Barley is regarded as the oldest cultivated grain in the world. It certainly predates rice in Asia. We can trace the consumption back to 8000BC in Syria. The Egyptians were the first to master distillation, originally for perfumes and balms. The art of distilling was probably brought to Scotland by the early Christian missionaries from Ireland. The first spirits were distilled in early medieval monasteries.
The Picts were already used to brewing heather ales from a mixture that included barley malt. The Christians added the still, the recipe scarcely varied. Whisky is really a form of distilled beer. The first historical mention of whisky dates from 1494 when the record shows the friar John Cor instructed to make "Aqua Vitae" for the royal household. It is from the Gaelic for "Water of Life" that we get the name "whisky".
The Picts were already used to brewing heather ales from a mixture that included barley malt. The Christians added the still, the recipe scarcely varied. Whisky is really a form of distilled beer. The first historical mention of whisky dates from 1494 when the record shows the friar John Cor instructed to make "Aqua Vitae" for the royal household. It is from the Gaelic for "Water of Life" that we get the name "whisky".
The production of whisky was a domestic industry (made at home) until the late 18th century. Farmers used their own barley to make it. It was as natural to them as using their own oats to make porridge, just as it was natural for French farmers to turn their grapes into wine. It was the Government that turned this native skill into a crime. The stills were usually hidden in remote locations. The basic equipment was simple, easy to dismantle and conceal. A good copper still could last for 20 years or more. Tin stills were much cheaper to make but corroded very quickly. The main vessel was a copper pot of 10 or more gallon capacity. The key part was the “worm”, the copper pipe used to condense the hot vapours into liquid.
The recipe was relatively simple. Around 3 bolls of barley (about 200 kg) in sacks were soaked in water for 3 days. Then it was spread to sprout, dried in a kiln, and milled. It was now ready for the bothy. Bothies were around 8 feet square and built alongside running water. There the barley was boiled, stirred slowly, allowed to cool and then fed into the vat where it was mixed with yeast to ferment. Then, over a slow burning fire (usually of peat), the distilling process began. The vapour passed through the coiled “worm” in a wooden jacket (flakeboard) to condense it. The water had to be kept very cold. The condensed spirit was saved in a pitcher. The first distillation was quite lethal! Most spirits were double distilled, the best were triple distilled. The leftover barley, the “draft”, was high quality cattle food, the straw from the barley crop also provided winter fodder. The leftover liquid, the “burnt wine”, was usually poured into the burn.
Two or three people usually worked the bothy. The working conditions would be very smoky and unpleasant. The whole process from malting to distillation usually took 3 to 4 weeks. As a general rule, it was women who made the whisky; the men marketed and distributed it. It would be sold within days and consumed very quickly. Modern whiskies are aged in barrels for years to smooth the rough palate of the raw spirit and add the amber hue.
Governments have always found the "sin taxes" to be easy revenue earners. Every budget to this day is centred on such taxes. In 1579, distillers were taxed in Scotland for the first time. Few of them paid, most were producing in areas outside strict Government control. In 1609 the Scottish Government tried to impose restrictions on the manufacture of spirits in Scotland. Governments have to control industries so that they can maximise the revenue intake: and Governments are always looking for more money as costs soar e.g. in 1644 the Scottish Parliament, in need of money to finance an army of Parliamentarians against King Charles 1, introduced a levy of 40p a gallon on whisky. That drove the industry underground. The stills were hidden; the precious liquid had to be smuggled around the country.
The 1707 Act of Union led to a confusion of duties, a confusion that lasted more than a century. The English had always been taxed higher than the Scots, and in the interim the 2 tax levels remained. This opened an obvious market for smuggling into England, and the market in Northern England was a particularly lucrative one. By 1820 an estimated 10,000 gallons a week were crossing the border. Already by that date at least half of the whisky consumed was of the illicit variety, duty free. In vast areas of Scotland, many people refused to drink the legalised variety, as a point of principle. When the railways opened in the 1840s there were revenue checks and searches carried out on every train south at Carlisle and Berwick. It wasn't until 1855 that the then Chancellor William Gladstone equalised the rate at 40p per proof gallon.
To make matters worse, in 1725, the London government introduced the hated Malt Tax of 3d a bushel on malted barley. When the idea had first been debated in the House of Lords in 1712, a motion to dissolve the Treaty of Union failed by only 3 votes. The Jacobites campaigned on the slogan "No Union, No Malt Tax". The farmers sidestepped the Malt Tax by selling their malt to the illegal distillers. It was a patriotic gesture, but it turned the farmers into criminals for evading the duty.The Malt Tax also affected the legalised distillers. They started producing blends of 80% raw barley spirits added to 20% malted barley. It saved them on tax but it compromised the quality of the product. The illicit stills produced pure malt whisky.
A researcher in Edinburgh in 1777 counted 8 legal distilleries and estimated 400 illegal stills in the city. The situation had come about through Government ignorance and greed. In 1736 the Distillers Tax had been raised to the extortionate £1 per gallon. Further rises came throughout the costly French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars 1792-1815. The sad fact was that the ever-increasing costs of the Excise service outweighed the actual income raised. It was a classic example of the Law of Diminishing Returns.
