National Museums Liverpool Blog - seized - revenue and customs uncovered

A ship's crew is inspected for disease. Image courtesy Liverpool Daily Post and Echo.

I admit to being wary of catching infections and take the precaution of washing my hands whenever possible. Other useful safeguards are adding disinfectant to the bath water and gargling with mouthwash. It was impressed on me at a very early age the awful things you can catch – especially when travelling. I caught TB as a child but threw it off – a natural immunity, I was told later.

Passengers and crews of ships have always feared outbreaks of contagious diseases that could sweep through vessels like wildfire, affecting everybody’s safety and wellbeing. The words typhus, cholera, yellow fever, smallpox and plague were enough to chill the bones of the most seasoned traveller.

It was the same on shore when epidemics swept through crowded poorly-housed communities, killing old and young alike. But on land you could at least get away to somewhere healthy – not an option on a crowded ship where there was no escape.

There is still the ever-present threat of contagions being brought into Britain. Cargoes which might carry disease are handed over to Government officials. They may be placed in isolation or quarantine for further investigation.

Historically, Customs officers played a vital role in preventing the spread of contagious diseases. This is illustrated in a display in the exciting new exhibition, Seized: Revenue and Customs Uncovered at Merseyside Maritime Museum. A photo shows a ship’s crew members being inspected by Liverpool’s medical officer around 1925 (pictured).

A painting called A Revenue Cutter on the Clyde by Robert Salmon (1826) depicts the cutter approaching a newly-arrived vessel to check for diseases. The cutter flies a signal flag from the mast which asks: “Are you healthy?”

In the 19th century the arrival of migrants in the UK brought the danger of contagious diseases. A ship’s master was required by Customs officers to swear on the Bible as to the condition of his ship. If it was healthy, he would be issued with a certificate and cleared to enter port.

A photo shows a young smallpox sufferer covered with pustules, particularly on her face, hands and arms. Smallpox was a scourge which killed and disfigured countless people over the ages - in the 20th century alone up to 500 million died from it.

There have been more than 100 disease outbreaks associated with ships since 1970, according to the World Health Organisation. Today the main infections associated with ships are gastrointestinal and Legionnaires’ diseases.

A new Maritime Tale by Stephen Guy appears every Saturday in the Liverpool Echo. A paperback – Mersey Maritime Tales (£3.99) – is available from the museum, newsagents, bookshops or from the Mersey Shop website (£1.50 p&p UK).

The Hawkhurst Gang. The text beneath the image reads: Galley and Chater falling off their Horse at Woodash, draggs thier Heads on the Ground, while the Horse kicks them as he goes; the Smugglers still continuing thier brutish usage.

When I was at primary school in the 1950s we used to enjoy singing the popular Smugglers’ Song with words by Rudyard Kipling:

Five and twenty ponies
Trotting through the dark –
Brandy for the Parson,
Tobacco for the Clerk:
Laces for a lady; letters for a spy,
And watch the wall my darling, while the Gentlemen go by!

Running round the woodpile if you chance to find
Little barrels, roped and tarred, all full of brandy wine;
Don’t you shout to come and look, nor take them for your play;
Put the brushwood back again – and they’ll be gone next day!

It is a song that races along but embraces a popular myth masking the brutal reality behind smuggling. It is true that gangs of smugglers operated right along the coast with whole communities involved.

However, sickening violence could be used by smugglers driven by greed, poverty and lack of employment. Customs men often assisted by soldiers, used counter-measures which were both brutal and harsh, including the death penalty.

It was not until the 1840s with the introduction of free trade and the reduction of excise duties that smuggling was reduced.

The Hawkhurst Gang of Sussex smugglers was notoriously violent in the era of highwaymen and pirates. In 1748 gang member Daniel Chater was arrested by Customs officer William Galley and turned informer.

When both men were captured by other members of the gang Galley was beaten, tied to his horse and had his nose cut off. Chater was hung down a well and stoned to death.

The stark reality of the lives of smugglers past and present is revealed in the new Merseyside Maritime Museum gallery Seized: Revenue & Customs Uncovered.

On display in Seized is a contemporary print showing the two men hung upside down while they are whipped by gang members. Another shows Chater being thrust down the well.

