Smuggling & Smugglers in Sussex: The Genuine History of the Inhuman and Unparalleled Murders of Mr. William Galley a Custom-house Officer, and Mr. Daniel Chater, a Shoemaker, by Fourteen Notorious Smugglers, with the Trials and Execution of Seven of the Criminals at Chichester, 1748-9Anonymous
History
Smuggling & Smugglers in Sussex: The Genuine History of the Inhuman and Unparalleled Murders of Mr. William Galley a Custom-house Officer, and Mr. Daniel Chater, a Shoemaker, by Fourteen Notorious Smugglers, with the Trials and Execution of Seven of the Criminals at Chichester, 1748-9
Anonymous
Crime -- England -- History; Smuggling -- England -- Sussex -- History
John Mills, about 30 years of age, son of Richard Mills, of Trotton,
lately executed at Chichester, was bred up to the business of a
colt-breaker by his father. He said he had been a smuggler many years,
and blamed Jeremiah Curtis, alias Pollard, who stands indicted for
the same murder he was convicted of, and William Jackson, who was
condemned at Chichester for the murders of Galley and Chater, as being
the principal persons concerned in drawing him away from his honest
employment.
Young Mills acknowledged himself a very wicked liver; but complained
of the witnesses, that is, such of them as had been smugglers and
turned evidences, and said that they had acted contrary to the solemn
oaths and engagements they had made and sworn to among themselves, and
therefore wished they might all come to the same end, and be hanged
like him, and d--ned afterwards.
John Mills stood indicted for two murders, besides robberies, as is
before mentioned; but it is remarkable that he committed both murders
in twenty days; that of Hawkins, for which he was condemned, was
perpetrated on the 28th of January; and the other, that he was not
tried for, which was the murder of Daniel Chater, he committed the 17th
of the following month.
It having been said, as soon as Mills was convicted, that the design
of him and Curtis in fetching the two Cockrels, the father and
brother-in-law of Hawkins, to the Dog and Partridge, was to serve them
as they had done Hawkins; Mills being asked the question, at first
seemed very sulky; but at last said, he believed that if Winter and
Robb had not met them and told them that Hawkins was dead, they should
have basted the Cockrels well, when they had got them there; so that in
all probability their lives were preserved by Hawkins dying sooner than
his murderers expected.
Jeremiah Curtis, alias Pollard, is at Gravelines in France, and has
entered himself into the corps of the Irish brigades; but Richard
Rowland, alias Robb, he imagined for very good reasons, was not out of
the kingdom; and indeed he was seen and spoken to on East Grinstead
Common, which is near that town, the latter end of the month of January
last.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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