The illicit producers didn't see it as a crime, rather as a traditional right and an essential earner for the survival of their families and the maintenance of their lifestyle. They were only doing what their ancestors for generations had done. They regarded Duties and Excise men as forms of oppression. In their communities, smugglers were regarded as local heroes. Most of the sympathisers were also regular customers. Some of the smugglers were elevated to legendary status as tales abound of how they outwitted or out-fought the hated Gaugers. Every area has its folklore of crafty smugglers duping rather thick-headed excise men. Compton Mackenzie captured the sentiment hilariously in his "Whisky Galore".
Adam Smith, author of the "Wealth of Nations" was also privately a sympathiser. He applauded the undoubted skills involved in the manufacture by decent hard-working people in an industry of which the nation ought to have been proud. He saw the producers as otherwise. "Excellent citizens had not the laws of this country made that a crime which nature never intended to be so".
There was a human side to the story. People have to earn enough to survive. The trade was driven by poverty, just as the marijuana trade is today. Farming, especially in the Highlands, could be precarious. Productivity was generally low due to the soil, the weather, the methods and the farming equipment. At best, it was subsistence farming. Whisky could always pay the rent. In the old days of payment in kind, it was common to pay in liquid form. In the 18t h century the home-made whisky raised cash for an increasingly money-based economy. Cash could be earned in the towns which became the target markets for the smugglers.
Long before the advent of the County Police Force, Deeside and other north-east country areas were patrolled by Excise Men. Their main concern was the tax evasion by the sale of illicit whisky. The income from illegal whisky was a necessity for economic survival after Culloden. Many areas had lost most of their men and almost all of their cattle and sheep. Much of the illegal distilling took place in the upper reaches of the Dee and its surrounding glens. There was a fine balancing act between breaking the law and losing your farm. In 1773 John Stewart of Tomnalienan having lost his previous harvests to the wet weather, and having thereby fallen heavily behind with his rent, converted his latest barley harvest into whisky. The whisky was seized and the equipment confiscated, he was fined
75p (fifteen shillings) which he could not pay, so his effects were poinded in lieu of the fine. His landlord, the Duke of Gordon, ordered his factor to give John Stewart" The wherewithal for purchasing back his whisky pot".
Even Dukes needed the rent. The Fourth Duke of Gordon was a remarkable man described by Lord Kames as “the greatest subject in Britain”. He was a very enlightened landowner and improver, much loved by his tenants. He founded the model villages of Fochabers, Tomintoul and Port Gordon. His wife, “Bonnie Jean” was the main recruiter for the Gordon Highlanders (the 92n d) in 1794. The illicit trade flourished in the years of the French Wars. The tax level was ludicrous, the Excise service was over-stretched, French brandy could no longer be imported either legally or illegally, whilst Dutch gin was virtually unobtainable, and West Indian rum was very hard to get. In a sample year 1795-96 I have counted 150 cases that came to court in Aberdeen for "distilling and malting privately" involving seized values ranging from £200 to £650. In the same year, Alexander Mollison and William Mortimer were separately charged with the manufacture of illicit stills and Alexander Anderson was fined for selling malt to "private distillers". It was big business and it kept the courts busy
.
It also kept the excise men busy. They were particularly busy in Deeside and Donside and in the vast area between the Dee and Don. In 1820 there were reputed to be 200 illicit stills in Glenlivet alone. It was common practice in the area for farmers to share stills to distil their own local barley: they also shared the fines. The stills were constantly on the move from autumn through winter: the rest of the time they were carefully hidden. There was a Government scheme that gave a reward for every still uncovered by informers: the farmers were excellent informers to their own discarded clapped out gear. Government money unwittingly financed new equipment.
The Excise Men could not effectively police the heavily forested areas such as Glen Tanar that retained at least 14 stills in 1820. There were only 11 Excise Men in the county and they concentrated their efforts on the western suburbs of Aberdeen, the main market for the produce. The smugglers employed scouts to spy on the activities of the Excise Men. Although the women did the distilling, the men did the transporting, usually by pony-trains. It is estimated that 2 million gallons were illegally distilled every year and that a fifth of the whisky was produced in upper Deeside. It was transported in 20 pint kegs, known as Ankers.
Many of the north-east whisky smuggling stories involve that well known excise man Malcolm Gillespie. He was a Dunblane born ex-soldier who entered the Excise in 1799 in Prestonpans in East Lothian, supervising the salt tax. He detected a lot of fraud and earned his promotion to Revenue Officer in Collieston in 1801 to tackle the large-scale coastal smuggling of brandy and gin. He cleaned up the area before moving on to do a similar job at Stonehaven. In 1812 he moved on to take over the Third Aberdeen or Skene Ride patrolling the wide Dee-Don area to tackle the whisky smuggling from Strathdon and Glenlivet. He was brave and aggressive and was involved with many skirmishes with the smugglers all over the area from Drum to Midmar to Inverurie. Culter was the scene of many such battles. He was a larger than life character, a self-publicist who claimed to have suffered some 42 wounds in the course of his career during which he confiscated an estimated 25,000 gallons of spirits. Sadly the author of his own legend was also the author of his own downfall - he was hanged for forgery in Aberdeen on 16 December 1827. He had long lived beyond his means and had run up deep debts.