In 1785 it was discovered that most of the fishing fleet in Deal, Kent, was involved in smuggling. The fishermen were desperate to earn a living. Every vessel was burnt to ashes on the orders of the Prime Minister William Pitt, who was just 26.

Exhibits include weapons used by smugglers and Customs officers – a blunderbuss, musket, pistols, swords and cutlasses. You can see some of them here.

A smugglers’ lantern has a spout which directed a beam of light to avoid detection. A sinking stone was used to secure smuggled casks to the seabed while a grappling hook was used by smugglers to retrieve their contraband. 

A new Maritime Tale by Stephen Guy appears every Saturday in the Liverpool Echo. A paperback – Mersey Maritime Tales (£3.99) – is available from the museum, newsagents, bookshops or from the Mersey Shop website (£1.50 p&p UK).

Across the National Museums Liverpool website, we have loads of great games, e-cards, online-only exhibitions, videos, interactives and podcasts for you to enjoy. And we've just launched our new VIP Zone as a hub for all these cool features that really bring our collections and exhibitions to life.

You can watch a video of a Pharaoh talking about life in ancient Egypt or download a talk by curator Pauline Rushton and photographer Francesco Mellina about our Sound and Vision exhibition - photographs of Liverpool music and fashion from 1978-82.

This multi-media stuff gives people from around the world the chance to get a better experience of what we have in our venues, even if they can't come along in real life.

You can also find all our social networking sites in the VIP Zone. So if you want to follow the new Museum of Liverpool on Twitter or join the Walker Facebook group then you can find links to our social sites there too.

Here's one of the latest videos we've put online featuring George Holt, the former owner of Sudley House, in the dining room. He talks about dinner parties, his plans for improving the city of Liverpool and describes some of the paintings in the room.

We've just published a cute little pocket guide to many of the fab happenings at NML in 2008. It's good to revisit highlights like Ben Johnson's residency, the Superlambananas, the opening of Seized! and exhibitions like Art In The Age of Steam and The Beat Goes On.

You can download your copy of The Little Book of Big Highlights here (pdf 6mb).

It’s World Toilet Day.  There’s no polite way of introducing it – you’ve just got to say it. You have to wonder who thinks these things up, but then there is a serious and worthy message about the state of the world’s sanitation to be gleaned.

Actually, museums and art galleries have formed a healthy relationship with the toilet that goes back beyond Duchamp’s ‘Fountain’ or urinal.  What self-respecting museum would be caught out without the humble (or in some cases the ridiculously ornate) chamber pot? You can see one that was designed for Napoleon, no less, in the Walker’s Craft & Design Gallery.

A quick internet search will reveal more toilet-related museums and collections than you imagine, including the Flushed With Pride gallery at Gladstone Pottery Museum  I love this female chamber pot or ‘Bourdalon’ at the Science Museum. Replica ‘pee’-pots (I’ve sanitised the phrase for blogging purposes) are still very much in demand in the historical re-enactment community. They are incredibly handy for using under inaccessible kirtles and petticoats (as well as in tents).  

In addition to the bog standard collection of chamber pots, National Museums Liverpool has got some top notch toilet exhibits. At the Seized! gallery at Maritime Museum you can see a ‘Special Isolation Unit’ or frost chamber which was used to locate internally smuggled drugs once they passed through the body. According to our web page, ‘Before its invention customs officers used rubber gloves and a colander, so this was seen as a much-needed replacement!’  Yak.

This tuneful toilet was used during an RLPO concert as an April Fool

If lavatories are your idea of a laugh then look no further than The Walker’s truly spectacular Loophonium, which was designed and played by Fritz Spiegl, The Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra’s former principal flautist. I’ve heard of toilet humour, but that is just ridiculous. 

Believe it or not we actually have a Loophonium e-card. I can’t think of many occasions when it would be appropriate to send it (although I can think of a few people who would fit the bill) so we may as well make the most of World Toilet Day.

But if you really want to celebrate World Toilet Day in style then how about downloading our podcast, and listening to it ...  on the loo?

