“Perhaps the oddest form of the smuggling carried on in later times,” says a writer in an old magazine, “was a curious practice in vogue between Calais and Dover about 1819–20. This, however, was rather an open and well-known technical evasion of the customs dues than actual smuggling. The fashion at that time came in of ladies wearing Leghorn hats and bonnets of enormous dimensions. They were huge, strong plaits, nearly circular, and commonly about a yard in diameter; and they sold in England at from two to three guineas, and sometimes even more, apiece. A heavy duty was laid upon them, amounting to nearly half their value.
It is a well-known concession, made by the custom-houses of various countries, that wearing-apparel in use is not liable to duty, and herein lay the opportunity of those who were financially interested in the import of Leghorn plaits. A dealer in them hired, at a low figure, a numerous company of women and girls of the poorest class to voyage daily from Dover to Calais and back, and entered into a favourable contract with the owners of one of the steamers for season-tickets for the whole band of them at low rates. The sight of these women leaving the town in the morning with the most deplorable headgear and returning in the evening gloriously arrayed, so far as their heads were concerned, was for some few years a familiar and amusing one to the people of Dover.
Another ingenious evasion was that long practised by the Swiss importers of watches at the time when watches also were subject to duty. An _ad valorem_ duty was placed upon them, which was arrived at by the importers making a declaration of their value. In order to prevent the value being fixed too low, and the Revenue being consequently defrauded, the Government had the right of buying any goods they chose, at the prices declared. This was by no means a disregarded right, for the authorities did frequently, in suspicious cases, exercise it, and bought considerable consignments of goods, which were afterwards disposed of by auction, at well-known custom-house sales.
The Swiss makers and importers of watches managed to do a pretty good deal of business with the customs as an unwilling partner, and they did it in a perfectly legitimate way; although a way not altogether without suspicion of sharp practice. They would follow consignments of goods declared at ordinary prices with others of exactly similar quality, entered at the very lowest possible price, consistent with the making of a trading profit; and the customs officials, noting the glaring discrepancy, would exercise their rights and buy the cheaper lots, thinking to cause the importers a severe loss and thus give them a greatly needed lesson. The watch-manufacturers really desired nothing better, and were cheerfully prepared to learn many such lessons; for they thus secured an immediate purchaser, for cash, and so greatly increased their turnover. Other folks incidentally benefited, for goods sold at customs auctions rarely ever fetched their real value: there were too many keenly interested middlemen about for that to be permitted. Thus, an excellent watch only, as a rule, to be bought for from £14 to £15, could on these occasions often be purchased for £10. Naturally enough, the proprietors of watch and jewellery businesses were the chief bidders at these auctions; and, equally naturally, they usually found means to keep down the prices to themselves, while carefully ensuring that private bidders should be artfully run up.
