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This handbook describes the Scottish Customs & Excise records available at the national and local archive offices and at Greenock custom house. Several examples from the Strathclyde region are used to illustrate the different types of information that can be obtained from these records. Over 130 ships registered at Greenock in 1786 are traced through the subsequent shipping registers and the custom house letter-books of Greenock and other outports. Additional examples from these records are found in Strathclyde's Smuggling Story and The Smugglers of Kyle.

1992
ISBN 978 1 897725 01 6
A4 64pp paperback
£5.95

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This is not another guide to genealogical sources. Instead it concentrates on one particular type of record - the Scottish Custom House Letter-books - showing the wealth of family history information that can be obtained from this source. The information provides details of the lifestyles not only of the revenue men and smugglers but also of the local community - the merchants, farmers, fishermen, mariners, constables, widows and children of officers and seamen - in fact anyone who for one reason or another came into contact with the customs officers. All the examples are from the Dumfries & Galloway records. This is a sequel to Scottish Customs & Excise Records and additional information is available in Dumfries & Galloway's Smuggling Story.

1993
ISBN 978 1 897725 04 7
A4 92pp paperback
£10.00

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This book describes the history of smuggling in the Strathclyde region, based on information available from the custom house letter-books and the correspondence of both local merchants and their suppliers on the Isle of Man, including George Moore. It traces the types of goods smuggled, from their countries of origin to the consumer, and explains the fluctuating popularity of different goods. Descriptions are given of the people involved, both smugglers and preventive men, in the various parts of the region.

1992
ISBN 978 1 897725 02 3
A5 144pp paperback
£6.95

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See also The Smugglers of Kyle: An A to Z in the Dundonald Series & The Smuggling Trade Revisited in the Manx Series.

Dumfries and Galloway's smuggling story is told through extracts from the custom house letter-books for the local outports and from the correspondence of a Manx merchant who supplied his customers with tea, brandy, rum and wine. Events are told from the viewpoint of several different participants - the smugglers, witnesses to their activities and the preventive men who spent their time trying, mainly unsuccessfully, to halt the flow of contraband both into the area and form there across the Border into England.

1993
ISBN 978 1 897725 03 0
A5 144pp paperback
Out of Print

See also The Smuggling Trade Revisited in the Manx Series.

This book, covering the area from Montrose in the north to Dunbar in the south: the Firths of Tay and Forth, shows that there was a very active smuggling trade on the east coast of Scotland. The custom house letter-books surviving for ten of the outports in the area are used as a basis for the story to which are added extracts from the autobiographies of a seventeenth century customs officer and an eighteenth century smuggler, and from merchant letter-books. Local smuggling events are illustrated by contemporary maps.

1993
ISBN 978 1 897725 06 1
A5 212pp paperback
£7.95

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See also Dumfries & Galloway

Last in the series of Scottish smuggling stories, this book covers the area from Oban in the west to Montrose in the east, including the major Islands. Based on the contemporary eighteenth century records, including custom house letter-books for the outports and correspondence to or from 'smuggling' merchants in Kirkwall, Thurso, Wick and Inverness, the smuggling story is told once again from a 'They Saw It Happen' viewpoint. A diorama at the new (in 1995) HM Customs & Excise National Museum in Liverpool uses a story from the chapter on The Smugglers so helping to bring to life this exciting smuggling story. Pointers are given for other researchers interested in continuing the smuggling history of the area into the nineteenth century.

1995
ISBN 978 1 897725 05 4
A5 212pp paperback
£7.95

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