Gillespie did not always get his own way with the smugglers. Writing in the local newspapers in 1955, in a year when whisky was Britain's biggest single export dollar earner, J. A. Fraser Wood described how he searched for his roots in Glenlivet where his great, great grandfather John Stewart-Fraser of Conven Cottage owned a well-worked and highly respected still. Stuart-Fraser's main market was in Aberdeen and he conveyed it there on a hearse with a dozen paid mourners in attendance. They regularly duped Gillespie who would doff his cap as the cortege went past. In 1817 he tried to get through on horseback: as he crossed the Dee at the ford at Allenvale, Gillespie tried to arrest him, shot his horse (a typical Gillespie tactic), a sabre-fight ensued in midstream. Stuart-Fraser was slashed across the forehead but Gillespie was left for dead,and the whisky got through.
Intriguingly, some of the whisky was regularly delivered to a boat in Stonehaven. No doubt it was moved on down the coast or it may even have found itself sailing for the continent, perhaps to a niche market for the Peat-reek. The Glenlivet whisky was always the most expensive of the illicit varieties of "Golden Spirit" but there were always plenty of customers because demand regularly outstripped supply.
For most gaugers, tackling the smugglers was a no-win situation. Working in relatively unknown territory (it was policy to move them away from home), despised, offered no local help, and subject to constant abuse with the ever-present threat of physical attack, they did a rather lonely and ill-paid job.
Their two main tactics were either to find the elusive stills or seize the whisky in transit. Neither task was easy to execute. There were look-outs ready to warn of their
approach, and the stills were easily hidden. The transit routes, usually along pony- tracks in the old hill paths or through the drove roads, were used under cover of darkness and the pony-trains were well protected by stout highlanders. Stopping a convoy almost guaranteed a battle in which the excise men were usually outnumbered. It was a dangerous job.
Once the whisky got to town it was soon dispersed. The bladder men and bladder women supplied the customers. The bladders of whisky were easily concealed by the lassies under their bodices or under their skirts: many pretended to be pregnant. Once delivered to the customer, the whisky was drunk within days. The evidence didn't hang around for very long. The price in 1820 was 2p a gill or 60p a gallon.
Gillespie's money troubles grew in the 1820s simply because his seizures were rapidly drying up. The reason was that the law had changed. The 1823 Excise Act changed the rules in such a way that legal distillation was encouraged. Much of the rationale behind the Act stemmed from a plea in the House of Lords by the Fourth Duke of Gordon. He realised the importance of whisky to the Highland economy and that it could become even more important if we encouraged the skilful distillers to produce the product legally. Otherwise the losing battle against the smugglers would continue unabated. Areas where the Excise Men were successful became depopulated. Birse was one such area. It was estimated that in that year some 2 million illicit gallons were produced in the Highlands. In 1823 some 14,000 seizures were to be made, the same amount occurred over each of the next two years.
It couldn't go on like this. The 1823 Act offered a cheap annual licence of £10 plus a set payment of 12p per proof gallon for every still of 40 gallons or more. Landowners were to be held responsible for illicit stills found on their estates. This was a complete turnaround. Since the 1788 Excise Act stills of less than 100 gallon capacity had been illegal. Now the small time producer could have his licence. The tax per proof g
Captured stills were a source of income to the Excise men. They were paid for their confiscations and were rewarded a percentage of the fines. Gillespie did well until 1825: thereafter, the seizures virtually dried up. His debts were mounting. He had even taken out heavy insurances on his home - and he planned to burn it down but was arrested for fraud before he could do so.
The first smuggler to break into legality was George Smith a farmer who became manager of the Glenlivet Distillery built less than half a mile from the site of his former illicit still at Upper Drumin. It wasn't all plain sailing for him. His neighbours regarded him at first as a traitor. At the opening of the distillery he had been given a brace of pistols by the Laird of Aberlour - and he needed them to protect his property. The distillery was never left unattended; his brothers and their fellow workers were always armed with the pistols. By the end of 1824 he was producing 100 gallons a week. Three neighbouring distilleries in the Glen set up in 1825-26 were all burned down by the resentful smugglers. George was a heavily-bearded stocky 6-footer and was never challenged to fight - but a notorious smuggler called Shaw tried to kill him in his sleep. George survived; he took his pistols to bed with him.
George Smith did, however, struggle to meet the financial demands of the new
business. A lot of money has to be laid out before the customers' cash rolls in. There are a lot more overheads in legitimate business than in the smuggling sector. It was a huge learning curve. He was lucky in that he had a factor who believed in what George was doing. James Skinner had been appointed factor to the Duke of Gordon in 1824. He faced the huge problem of rent arrears. Distilling could pay off the arrears. Skinner advanced just over £231, a fortune, to keep the Glenlivet distillery afloat. By the time George Smith died in 1871, production had reached 18,000 gallons per week. Today it sells 6 million bottles per year.
