cacakerbamakhlukpolitik

While researching smuggling for The Ghost and Miss Moore,  there's one problem I run into again and again: the bulk of the records of the customs service were lost in the 1814 London Customs House fire. To me the greatest loss is that every revenue officer was required to keep notebooks detailing his daily activities and submit them to his superior officer. There are almost none extent from before 1814 because of this fire. "The fatal Conflagration of the Custom House, on the Morning of the 12th February 1814" (British Museum) The fire was discovered by the porter at 6AM. By 7 the fire engines had arrived, and by 8 the flames were so high they had given up on saving the Customs House and began trying to save the surrounding buildings. [A] report was circulated that many barrels of gunpowder were deposited in the vaults, and that consequently an explosion might soon be expected. This report had nearly a magical effect. All withdrew to a distance, both firemen and spectator...

Hi, Rose here! As I mentioned in my last post , I'm doing research for my next book, about a revenue officer, a governess, and a ghost in Orkney (tentatively titled The Ghost and Miss Moore ). I've always liked stories with ghost characters, but real-life ghost sightings have never been much of an interest of mine, so I'm reading The Haunted: a Social History of Ghosts by Owen Davies. It's a fascinating book and it's been giving me lots of ideas for how I want my ghost character to work! He's a murder victim seeking justice (or maybe vengeance...he's not entirely a nice ghost), which has been a popular kind of ghost over the centuries--so popular, in fact, that murder investigations have been opened because of ghost sightings, up through the early part of the eighteenth century. In one case in 1660, a Westmoreland magistrate investigated the death of Robert Parkin because of a report that Robert's ghost had appeared to a man in the parish church crying ...

I've been researching smuggling for my soon-to-be-started WIP (a revenue officer, a governess, and a ghost in Orkney!) . Mostly what I'm discovering is how incredibly widespread and shameless smuggling was. It operated in many ways like our modern-day Mafia--but before the 80s mob trials. Revenue officers knew who the smugglers were. Often they even had advance knowledge of smuggling runs. But they were so badly outnumbered that in many cases, the officer or two (even if he was backed by half-a-dozen dragoons) had to simply watch as sixty or a hundred armed men rode by escorting huge cargoes. There were cases of small fleets of smuggling ships coming into an inlet where a Revenue cutter lay at anchor and saying, "Cut your anchor and take off or we'll sink you!" (But with worse language, my book made sure to clarify!) And the ship had really no choice but to do it. Even if smugglers could be arrested, it was rare to find a jury that would convict them. This was bot...