Dan Snow's History Hit - Smugglers of Jamaica Inn

Episode Date: October 31, 2022

Stories of shipwrecks, smugglers and ghosts. Built in the mid-18th century, over the years many of the Jamaica Inn's patrons have been less respectable than most. The inn has a long history of being used by smugglers to hide away contraband that was brought ashore concealed in all sorts of things - potatoes, women's stockings and even a hollowed-out turtle. It is estimated that half the brandy and a quarter of all tea being smuggled into the UK was landed along the Cornish and Devon coasts. Jamaica Inn was remote and isolated so it was the ideal stopping place on the way to Devon and beyond.The inn was made famous by Daphne Du Maurier's novel of the same name published in 1936 after she and a friend became lost in fog whilst out riding on the moors and were led back by their horses to safety at the Inn. During the time spent recovering from her ordeal, the local rector is said to have entertained her with ghost stories and tales of smuggling...Today it still operates as a hotel and museum and local historian at the Jamaica Inn Karin Beasant joins the podcast to regale us with tales of smuggling off the Cornish coast.Find out more information about the Jamaica Inn.Produced by Mariana Des Forges, edited by Dougal Patmore and readings by Lucy Davidson.If you'd like to learn more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad-free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe to History Hit today!To download the History Hit app please go to the Android or Apple store.

The Wind Blew And so the coach rumbled into Bodmin, grey and forbidding like the hills that cradled it. And one by one the passengers gathered up their things in preparation for departure, all save Mary, who sat in her corner. The driver, his face a stream of rain looked in at the window are you going on to Launceston he said it'll be a wild drive tonight across the moors you can stay in Bodmin you know and go on by coach in the morning my friends will be expecting me

said Mary I'm not afraid of the drive and I don't want to go as far as Launceston will you please put me down at Jamaica Inn? The man looked at her curiously. Jamaica Inn, he said. What would you be doing at Jamaica Inn? That's no place for a girl.

You must have made a mistake, surely. He stared at her, her hard not believing her this is the opening of daphne de moray's celebrated novel jamaica in about a young orphaned woman who goes to live with her aunt and uncle the terrifying landlords of the jamaica inn that sits high on the foggy bodmin moore loved it my dad read it to me when i was a kid she begins to search for answers about the mystery of her uncle's involvement in smuggling along the that sits high on the foggy Bodmin Moor. I loved it. My dad read it to me when I was a kid. She begins to search for answers about the mystery of her uncle's involvement in smuggling along the Cornish coast.

It's at Jamaica Inn that Mary learns what fear is for the first time. Jamaica Inn was built in 1750. It was a coaching inn, the kind of 18th century equivalent of a modern day service station, a travel lodge where weary travellers could relax and heat up before the next leg of the journey. It's on the turnpike between Launceston and Bodmin,

and they would stay in the inn after crossing the wild and treacherous moor. It's such a cool place. Meanwhile, smugglers had, well, anywhere up to 100 secret routes to move their contraband around. Now, some of these travellers were the smugglers, and they used the inn to hide their smuggled goods that had been brought ashore. It's estimated that about half of the brandy and a quarter of all the tea being smuggled into the UK was landed along the Cornish and Devon coast.

Jamaica Inn was isolated and remote, making it the perfect stopping place for those laden down with illegal goods to sell. Our producer, Marianna Day-Forge, has been down to Jamaica to find out more about this haven for smugglers, how wreckers operate on the rocky southwest coast, and the search for ghosts that apparently haunt the inn. Here's the episode. Stay safe out there. Here's the episode. Stay safe out there. I'm just walking up to the Jamaica Inn and on this drizzly October afternoon, it is very atmospheric.

There is a sort of pea soup fog gathering up on the moor and Jamaica Inn sits on the top of this hill. And it's a stone coaching inn with a cobbled courtyard. There's the very famous Jamaican inn sign swinging in the breeze, the pirate with his parrot on his shoulder and I can see why this place caught Daphne du Maurier's imagination when she first came here in the 1930s. The majority of the inn is still very much functioning as that although now it has a museum as well and it's got this atmospheric pub with lots of artifacts from the inn's history. I'm here to meet Karim Basant who is a local historian she also runs the ghost hunting events that the inn does and she probably knows more about this

history than anybody else. Hello, I'm looking for Karen. Hello. Hi. So where does the name for this inn come from? So most sources say that Jamaica Inn was named after the Trelawney family, who were governors of the Jamaica Inn. But a few years ago, we had a chap contact us who said, no, you're wrong, I have the correct answer,

which I think it's the most romantic one. He claims that there was fruit being smuggled in a barrel. It was starting to go off, so the landlord here boiled it up to make jam, and it became known as the Jam Maker Inn. Ah, so that's different from the story that most people think, that it's got something to do with the rum that was being smuggled through here. Exactly. You know, no one can know for sure. I like the more romantic one, but obviously there are two explanations.