The golden years of smuggling were over. It was a mixed blessing. Suppressing the smuggling is closely linked to depopulation throughout the highlands and islands. This is dramatically shown in the population decline in the Orkney Isles of Stroma, Swona and Shapinsay where whisky had long been the main cash crop. The little isolated communities couldn't survive without the income. Illicit distilling didn't disappear overnight but the product was no longer distilled to be sold. The remote stills were still used for domestic consumption among family and friends. Even as late as 1880 it was reckoned that there were around 50 illegal stills to every legal one, but the rate of prosecutions had fallen to 20 a year. The emigrant Highlanders took their skills with them to Canada, Australia and New Zealand. They also took them to the Scottish cities.
One of the difficulties of setting up a still in the towns was camouflaging the smell. In 1860 in Aberdeen there were complaints from the neighbours in James Street about the activities of John Moncrieff. It was claimed that he had been slaughtering the odd pig and was even accused of boiling down cattle hooves. On investigation, it was found that he was also producing whisky which he supplied to the local publicans. He was charged along with his wife Janet,and his labourer, Robert Davidson. They were fined £30 each, couldn't pay, and had to serve 3 months in prison.
The temptation to produce a drop of the craitur didn't go away in a hurry. Family weddings required a good drop of the real stuff, as did Hogmanay. The week prior to Hogmanay 1867 saw two seizures in Aberdeen. The first still was discovered in a back shop in East Green, it was using the water from the diverted Flour Mill burn. The shop was rented to a Mr Ross, an ex-brewer from George Street. On 1st January 1868 he was fined £30 which he could not pay and spent 3 months in jail. The second case was reported on 18 March 1868 in the Aberdeen Journal. It concerned an illicit still found at number 5, The Green, on 27 December 1867. Three men were charged - Marshall Adams (alias Peter Brown), James Allan and David Welsh. Adams had only just moved into the town from Oldmeldrum and had been unwittingly sucked into the ploy. He was fined £10; the others were fined £300.
Meanwhile the illicit trade continued in a modest way in the remote hinterland. The workers building Balmoral Castle provided a lucrative and thirsty market, as did the garrison troops at Braemar. The present Lochnagar Distillery, the next door neighbour of Balmoral, is on the site of Charles Robertson’s famous mill – and still. The original legal distillery was burned down by the smugglers in 1826. The new site across the river was opened by John Begg in 1845: he entertained Victoria and Albert in 1848 and obtained the royal Warrant. The workmen, however, went shopping elsewhere.
Whisky smuggling revived for a time during the Prohibition era in the USA
1920-1934. There were smuggling routes into the States from Canada, Cuba and the West Indies. The main route for Scotch whisky was via Nassau in the Bahamas. Cutty Sark was specially blended for the American palate in 1923. Their main agent- runner Bill McCoy guaranteed that it was neither tampered with nor adulterated - it was indeed "the real McCoy". It tapped a huge market among the Americans who were denied their usual Bourbon or Rye Whiskey. The Canadian companies of Hiram Walker and Seagram also created markets in the states at this time.
The next episode in the smuggling story came in February 1941 when the S.S. Politician was wrecked off Eriskay with 24,000 tons of spirits, mainly whisky in some 21,000 cases in its Number 5 Hold. At least 2,000 cases were looted (24,000 bottles). Compton Mackenzie captured the cunning and ingenuity of the moment in his hilarious "Whisky Galore”. It was made into an Ealing comedy in 1949. Bottles continue to be found in their shallow graves, originally marked by plants. They are collector's items - probably quite undrinkable but precious to our national traditions. The relatively unknown sequel to that story is that SS Politician also carried on board some 8 cases of currency destined for the West Indies. It consisted of 290,000 ten shilling notes. Some 2329 of these were eventually presented at banks in Scotland, England, Ireland, Switzerland, Malta, Canada, the USA and Jamaica. To this day there are still over 76,000 notes unaccounted for.
Relics of the old smuggling trade re-emerge from time to time. John Stewart, a 90 year old antique dealer tried to sell a still at Stonehaven Auction Mart – and had it seized by Customs. A couple building a house extension in Braemar, found a hidden bothy. Hillwalkers sometimes stumble across the old sites in the hills around Strathisla, or Crathie or Corgarff or Strathdon. There is even a site at Westhill that operated under the nose of Malcolm Gillespie.
Today the real smuggling story is of counterfeit whisky, some of it potentially lethal with high levels of methanol, finding its way here from Spain and Eastern Europe. It finds a market because it is tax free and therefore cheap. Politicians first taxed the barrel, then the bottle, and are now charging the unit of alcohol
.
Will Fyffe, a music hall star noted for his songs and sketches was born in Dundee but wrote “I Belong To Glasgow”. He wrote a popular song bemoaning the soaring price of whisky: In 1929 Chancellor Austen Chamberlain in his budget increased the price of a bottle of whisky by 2 shillings and 6 pence, adding 20% to the price: it prompted this music hall refrain
“It’s twelve and a tanner a bottle
That’s what its costin’ today
Twelve and a tanner a bottle -
Man it takes a’ your pleasure away.