Workshop leader Ildi Szabo wearing one of her amazing woolly creations, with museum demonstrator Pam Hale

I went to a great knitting workshop at Merseyside Maritime Museum at lunchtime. It was organised by the Seized learning team who normally hold events looking at how smugglers try to get firearms, drugs and other illegal substances through customs - and how customs officers stop them. Apparently wool also used to be smuggled out of the country centuries ago - I never knew that I had been knitting with such a precious material before!

As a fledgling knitter I had great fun learning some new techniques and making a few mini projects. If you want to have a go then the good news is that Ildi will be back at the Maritime Museum on Sunday afternoon with some fun things for knitters of all ages and abilities to make in the 'Where there's a wool there's a way' workshop. Have a look at the Seized! events page for further details.

Strange things are afoot in the basement of Merseyside Maritime Museum, where a brand new permanent gallery 'Seized! Revenue and Customs uncovered' opens this weekend.

The gallery reveals the mysterious world of smuggling and surveilance that's all in a day's work for Customs Officers, with help from unusual exhibits including exotic birds, dangerous weapons and a highly suspicious garden gnome.

To celebrate the opening a busy weekend of events is planned, including displays by sniffer dogs and hopefully a visit by a Customs cutter - as long as it isn't called away for an official operation.

Also in the basement, the newly refurbished Emigration gallery reopens this weekend.

Poster accession number RD00042.0012

The Easter holidays start this weekend, and as you'd expect, we've got lots of free activities at our venues to keep the kids entertained while they're off school.

In the spirit of the season, the National Conservation Centre are holding five Easter craft afternoons from Wed 4 April, which include card making and egg painting. You could also take part in an Easter rummage at the Customs and Excise Museum over the next 3 Sundays. Please check the What's On listings for the times of each session.

It's a busy time so if you are travelling into town, this poster from the Museum of Liverpool collections has some good advice, which still rings true sixty years after it was printed. The poster is number 13 in a series produced by Liverpool Corporation Passenger Transport in the late 1940s, aimed at passengers to help reduce queues and peak time travel for workers.

'An Idyll' by Maurice Greiffenhagen

If you haven't been in outer space you've probably noticed that Valentine's Day is fast approaching. Wherever you turn in the shops you see hearts, cupids, chocolates and completely pointless fluffy pink things that men everywhere will buy in a panic minutes before closing time on 13 February.

Being a big soppy romantic myself (well maybe not, but I have my moments) I thought it'd be nice to gather together the most loved-up objects from our collections for a romantic online exhibition. So I asked the curators for ideas and what did they suggest? An obscene novel, a tale of bigamy, a pair of boots a painting of a tiff and nasty disease carrying bugs responsible for killing and maiming people in Central America, amongst other things. Hmmm. This could take years of therapy to sort out.

I guess it's good to cater for the hardened cynics at this time of year, as their needs are so often neglected. Fret not though, we've also got some proper romance, including An Idyll, the painting that visualised the word passion, according to the author DH Lawrence.

An improved range of Valentine e-cards has also been launched on the website today, including John and Yoko's 'All You Need Is Love' bedspread from their Montreal bed-in for peace, as a treat for Beatles fans out there. And don't forget, if you're stuck for an original present there's still time to adopt an ant for your Val-ant-ine.

Print of Robert Burns from the Customs and Excise Museum collection, accession number CENM1996.928

Here's a bit of trivia to impress your whisky drinking chums with when you're out celebrating Burns night this evening. If you ask most people for 3 facts about Robert Burns, they would probably tell you that he was Scottish, he was a poet and he has a night held in his honour every year to celebrate his birthday. But did you know that he worked as an Excise Officer?

In 1789 Burns was appointed Excise Officer in Dumfries. His job was to gauge the vessels used by brewers and other traders in the manufacture of liquors on which Excise duty was charged and to charge the duty on the liquors when manufactured. A very conscientious officer, Burns was selected for promotion to supervisor, the official in charge of an excise district, but unfortunately died before he could take up his post.

His way with words didn't appear to rub off on those around him, as his confidential character assessment from 1792 simply states "The Poet. Does pretty well".

