

She took him on as a servant in her household and all seemed well for a couple of years. He came to London, got a job at a stables at Brooke’s Mews and in due course became a driver of a post chaise. But the ambitious young man wanted to impress -- and to do that he needed more money than he could get from his wages as a driver.

It appears that he extended his repertoire as a pick-pocket by chancing his arm at robbery on the King’s Highway – a capital offence if caught. He was dragged before the magistrates on a number of occasions but each time managed to talk his way out of the charge. He liked to adopt the persona of a modern day Robin Hood – well, he robbed the rich, even though he never seemed to follow it up by helping the poor.

He enjoyed being in the public eye – he turned up at Barnet Races sporting an elegant blue satin waistcoat trimmed with silver, to make sure that he stood out. He was followed by hundreds of people, who were eager to gratify their curiosity by the sight of a man who had been so much the subject of gossip. On at least one occasion he turned up to watch the fun at Tyburn, thoroughly upstaging the poor man who was about to be sent to the gallows. One story has it that he even bragged that one day he would be the main attraction, and not just a bystander.

He appeared at the Old Bailey in April, 1775, charged with others of robbing Mr. William Somers on the highway, and was acquitted for lack of evidence. Shortly afterwards he was again tried, for robbing a Mr. Langford, but again was acquitted for the same reason. The lad appeared to be above the law, and how he loved it!

A month later a Miss Roache (his girlfriend -- one of many), was caught trying to pawn a watch which Rann had stolen during a robbery “near the nine-mile stone on the Hounslow road.” Again he was hauled before the Bench and when Sir John Fielding asked him if he would offer anything in his defence, Rann replied "I know no more of the matter than you do, nor half so much neither."

His appearance in court was suitably flamboyant – the Newgate Calendar comments that he “had a bundle of flowers in the breast of his coat almost as large as a broom; and his irons were tied up with a number of blue ribands.” Once more, he got off...On another occasion he was sent to Marshalsea Debtors' Prison for failure to pay a debt of fifty pounds – he sent word to his mates and in no time a steady stream of ne’er-do-wells, male and female, turned up at the prison gates and paid off the debt.

Various other acquittals followed until one afternoon in September 1784 he stole items from Dr. William Bell, physician to the Princess Amelia. Bell gave evidence that he was riding near Ealing when he observed two men of “rather mean appearance” ride past him. The Newgate Calendar takes up the story: “A short while afterwards one of them, which he believed was Rann, crossed the head of his horse, and, demanding his money, said "Give it to me, and take no notice, or I'll blow your brains out." On this the doctor gave him one shilling and sixpence, which was all the silver he had, and likewise a common watch in a tortoise-shell case.


Later that evening Miss Roache tried to offer the watch to a pawnbroker in Oxford Road. He had his suspicions about the watch, and turned it over to observe that it had been made by a well-known watchmaker called Mr. Gregnion of Russell Street, Covent Garden. The pawnbroker contacted Mr Gregnion, who confirmed that he had made the watch for Dr. Bell.

The net was closing tight: John Rann and his associate, William Collier, were arrested and committed to Newgate, charged with highway robbery; Miss Roche was charged, along with her servant, with being an accessory after the fact. In the event Miss Roche was found guilty and sentenced to be transported for fourteen years; her servant was acquitted.

When Rann appeared for his trial the Calendar reports that he was “dressed in a new suit of pea-green clothes; his hat was bound round with silver strings; he wore a ruffled shirt; and his behaviour evinced the utmost unconcern.”

He was so confident that he would get off scot-free that he ordered a fine supper to be provided for the entertainment of his special friends and associates. But the atmosphere became more sombre when all present realized that this time there would be no acquittal. A short time afterwards he was found guilty, and sentenced to death by hanging. Still the merriment continued -- on October 23rd he held another dinner, this time for seven girlfriends. It was by all accounts a mirth-filled evening.

[The Tyburn stone at the junction of Edgeware Road, and Oxford Street, Marble Arch.]

The hangman’s noose was finally put round his neck on 30th November 1774. James Boswell was one of the people in the large crowd which turned up to watch. According to the Newgate Calendar “when he came near the gallows he turned round, and looked at it as an object which he had long expected to see, but not as one that he dreaded, as might reasonably have been expected."

According to contemporary reports Sixteen-String Jack went to the gallows wearing his pea-green suit and all his finery complete with a huge nosegay in his buttonhole. He decorated his foot shackles with bright blue ribbons.

Some accounts suggested he enjoyed some lively banter with the crowd, danced a jig, and generally showed no sign of fear or apprehension. According to Boswell he was cheered by ‘the whole vagabond population of London’.

He was twenty four years old when he died.

In the Victorian era there was an insatiable appetite for stories about Rann's exploits, and even today there is a public House named after him at Theydon Bois, near Epping Forest. And in case anyone is interested in the paper cut-outs I have published a book of them (see here) and it is also available on Kindle  - see here.