Afore ye can hae a wee drappie
You have to spend a’ that you’ve got
How can a fella be happy
When happiness costs such a lot?”
There’s taxes on this, taxes on that,
While the people grow lean,
the officials grow fat,
You have to admit,
it's a bit underhand
Putting a tax on the breath of the land” Its twelve and a tanner the bottle, etc
It now seems like a memoir of a golden age! By World War 1, the duty on a bottle was 9p: by World War 2 the duty had soared to 48p. By 1990 the duty had reached £5.55. The Scots on holidays abroad were filling their cases with whisky to take home. Spain imported it for the Scots to take home. It defies logic.
Now where is that old recipe - and what is the name of that friendly plumber – and where can I buy decent malt?
The recipe was relatively simple. Around 3 bolls of barley (about 200 kg) in sacks were soaked in water for 3 days. Then it was spread to sprout, dried in a kiln, and milled. It was now ready for the bothy. Bothies were around 8 feet square and built alongside running water. There the barley was boiled, stirred slowly, allowed to cool and then fed into the vat where it was mixed with yeast to ferment. Then, over a slow burning fire (usually of peat), the distilling process began. The vapour passed through the coiled “worm” in a wooden jacket (flakeboard) to condense it. The water had to be kept very cold. The condensed spirit was saved in a pitcher. The first distillation was quite lethal! Most spirits were double distilled, the best were triple distilled. The leftover barley, the “draft”, was high quality cattle food, the straw from the barley crop also provided winter fodder. The leftover liquid, the “burnt wine”, was usually poured into the burn.
Two or three people usually worked the bothy. The working conditions would be very smoky and unpleasant. The whole process from malting to distillation usually took 3 to 4 weeks. As a general rule, it was women who made the whisky; the men marketed and distributed it. It would be sold within days and consumed very quickly. Modern whiskies are aged in barrels for years to smooth the rough palate of the raw spirit and add the amber hue.
Governments have always found the "sin taxes" to be easy revenue earners. Every budget to this day is centred on such taxes. In 1579, distillers were taxed in Scotland for the first time. Few of them paid, most were producing in areas outside strict Government control. In 1609 the Scottish Government tried to impose restrictions on the manufacture of spirits in Scotland. Governments have to control industries so that they can maximise the revenue intake: and Governments are always looking for more money as costs soar e.g. in 1644 the Scottish Parliament, in need of money to finance an army of Parliamentarians against King Charles 1, introduced a levy of 40p a gallon on whisky. That drove the industry underground. The stills were hidden; the precious liquid had to be smuggled around the country.
The 1707 Act of Union led to a confusion of duties, a confusion that lasted more than a century. The English had always been taxed higher than the Scots, and in the interim the 2 tax levels remained. This opened an obvious market for smuggling into England, and the market in Northern England was a particularly lucrative one. By 1820 an estimated 10,000 gallons a week were crossing the border. Already by that date at least half of the whisky consumed was of the illicit variety, duty free. In vast areas of Scotland, many people refused to drink the legalised variety, as a point of principle. When the railways opened in the 1840s there were revenue checks and searches carried out on every train south at Carlisle and Berwick. It wasn't until 1855 that the then Chancellor William Gladstone equalised the rate at 40p per proof gallon.
To make matters worse, in 1725, the London government introduced the hated Malt Tax of 3d a bushel on malted barley. When the idea had first been debated in the House of Lords in 1712, a motion to dissolve the Treaty of Union failed by only 3 votes. The Jacobites campaigned on the slogan "No Union, No Malt Tax". The farmers sidestepped the Malt Tax by selling their malt to the illegal distillers. It was a patriotic gesture, but it turned the farmers into criminals for evading the duty.The Malt Tax also affected the legalised distillers. They started producing blends of 80% raw barley spirits added to 20% malted barley. It saved them on tax but it compromised the quality of the product. The illicit stills produced pure malt whisky.
A researcher in Edinburgh in 1777 counted 8 legal distilleries and estimated 400 illegal stills in the city. The situation had come about through Government ignorance and greed. In 1736 the Distillers Tax had been raised to the extortionate £1 per gallon. Further rises came throughout the costly French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars 1792-1815. The sad fact was that the ever-increasing costs of the Excise service outweighed the actual income raised. It was a classic example of the Law of Diminishing Returns.
The illicit producers didn't see it as a crime, rather as a traditional right and an essential earner for the survival of their families and the maintenance of their lifestyle. They were only doing what their ancestors for generations had done. They regarded Duties and Excise men as forms of oppression. In their communities, smugglers were regarded as local heroes. Most of the sympathisers were also regular customers. Some of the smugglers were elevated to legendary status as tales abound of how they outwitted or out-fought the hated Gaugers. Every area has its folklore of crafty smugglers duping rather thick-headed excise men. Compton Mackenzie captured the sentiment hilariously in his "Whisky Galore".
