Smuggling on the South Coast

A smuggler ...''honest thief '' or ''wretch''? Opinion was divided some two hundred years ago when smuggling was in its heyday and known as ''that infamous traffick''. Charles Lamb, the essayist, was in favour when he wrote in the early 1800s, ''I like a smuggler; he is the only honest thief.'' The great lexicographer, Dr Johnson, begged to differ when he wrote this definition in his dictionary: '...