Charles Weeks: the Crafty Winfrith Smuggler

Charles Weeks, like many men and women in Dorset in the early 1700s, was deeply enmeshed in the smuggling trade. He operated at Lulworth and all along the Dorset coast and would land goods like brandy, tea and tobacco to evade paying heavy taxes. The rugged coastline provided secretive landing spots that were difficult for customs officials to patrol. Charles Weeks’s house was described as ‘a general magazine of snuff, pepper, cocoa nuts (beans), coffee and other goods.’ Weeks acted also as an organising agent for other smuggling merchants.

He lived at Winfrith and recruited most of the village to work for him in the smuggling trade. He had a particularly crafty method of evading customs officials. He would mix seized contraband goods, which he bought at auction, with his own illicit smuggled items. When challenged, he was able to produce legitimate receipts. If this was not accepted, he would threaten litigation knowing that custom officials would be unlikely to follow up as they were so poorly paid. Weeks used this threat in 1720 against a customs official  who had discovered a stash of pepper, cocoa beans, coffee and snuff hidden in a hay loft in Blandford.

On one occasion as many as five vessels were unloading contraband with as many people disguised and armed on the shore as would attend Dorchester Fair.

Charles Weeks would ship the goods onwards often to London where they would be sold in a grocery shop in the Strand area or at the Rose and Crown Inn in Knightsbridge. Drinking chocolate, made from the heavily taxed cocoa beans, had become fashionable and popular among London’s more wealthy citizens. His son, Charles Weeks junior was also involved in the family smuggling business but was imprisoned for five years for assaulting a customs official.

Smuggling was made less challenging for smugglers such as Charles Weeks because of the degree of corruption which existed among customs officials.

(Credit: Dorset Smugglers [1984] by Roger Guttridge).