Adam Smith, author of the "Wealth of Nations" was also privately a sympathiser. He applauded the undoubted skills involved in the manufacture by decent hard-working people in an industry of which the nation ought to have been proud. He saw the producers as otherwise. "Excellent citizens had not the laws of this country made that a crime which nature never intended to be so".
There was a human side to the story. People have to earn enough to survive. The trade was driven by poverty, just as the marijuana trade is today. Farming, especially in the Highlands, could be precarious. Productivity was generally low due to the soil, the weather, the methods and the farming equipment. At best, it was subsistence farming. Whisky could always pay the rent. In the old days of payment in kind, it was common to pay in liquid form. In the 18t h century the home-made whisky raised cash for an increasingly money-based economy. Cash could be earned in the towns which became the target markets for the smugglers.
Long before the advent of the County Police Force, Deeside and other north-east country areas were patrolled by Excise Men. Their main concern was the tax evasion by the sale of illicit whisky. The income from illegal whisky was a necessity for economic survival after Culloden. Many areas had lost most of their men and almost all of their cattle and sheep. Much of the illegal distilling took place in the upper reaches of the Dee and its surrounding glens. There was a fine balancing act between breaking the law and losing your farm. In 1773 John Stewart of Tomnalienan having lost his previous harvests to the wet weather, and having thereby fallen heavily behind with his rent, converted his latest barley harvest into whisky. The whisky was seized and the equipment confiscated, he was fined
75p (fifteen shillings) which he could not pay, so his effects were poinded in lieu of the fine. His landlord, the Duke of Gordon, ordered his factor to give John Stewart" The wherewithal for purchasing back his whisky pot".
Even Dukes needed the rent. The Fourth Duke of Gordon was a remarkable man described by Lord Kames as “the greatest subject in Britain”. He was a very enlightened landowner and improver, much loved by his tenants. He founded the model villages of Fochabers, Tomintoul and Port Gordon. His wife, “Bonnie Jean” was the main recruiter for the Gordon Highlanders (the 92n d) in 1794. The illicit trade flourished in the years of the French Wars. The tax level was ludicrous, the Excise service was over-stretched, French brandy could no longer be imported either legally or illegally, whilst Dutch gin was virtually unobtainable, and West Indian rum was very hard to get. In a sample year 1795-96 I have counted 150 cases that came to court in Aberdeen for "distilling and malting privately" involving seized values ranging from £200 to £650. In the same year, Alexander Mollison and William Mortimer were separately charged with the manufacture of illicit stills and Alexander Anderson was fined for selling malt to "private distillers". It was big business and it kept the courts busy
.
It also kept the excise men busy. They were particularly busy in Deeside and Donside and in the vast area between the Dee and Don. In 1820 there were reputed to be 200 illicit stills in Glenlivet alone. It was common practice in the area for farmers to share stills to distil their own local barley: they also shared the fines. The stills were constantly on the move from autumn through winter: the rest of the time they were carefully hidden. There was a Government scheme that gave a reward for every still uncovered by informers: the farmers were excellent informers to their own discarded clapped out gear. Government money unwittingly financed new equipment.
The Excise Men could not effectively police the heavily forested areas such as Glen Tanar that retained at least 14 stills in 1820. There were only 11 Excise Men in the county and they concentrated their efforts on the western suburbs of Aberdeen, the main market for the produce. The smugglers employed scouts to spy on the activities of the Excise Men. Although the women did the distilling, the men did the transporting, usually by pony-trains. It is estimated that 2 million gallons were illegally distilled every year and that a fifth of the whisky was produced in upper Deeside. It was transported in 20 pint kegs, known as Ankers.
Many of the north-east whisky smuggling stories involve that well known excise man Malcolm Gillespie. He was a Dunblane born ex-soldier who entered the Excise in 1799 in Prestonpans in East Lothian, supervising the salt tax. He detected a lot of fraud and earned his promotion to Revenue Officer in Collieston in 1801 to tackle the large-scale coastal smuggling of brandy and gin. He cleaned up the area before moving on to do a similar job at Stonehaven. In 1812 he moved on to take over the Third Aberdeen or Skene Ride patrolling the wide Dee-Don area to tackle the whisky smuggling from Strathdon and Glenlivet. He was brave and aggressive and was involved with many skirmishes with the smugglers all over the area from Drum to Midmar to Inverurie. Culter was the scene of many such battles. He was a larger than life character, a self-publicist who claimed to have suffered some 42 wounds in the course of his career during which he confiscated an estimated 25,000 gallons of spirits. Sadly the author of his own legend was also the author of his own downfall - he was hanged for forgery in Aberdeen on 16 December 1827. He had long lived beyond his means and had run up deep debts.
Gillespie did not always get his own way with the smugglers. Writing in the local newspapers in 1955, in a year when whisky was Britain's biggest single export dollar earner, J. A. Fraser Wood described how he searched for his roots in Glenlivet where his great, great grandfather John Stewart-Fraser of Conven Cottage owned a well-worked and highly respected still. Stuart-Fraser's main market was in Aberdeen and he conveyed it there on a hearse with a dozen paid mourners in attendance. They regularly duped Gillespie who would doff his cap as the cortege went past. In 1817 he tried to get through on horseback: as he crossed the Dee at the ford at Allenvale, Gillespie tried to arrest him, shot his horse (a typical Gillespie tactic), a sabre-fight ensued in midstream. Stuart-Fraser was slashed across the forehead but Gillespie was left for dead,and the whisky got through.