So this has been here since the mid 18th century now there's a big A road running alongside here but what would it have looked like when it was first built? So we know that a John Broad he may have been a sea captain with a handshake so very very unusual not a written tenancy agreement with a gentleman called James Scarwin from Northampton was allowed to hinge in 20 acres of land. And he called this Bold Venture and it became the Hamlet of Bulventa. He built a small dwelling house. Bulventa. He built a small dwelling house so when you look directly onto the Jamaica Inn where the two chimneys end that was the original Jamaica Inn. And how remote was this part you know we're set sort of up on a hill we can see across it's very misty outside what would this have

looked like this area? So the Jamaica Inn is over 900 feet of a sea level and Bobmin Moor you have to remember was very isolated the Cornish were a very independent people down the centuries they did not like to be told what to do so when the magistrates used to come and do the assizes, so they'll come to Launceston. Now, there were no decent roads, so they had to take then the road and go around the moor. So they would go to Weybridge, then to Bobmin to deal with court matters. So we believe that a landlord from the White Hart and Launceston, the White Hart and Bobmin, decided to pave a track. We know that there's a track here that probably goes back to Roman times. The authorities thought, well, hang on, 1778, let's put some tall houses to pave for us upkeepkeep and then suddenly carriages could go past. So any decent businessman is going to think, hang on a sec, I could make some money from here.

So he extended the side gables, put on the tack room and stable block and also built the annex across the road. And the white building opposite the Jamaica Inn was the forge. It still has the original Ford fire and in the restaurant of the Jamaica Inn you will see one of the huge bellows. Wow and you said carriages were coming through here. What kinds of people would stop at the inn that was built here? It was very rough and ready we know that there was a report in 1814 of a man criticizing the lack of refreshments the lack of bread because the harvest had failed and the rough linen so it wouldn't have been what we would call a nice place for the gentry to stop over. More like pull in, change the horses, have a hunk of meat and bread and off you go. I suppose it's very remote here, well it would have been before you had this big road. Tell me what other kinds of nefarious people potentially were coming through the inn.

So I will show you a window on the first floor where supposedly a candle would be lit to say whether it's all clear for the smugglers to come here and the excise men were nowhere to be seen. With the smuggling that went on in Cornwall, they were called free traders. Everyone was in it from the lowly farmer the nobility the magistrate can we go back a little bit into the history of Cornwall and its position in Britain in the 18th century with trade you know London particularly was a hub of commerce and trade in the world so obviously a lot of wine oil oil, spices were coming into Britain. I suppose they would have been coming up through the south coast. Yes. So because Britain was at war, first of all, you had the independence wars of America and then the wars with France.

So taxation was extremely high. We've had custodized taxation since the 1300s, but it became very high on things like brandy, tea. We know that probably a quarter or a third of all tea that came into this country was smuggled in. And it carried on for so long. It was Prime Minister Peel that changed it to stop the smuggling of this high end goods because he thought if I change the excise duty, it's just as cheap to buy in the shops as to be smuggled in. So they would find other ways of smuggling.

So when we think of smuggling, it's easy to think, oh, well, they were smuggling in, you know, illegal substances and things they weren't supposed to have, like opium. But actually, it was things that people were using day to day, but they just didn't want to pay the tax on it. And were the companies that they were working for, were they involved or did they turn a blind eye to these, I presume, sailors, would they be, who would come through and bring them? So you had even the excise men, some of them were paid to turn the blind eye. And it all depends if you found an honest one. And there's one quote here that I absolutely love. It was once estimated that if all the goods smuggled into Falmouth alone in the course of one year had been taxed, the money collected would have been more than twice the land tax for the whole of the kingdom. That shows you the quantity that was coming in. And people like their drink. Us English like our

alcohol, you know, so brandy, wine, anything like that. like that and you know it wasn't just being smuggled from france it was being smuggled from portugal as well and some of these smugglers they had three or four ships and they were very fast ships so they could make a crossing to france in eight hours if the wind was in the right direction. It was very organised. And presumably they land on the south coast, they come up into the countryside through the moor, and this is the obvious stop off, I suppose. So being high up on the moor, this is obviously one of the ideal places. The only thing that we cannot find are hidden tunnels we do know that

the house opposite the family that lived there before claimed there was a small tunnel that went from under those stairs across the road here but it was filled in so we have to see it to say yet we can confirm it because this is built on granite and granite is very hard to dig out but there must have been places nearby or perhaps a cottage or somewhere hidden that they could store the goods unseen well you also have a museum here as well as being an inn where people can stay would you show me the museum and some of the artifacts that you still have from those days of smuggling yeah has the inn changed much in the years that it's been operating because obviously people still come here and they still use it as an inn and people for the museum does it still look very much how it did well we were very lucky to interview two people. One lady was born here in 1955. Another lady lived and worked here from 1959 to 1969.

