WIMBORNE MINSTER has a fantastic independent bookshop that trades under the name of GULLIVERS.
It was this treasure of a shop and the mystery of its name that led me to research this book. I soon found that Smugglers wrote little down - well I guess they wouldn't would they - and I had eighteen months of travel and research throughout libraries, museums, private archives, churchyards and near forotten memories, ahead of me. It was a journey into the past, which blew some legends, put flesh on the bones of others and uncovered the remarkable life of one of Wimborne's most mysterious residents.
I found that whereas there may be some truth in the legend of Robin Hood, that here in Dorset was a man who brought bread to the mouths of the starving peasants. His trade was not legal but it kept communities alive. And the letters uncovered by The Revenue show a grudging admiration for a man they describe as 'a most notorious smuggler' in one breath and 'A man of great speculative genius.' in another.
From the latter half of the eighteenth century, until the year of his death in 1822, Isaac Gulliver rose to become the most notorious and successful smuggler on the south coast of England. A figure of legend and mystery and a hero of romance, Gulliver and his army of moonrakers harried the Kings preventative officers along the coast of Hampshire and Dorset, from Christchurch in the east to Lyme Regis in the west.
From the latter half of the eighteenth century, until the year of his death in 1822, Isaac Gulliver rose to become the most notorious and successful smuggler on the south coast of England. A figure of legend and mystery and a hero of romance, Gulliver and his army of moonrakers harried the Kings preventative officers along the coast of Hampshire and Dorset, from Christchurch in the east to Lyme Regis in the west.
The smuggling of goods from across the channel was at its peak in this period, and Dorset’s coastline, with its wooded creeks around the Bournemouth area and wide sweeps of deserted shingle and sand further west, made it ideal for clandestine moonlit landings. Behind the beachheads, running for many miles inland, the broad wild sweep of Dorset heath-land - some of which is still visible today - was the smugglers route to the towns, hamlets, farms and coach houses within.
Stories tell of entire communities supplementing their meagre farm wages with earnings from the illegal contraband trade. Cheating the taxman was seen as fair game, after all most of the monies collected
went purely to finance a succession of foreign wars, and the Dorset agricultural worker - kept poor by wealthy landowners - had their own war to fight. For the peasant it was a constant struggle against disease and malnutrition.
It was during Gulliver’s time that the Dorset labourer became ‘enclosed in poverty’ when, in 1770, the rural landscape of the English countryside began to change forever. From this date, and into the next decade, the landowners - greedy for even greater wealth - proceeded to annex vast acreages of land. After these land ‘enclosures’ the peasants no longer had the commons on which to graze their sheep or single cow for milking, even their plots to grow vegetables had been taken from them. As a result the peasant’s basic diet became one of potatoes and bread, leaving them with a mean and undernourished existence.
Smugglers such as Gulliver were revered in such society, their trade in cut price black market goods, payment for handling, and employment in their gangs, made the difference to many lives, and in so doing bought them fame and, above all, great loyalty. ISBN 9780956071507
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