If you'd like to know more about Scotland's national bard have a look at the Burns Night feature on the BBC website. Or to find out how modern day customs officers are still 'doing pretty well' at protecting our ports and airports, you could pay a visit to the Customs and Excise Museum.

Detail of a Master's Declaration, announcing Shackleton's last expedition in 1921

Today is the anniversary of the day that polar explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton found the magnetic south pole in 1909. You'd think that after returning from an adventure like that he'd just want to stay at home with a warm mug of cocoa, or tick off the 'visit south pole' box on his travel wish list and start planning a cruise round the Caribbean to thaw out. He obviously wasn't the sunbathing type though, as he led several more expeditions to the Antarctic after this.

One of the prized documents in the collection of the Customs and Excise Museum is a Master's Declaration that announces the outward journey of his ill-fated last expedition in 1921. Sadly, Ernest Shackleton did not reach the Antarctic on that occasion as he died of a heart attack on South Georgia Island in January 1922.

Another famous explorer who has been in the news lately is Captain Robert Scott, whose moving last letters to his family will go on display at the Scott Polar Research Institute Museum in Cambridge tomorrow. The Customs and Excise Museum also have a letter from Captain Scott in the collections, that he wrote to request exemption from tax for the ship Terra Nova for an expedition in 1910. Nowhere near as poignant as the incredible letters to his loved ones, but still an interesting side of polar exploration that you wouldn't normally see.

Detail of a botanical print of frankincense

It's cold outside, so the latest online exhibition to grace the National Museums Liverpool website is on the theme of winter weather.

As always the online exhibition draws on items from different venues, many of which are not usually on public display. This time we've got exhibits and animals from some of the coldest places on the planet, plants traditionally associated with Christmas and the perfect teapots to make a warming cuppa on a cold day, to name just a few.

So if you've ever wondered exactly how Inuit women keep warm in temperatures of -40°C, what frankincense and myrrh actually look like, or what type of bird would make a good novelty tureen to serve a nice warming stew out of - and I'm sure that last question in particular has kept many people awake at night - then we have the answers you seek. 

Beatles Russian nesting dolls in Sgt Pepper outfits

This weekend thousands of Beatles fans will make a pilgrimage to Liverpool for the International Beatles Week and Mathew Street Festival. Some may find their way to the Walker Art Gallery to see Stuart Sutcliffe's Hamburg Painting No 2.  

You might not know this but there are lots of other Beatles related objects in National Museums Liverpool's collections, which are not currently on display at any of our venues. So for the first time the highlights, including items from the collections of the Customs and Excise Museum and the Museum of Liverpool, have been brought together for an online Beatles exhibition.

To get yourself in the mood for the 'Fab Four' festivities this weekend you can also try our Beatles Games and find out which Beatle you are. In case you were wondering, I'm George.

Today I encountered two very different sniffer dogs at the Customs and Excise Museum.

Two of our roleplayers, dressed as the larger-than-life characters Smugglebuster the customs officer and Sniffer the dog, were greeting visitors to the museum.

Outside I met the real deal - customs officer Claire Dewhirst with her sniffer dog, who were at the museum today doing demonstrations for the public.

If you missed today's demonstrations then you have another chance to see a real sniffer dog at the museum next Thursday.

Smugglebuster and Sniffer will also be back at the museum soon. For full details of all the events and activities taking place over the next few weeks have a look at the What's On listings.

I expect I'm not the only woman who's counting the hours until Colin Farrell and Jamie Foxx return to the big screen in Miami Vice. The film, like the 1980s TV series before it, follows two undercover cops on the trail of arms and drug traffickers.

Dancing coke can from the museum collections

If you can't wait to see the film you could always pop along to the Customs and Excise Museum in the Albert Dock to see the real stories of how customs officers in this country protect society from smuggling.

We might not have any Hollywood superstars, but we do have dancing coke cans and a very unusual toilet...

This year, as you probably already know, is the Chinese Year of the Dog. There are lots of canine related items in our collections, some of which can be seen in an online exhibition of dogs.

This summer however the Customs and Excise Museum have gone one better, with real live sniffer dogs visiting every Thursday afternoon, from today until 31 August.

The dogs and their handlers will be giving special demonstrations of how they sniff out contraband goods in our ports and airports.