So we know of different layouts from what we see now. So originally, the main bar was the dining room. Aha. And in the 1950s, Mr. Grouse was the manager here. And there was a pet pig that used to walk around the bar. It's a nice place for a pig to live. Exactly. So we are in the original stable block.

Before we come through here, I want to ask you about this horrible looking thing, which says man trap, and it's like a metal set of teeth with very long spikes on it. What do I dare ask is that for? It's to stop a smuggler. And now imagine the size of it. That would have taken someone's leg off.

If they'd walked onto that metal plate and it had snapped shut, those spikes would have gone right through bone and flesh. And that person would probably have lost their leg. And are there stories of smugglers being caught in man traps? I'm sure it would have happened. There's a smaller one. This is a beautiful smuggler's song. Howl of the giraffe from the puck of Pook's hill. If you wake at midnight and hear a horse's feet, don't go drawing back the blind or looking in the street. Then the ask no question isn't told a lie.

Watch the war, my darling, while the gentlemen go by. Five and twenty ponies trotting through the dark. Brandy for the parson, backy for the clerk. Laces for a lady, letters for a spy. And watch the war, my darling,

as the gentlemen go by. spy and watch the war, my darling, as the gentlemen go by. You listened to Dan Snow's History. Don't go anywhere, there's more to come. Coming to Dan Snow's History hit soon, a mini-series that tells one of the most extraordinary stories in history, the discovery of Tutankhamun. The discovery of Tutankhamun. It's a tale of tombs lost beneath shifting desert sands, of adventurers, robbers and nations racing to uncover the greatest prize of all, an intact royal burial.

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Rebellions. And crusades. Find out who we really were. By subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit. Wherever you get your podcasts there's something very romantic about how we think of smuggling and i'm sure it's probably a lot to do with daphne demarais, but it must have been quite a grisly business. I have this fabulous story of an old ex-smuggler who on his deathbed asked for the local priest to come and say the last rites.

And as he looked at the priest, he said, you don't remember me? He said, many years ago, he said you were walking along the coastal path and he came to a fork in the road and I was there and I said good evening reverend don't go that way go that way it's a far better walk and I'm so glad you did and the reverend said why my son he said because we had goods coming in and I would have to slit your throat. So smuggling is one thing. What is wrecking?

So wrecking is where a false fire is put on a cliff. So a ship's out at sea. They think, ah, there's safe harbour. And they end up crashing onto the rocks. And then the people would go in and kill all on board and take the booty. But obviously the Daphne du Maurier story and then the film, the 1939 film, emphasise that more. But it would make sense smuggling to keep it low-key otherwise you would end up having the king's army come down and it would disrupt business so it was more likely smuggling than wrecking so you've got

loads of artifacts in here yes can you tell me about some of your favorite things in this museum and what they are some of my favorite things are the way they would hide goods later on so after the smuggling of tea and brandy became not worth doing because the excise was dropped on it opium tobacco which is a big trade still now but also you can see they used to smuggle in birds into stockings. Oh, my gosh. Like little tropical birds of paradise. Yeah, little budgies. And jewellery.

So you have books that would have the centre taken out and jewellery put in because, again, they didn't want to pay the excise duty. It happens now. Horses and shoes. And one of the funniest, potatoes. Potatoes. Hollowed out potatoes. Yeah.

But during Victorian times, opium was the cocaine of the time. Aha. So you had your opium, especially in London, the gentry, the nobility. It was something, and it was used as a painkiller as well. So it went from one type of trade to another. And you've got things from women. So you've got a corset and some shoes. Was there any benefit in hiding things in women's garments

because they would arouse less suspicion than perhaps men? Exactly. So you're less likely in the 30s, 40s. I mean, also during the war, in the Second World War, because I know my English grandfather was naughty, petrol was rationed. So if people get hold of petrol, they would sell it on the black market. When the inn was first opened in the 18th century, it was smuggling tea and brandy to have to not pay the tax on it. But it looks like towards the Victorian age, it's moving more towards substances like opium and narcotics. And jewellery. And same as today, what do people smuggle in when they go on holiday?

