The scale of tea smuggling in England in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries reached incredible proportions, almost equalling the country's official imports of tea, some 11,000 tonnes a year

The scale of tea smuggling in England in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries reached incredible proportions, almost equalling the country's official imports of tea, some 11,000 tonnes a year. From the early 1700s demand for tea grew without pause. So did the customs duties.

The upshot was that by the early nineteenth century a sailor of the East India Company might find himself kitted out from head to foot with hidden packets of tea.

In the 1820s the chief ways of carrying contraband tea on one's person were a little bag concealed beneath the hat, a pallet strapped to the back under the coat, a belt for the small of the back, and packets on the insides of the thighs. In this way a single sailor carried almost 14 kg of the costly commodity.