Intriguingly, some of the whisky was regularly delivered to a boat in Stonehaven. No doubt it was moved on down the coast or it may even have found itself sailing for the continent, perhaps to a niche market for the Peat-reek. The Glenlivet whisky was always the most expensive of the illicit varieties of "Golden Spirit" but there were always plenty of customers because demand regularly outstripped supply.
For most gaugers, tackling the smugglers was a no-win situation. Working in relatively unknown territory (it was policy to move them away from home), despised, offered no local help, and subject to constant abuse with the ever-present threat of physical attack, they did a rather lonely and ill-paid job.
Their two main tactics were either to find the elusive stills or seize the whisky in transit. Neither task was easy to execute. There were look-outs ready to warn of their
approach, and the stills were easily hidden. The transit routes, usually along pony- tracks in the old hill paths or through the drove roads, were used under cover of darkness and the pony-trains were well protected by stout highlanders. Stopping a convoy almost guaranteed a battle in which the excise men were usually outnumbered. It was a dangerous job.
Once the whisky got to town it was soon dispersed. The bladder men and bladder women supplied the customers. The bladders of whisky were easily concealed by the lassies under their bodices or under their skirts: many pretended to be pregnant. Once delivered to the customer, the whisky was drunk within days. The evidence didn't hang around for very long. The price in 1820 was 2p a gill or 60p a gallon.
Gillespie's money troubles grew in the 1820s simply because his seizures were rapidly drying up. The reason was that the law had changed. The 1823 Excise Act changed the rules in such a way that legal distillation was encouraged. Much of the rationale behind the Act stemmed from a plea in the House of Lords by the Fourth Duke of Gordon. He realised the importance of whisky to the Highland economy and that it could become even more important if we encouraged the skilful distillers to produce the product legally. Otherwise the losing battle against the smugglers would continue unabated. Areas where the Excise Men were successful became depopulated. Birse was one such area. It was estimated that in that year some 2 million illicit gallons were produced in the Highlands. In 1823 some 14,000 seizures were to be made, the same amount occurred over each of the next two years.
It couldn't go on like this. The 1823 Act offered a cheap annual licence of £10 plus a set payment of 12p per proof gallon for every still of 40 gallons or more. Landowners were to be held responsible for illicit stills found on their estates. This was a complete turnaround. Since the 1788 Excise Act stills of less than 100 gallon capacity had been illegal. Now the small time producer could have his licence. The tax per proof g
Captured stills were a source of income to the Excise men. They were paid for their confiscations and were rewarded a percentage of the fines. Gillespie did well until 1825: thereafter, the seizures virtually dried up. His debts were mounting. He had even taken out heavy insurances on his home - and he planned to burn it down but was arrested for fraud before he could do so.
The first smuggler to break into legality was George Smith a farmer who became manager of the Glenlivet Distillery built less than half a mile from the site of his former illicit still at Upper Drumin. It wasn't all plain sailing for him. His neighbours regarded him at first as a traitor. At the opening of the distillery he had been given a brace of pistols by the Laird of Aberlour - and he needed them to protect his property. The distillery was never left unattended; his brothers and their fellow workers were always armed with the pistols. By the end of 1824 he was producing 100 gallons a week. Three neighbouring distilleries in the Glen set up in 1825-26 were all burned down by the resentful smugglers. George was a heavily-bearded stocky 6-footer and was never challenged to fight - but a notorious smuggler called Shaw tried to kill him in his sleep. George survived; he took his pistols to bed with him.
George Smith did, however, struggle to meet the financial demands of the new
business. A lot of money has to be laid out before the customers' cash rolls in. There are a lot more overheads in legitimate business than in the smuggling sector. It was a huge learning curve. He was lucky in that he had a factor who believed in what George was doing. James Skinner had been appointed factor to the Duke of Gordon in 1824. He faced the huge problem of rent arrears. Distilling could pay off the arrears. Skinner advanced just over £231, a fortune, to keep the Glenlivet distillery afloat. By the time George Smith died in 1871, production had reached 18,000 gallons per week. Today it sells 6 million bottles per year.
The golden years of smuggling were over. It was a mixed blessing. Suppressing the smuggling is closely linked to depopulation throughout the highlands and islands. This is dramatically shown in the population decline in the Orkney Isles of Stroma, Swona and Shapinsay where whisky had long been the main cash crop. The little isolated communities couldn't survive without the income. Illicit distilling didn't disappear overnight but the product was no longer distilled to be sold. The remote stills were still used for domestic consumption among family and friends. Even as late as 1880 it was reckoned that there were around 50 illegal stills to every legal one, but the rate of prosecutions had fallen to 20 a year. The emigrant Highlanders took their skills with them to Canada, Australia and New Zealand. They also took them to the Scottish cities.