Cigarettes and tobacco. You know, from someone that's just getting an extra couple of hundred to people bringing in thousands and how many people take a van and go across the channel to the huge supermarkets and come back with loads of wine. Exactly the same thing they don't want to pay the custom tax. One thing there's a turtle here a stuffed one and it was hollowed out and for 20 years it went back and forth narcotics was hidden inside and that went on undetected for 20 years smuggling into the country so we've looked at some of the things that smugglers were using to bring products into britain do you have any stories of the smugglers themselves in this museum? Yes. So

Falmouth has one of the finest natural harbours in the world and it owes its existence probably to smuggling. It was developed as a town in a harbour in the 16th century by the Killigrews, a rich and influential family whose money came from piracy and smuggling. Sir John Killigrew held the position of Vice Admiral of Cornwall. So there's a man who's smuggling, who held a title, but on the side smuggled. You couldn't make it up. He eventually began to lead the raiding expeditions himself. So all the family took part in the bloodthirsty forest, including Lady Killigrew, who was suspected of drowning several crew members

of a Spanish ship that she wanted to loot. So they were wrecking. So they were wrecking not English people. Foreigners were fair game if they could get their hands on them. But also piracy in the late 1700s mid-1700s was massive you think of queen elizabeth the first sir francis drake they had an official letter by queen elizabeth to go and raid the spanish as long as she had a share of the booty but publicly she would denounce them it's diplomacy 101

so when the smugglers land in the coves of the cornish coast you know they're on the beaches then what do they do so a convoy of donkeys and ponies will be led down to the cove so all the goods will be unpacked i mean you're talking quite a lot of weight on these poor animals and led back up to the first stop to unload and then gradually it will be dispersed up and down the county and then obviously usually making his way to London so one crafty way was to shave the donkey put oil on there so if the custom men tried to grab the donkey, they couldn't get a firm grip. And they would also teach the donkeys words in reverse. So woa would mean stop, and then stop would mean go for it. So to me, that is so clever. When do they come to the Jamaica Inn? So the Jamaica Inn now is about

10 miles from the coast so that probably would have taken all night to bring it up here depending on obviously the path because people forget Bobmill was a moor. You could get stuck in pits etc so you had to know the tracks. Who's the the best people the locals who know all the way so they could walk through the mist with a lantern they would know exactly where to walk where not to walk same as the animals they knew where to put their foot you can see why when Daphne du Maurier came here she was so taken with the history of this place and the landscape so without Daphne du Maurier this will just be another pub in Cornwall same as many other pubs with stories of smuggling and ghosts so if she hadn't visited here first in 1930 with her friend borrowed a

couple of horses from here went to visit someone for tea. As they were coming back the rain and the mist came down and it can be very very thick here because you're so high up. They got lost, they took some shelter into an abandoned building. Her friend said why not let the horses lead the way back and as they came up the crest of the hill here about eight o'clock at night the landlord was outside with a lantern welcoming she stayed here for a few days the following year november 1931 she came here and the vicar of altrincham charles percival triplet he came and had afternoon tea, so it would have been the main bar. And he regaled her with stories of smugglers and wrecking. That inspired her to write Jamaica Inn.

And one thing to remember, as she later said in previous accounts, this was a temperance inn. There was no alcohol. And I couldn't come here and not ask you about the hauntings of the inn. Can you tell me about some of the resident ghosts that live here? Right, so interestingly, the first documented report is 1911. It ended up in Country Life magazine of a man sat on the wall outside in strange clothing and as the locals approached and tried to talk to him he ignored them and disappeared. So we move on then to the 1950s where I was lucky enough to interview a lady that was born here and her mother said that during the day, the Jamaica Inn was a lovely place,

but as night draw in, she hated living here. Because guests would come down in the morning and say, who's been in my room, folded up my clothing that I dropped on the floor and left it neatly positioned on the end of the bed? I wish that ghost was still here because we could really do with their help. Well there is a history of smugglers and ghost stories isn't there? Very much so. So the smugglers would tell ghost stories to stop locals going near where they would hide their cargo or take the cargo off a ship.

So there's one in the east coast of the Drummer Boy ghost. That was to stop people going to a certain area, and they did it in Cornwall as well. I can tell that you love working here. What is it that you think ultimately grips people in the stories of smugglers and in Daphne du Maurier's book, Wrecking? What is it that we're so drawn in by? I think we're drawn in by the romance of smugglers and in Daphne du Maurier's book, Wrecking, what is it that we're so drawn in by? I think we're drawn in by the romance of it all.

So think of the Jack Sparrow films. The crooked captain, the crooked smuggler, but has a heart of gold. And there are cases of one smuggler in Cornwall, one of three brothers, he became so conscious of his deeds, he ended up being a preacher because he wanted forgiveness. But again, you know, there is a moral code. And the moral code is you do not tell on other smugglers. And what happens in today's society, we call ititching you do not snitch snitches get

stitches exactly exactly well thank you so much karen you're more than welcome thank you perhaps there was no habitation in all the long and twenty miles that stretched between the two towns of Bodmin and Launceston. Perhaps there was not even a poor shepherd's hut on the desolate highway. Nothing but the one grim landmark that was the Jamaica Inn. Thank you.