Smuggling & Smugglers in Sussex - online book

An Account of a notorious Smuggling gang in the early 18th Century

Home | Order | Support | About | Contact | Search



Share page  



Previous Contents Next


SUSSEX SMUGGLERS.                             113
and he believed he should know one of the men that were with him.
John Aslett being called up, Steel said he was one of the men that was there.
Aslett was then sworn, and proved that he was with Steel and some dragoons on Friday last; that Steel pointed down to the ground with a stick, and saidr " There the man died " ; that he (the witness) took particular notice of that place, and is sure it was in the parish of Harting in Sussex ; that he now lives at Harting, and was born and bred just by, and had lived there ever since he was a lad, and served the offices of surveyor and constable.
Steel, being cross-examined, was asked how he could remember the place so as to be sure of it; said he knew the place very well again by the little gravelly rising of the ground.
William Scardefield proved the same as in the former trial, with the following facts relating to the burial of Galley: that one of the gang asked him if he knew the place where they laid up some goods about a year-and-a-half ago, and he told them he did; upon which the man said, " You must go along with us," but the witness told him his wife was ill, and he could not leave the house; and then Carter came in and asked for a lantern, and Edmund Eichards told him he must go with them, to which he replied, if he must go, he must; that when he came down the hill a little way from his own house, he saw two companies, one on the right and the other on the left; that Carter, Steel, and a short man he did not know, went on to the place, and one of them came up after him, and he told him where it was; upon which they brought the horse up to a rough kind of a dell, and the short man fell a-digging, 8
Previous Contents Next