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
Poor unhappy Galley! who can read the melancholy story of thy tragical
catastrophe without shedding tears at the sorrowful relation? What
variety of pains did thy body feel in every member of it, especially
by thy privy parts being so used? What extremity of anguish didst thou
groan under, so long as the small remains of life permitted thee to be
sensible of it! And after all, to be buried while life was yet in thee,
and to struggle with death even in thy wretched grave, what imagination
can form to itself a scene of greater horror, or more detestable
villainy? Sure thy murderers must be devils incarnate! for none but
the fiends of Hell could take pleasure in the torments of two unhappy
men, who had given them no offence, unless their endeavouring to serve
their king and country may be deemed such. This indeed was the plea of
these vile miscreants; but a very bad plea it was to support as bad a
cause. But such is the depravity of human nature, that when a man once
abandons himself to all manner of wickedness, he sets no bounds to his
passions, his conscience is seared, every tender sentiment is lost,
reason is no more, and he has nothing left him of the man but the form.
We forgot to mention in its proper place that in order to make their
whipping the more severely felt, they pulled off Galley’s great coat,
which was found in the road next morning all bloody.
They, supposing Galley was dead, laid him across a horse, two of the
smugglers, one on each side, holding him to prevent his falling, while
the third led the horse, and as they were going up a dirty lane,
Jackson said, “Stop at the swing gate beyond the water till we return,
and we will go and seek for a place to carry them both to;” when he
and Carter went to the house of one Pescod, who had been a reputed
smuggler, and knocked at the door. The daughter came down, when they
said they had got two men whom they wanted to bring to the house. The
girl told them her father was ill, and had been so for some time, and
that there was no conveniency for them, nor any body to look after
them; and they insisting that she should go up and ask him, she did,
and brought down word that her father would suffer nobody to be brought
there, be they who they would; upon which they returned to the rest.
Though this Pescod was (as I have observed) a reputed smuggler, and
therefore these fellows supposed he would give them harbour upon this
occasion, yet it does not appear that he had gone such lengths as
the rest of them had done; for if he had, he would not have refused
admitting them at any hour of the night, notwithstanding his illness;
but he imagining they were upon some villainous expedition, resolved
to have no hand in it, or have his name brought in question on that
account. But to proceed.
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