One of the difficulties of setting up a still in the towns was camouflaging the smell. In 1860 in Aberdeen there were complaints from the neighbours in James Street about the activities of John Moncrieff. It was claimed that he had been slaughtering the odd pig and was even accused of boiling down cattle hooves. On investigation, it was found that he was also producing whisky which he supplied to the local publicans. He was charged along with his wife Janet,and his labourer, Robert Davidson. They were fined £30 each, couldn't pay, and had to serve 3 months in prison.
The temptation to produce a drop of the craitur didn't go away in a hurry. Family weddings required a good drop of the real stuff, as did Hogmanay. The week prior to Hogmanay 1867 saw two seizures in Aberdeen. The first still was discovered in a back shop in East Green, it was using the water from the diverted Flour Mill burn. The shop was rented to a Mr Ross, an ex-brewer from George Street. On 1st January 1868 he was fined £30 which he could not pay and spent 3 months in jail. The second case was reported on 18 March 1868 in the Aberdeen Journal. It concerned an illicit still found at number 5, The Green, on 27 December 1867. Three men were charged - Marshall Adams (alias Peter Brown), James Allan and David Welsh. Adams had only just moved into the town from Oldmeldrum and had been unwittingly sucked into the ploy. He was fined £10; the others were fined £300.
Meanwhile the illicit trade continued in a modest way in the remote hinterland. The workers building Balmoral Castle provided a lucrative and thirsty market, as did the garrison troops at Braemar. The present Lochnagar Distillery, the next door neighbour of Balmoral, is on the site of Charles Robertson’s famous mill – and still. The original legal distillery was burned down by the smugglers in 1826. The new site across the river was opened by John Begg in 1845: he entertained Victoria and Albert in 1848 and obtained the royal Warrant. The workmen, however, went shopping elsewhere.
Whisky smuggling revived for a time during the Prohibition era in the USA
1920-1934. There were smuggling routes into the States from Canada, Cuba and the West Indies. The main route for Scotch whisky was via Nassau in the Bahamas. Cutty Sark was specially blended for the American palate in 1923. Their main agent- runner Bill McCoy guaranteed that it was neither tampered with nor adulterated - it was indeed "the real McCoy". It tapped a huge market among the Americans who were denied their usual Bourbon or Rye Whiskey. The Canadian companies of Hiram Walker and Seagram also created markets in the states at this time.
The next episode in the smuggling story came in February 1941 when the S.S. Politician was wrecked off Eriskay with 24,000 tons of spirits, mainly whisky in some 21,000 cases in its Number 5 Hold. At least 2,000 cases were looted (24,000 bottles). Compton Mackenzie captured the cunning and ingenuity of the moment in his hilarious "Whisky Galore”. It was made into an Ealing comedy in 1949. Bottles continue to be found in their shallow graves, originally marked by plants. They are collector's items - probably quite undrinkable but precious to our national traditions. The relatively unknown sequel to that story is that SS Politician also carried on board some 8 cases of currency destined for the West Indies. It consisted of 290,000 ten shilling notes. Some 2329 of these were eventually presented at banks in Scotland, England, Ireland, Switzerland, Malta, Canada, the USA and Jamaica. To this day there are still over 76,000 notes unaccounted for.
Relics of the old smuggling trade re-emerge from time to time. John Stewart, a 90 year old antique dealer tried to sell a still at Stonehaven Auction Mart – and had it seized by Customs. A couple building a house extension in Braemar, found a hidden bothy. Hillwalkers sometimes stumble across the old sites in the hills around Strathisla, or Crathie or Corgarff or Strathdon. There is even a site at Westhill that operated under the nose of Malcolm Gillespie.
Today the real smuggling story is of counterfeit whisky, some of it potentially lethal with high levels of methanol, finding its way here from Spain and Eastern Europe. It finds a market because it is tax free and therefore cheap. Politicians first taxed the barrel, then the bottle, and are now charging the unit of alcohol
.
Will Fyffe, a music hall star noted for his songs and sketches was born in Dundee but wrote “I Belong To Glasgow”. He wrote a popular song bemoaning the soaring price of whisky: In 1929 Chancellor Austen Chamberlain in his budget increased the price of a bottle of whisky by 2 shillings and 6 pence, adding 20% to the price: it prompted this music hall refrain
“It’s twelve and a tanner a bottle
That’s what its costin’ today
Twelve and a tanner a bottle -
Man it takes a’ your pleasure away.
Afore ye can hae a wee drappie
You have to spend a’ that you’ve got
How can a fella be happy
When happiness costs such a lot?”
There’s taxes on this, taxes on that,
While the people grow lean,
the officials grow fat,
You have to admit,
it's a bit underhand
Putting a tax on the breath of the land” Its twelve and a tanner the bottle, etc
It now seems like a memoir of a golden age! By World War 1, the duty on a bottle was 9p: by World War 2 the duty had soared to 48p. By 1990 the duty had reached £5.55. The Scots on holidays abroad were filling their cases with whisky to take home. Spain imported it for the Scots to take home. It defies logic.
Now where is that old recipe - and what is the name of that friendly plumber – and where can I buy decent malt?