Among the ascertained careers of notable smugglers, that of Thomas Johnson affords some exciting episodes. This worthy, who appears to have been born in 1772 and to have died in 1839, doubled the parts of smuggler and pilot. He was known pretty generally as “the famous Hampshire smuggler.”
As a captured and convicted smuggler he was imprisoned in the New Prison in the Borough, in 1798, but made his escape, not without suspicion of connivance on the part of the warders. That the possession of him was ardently desired by the authorities seems sufficiently evident by the fact of their offering a reward of £500 for his apprehension; but he countered this by offering his services the following year as pilot to the British forces sent to Holland. This offer was duly accepted, and Johnson acquitted himself so greatly to the satisfaction of Sir Ralph Abercromby, commanding, that he was fully pardoned.
He then plunged into extravagant living, and finally found himself involved in heavy debts, stated (but not altogether credibly) to have totalled £11,000. Resuming his old occupation of smuggling, he was sufficiently wary not to be captured again by the revenue officers; but what they found it impossible to achieve was with little difficulty accomplished by the bailiffs, who arrested him for debt and flung him into the debtors’ prison of the Fleet, in 1802. Once there, the Inland Revenue were upon him with smuggling charges, and the situation seemed so black that he determined on again making a venture for freedom. Waiting an exceptionally dark night, he, on November 29th, stealthily crossed the yard and climbed the tall enclosing wall that separated the prison from the outer world. Sitting on the summit of this wall, he let himself down slowly by the full length of his arms, just over the place where a lamp was bracketed out over the pathway, far beneath. He then let himself drop so that he would fall on to the bracket, which he calculated would admirably break the too deep drop from the summit of the wall to the ground. Unfortunately for him, an unexpected piece of projecting ironwork caught him and ripped up the entire length of his thigh. At that moment the slowly approaching footsteps of the watchman were heard, and Johnson, with agonised apprehension, saw him coming along, swinging his lantern. There was nothing for it but to lie along the bracket, bleeding profusely the while, until the watchman should have passed.