Who e’er thou art, if here by Wisdom led To view the silent mansions of the Dead And search for truth from life’s last mournful page Where Malice lives not, nor where Slanders rage, Read on. No Bombast swells these friendly lines; Here truth unhonour’d & unvarnish’d shines. Where o’er yon sod an envious nettle creeps, From care escap’d an honest Gunner sleeps. As on he travell’d to life’s sorrowing end, Distress for ever claim’d him as a friend; Orphan & Widow were alike his care; He gave with pleasure all he had to spare. His match now burnt, expended all his priming, He left the world, and us, without e’er whining, Deep in the earth his Carcase is entomb’d, Which Love & Grog for him had honeycomb’d. Jesting apart, Retir’d from winds & Weather, Virtue & WORTH are laid asleep together.”
Leaving this memorial to the charitable and love-worn Worth and his grog-blossoms, we trace the road towards Eastchurch. Along to the left, folded between the hills and sheltered from the winds, are vales where elms and beeches thrive luxuriantly. Such a spot is the ravine of Scrapsgate, very like the “chines” of the Isle of Wight, a charming spot in spring, where one may always be sure of finding violets, primroses, and bluebells in their season.
Scrapsgate was the scene of a mysterious tragedy many years ago. It has long since been forgotten, and the only reminder of it now to be found is a weather-worn tombstone in the obscure churchyard of the workhouse at Minster, with the following inscription:
“O, earth cover not my blood! Sacred to the memory of a man unknown, who was found murdered on the morning of the 22nd April 1814 near Scraps Gate in this parish, by his Head being nearly severed from his body A subscription was immediately entered into and one hundred guineas reward offered on conviction of the perpetrators of the horrible act, but they remain at present undiscovered.”
The perpetrators were never discovered. “Mysterious” I have described this affair, but it was pretty widely understood at the time that the stranger had met his fate at the hands of the smugglers who then found Scrapsgate a convenient spot for their shy trade. His identity and occupation alike remained unestablished, but the supposition was then current that he was either a member of a smuggling band who had turned informer and had been discovered in his treachery, or that he was one of the revenue officers. The ferocity of the smugglers who infested the coasts of Kent stuck at nothing, and this was by no means an exceptional outrage, as the history of their desperate doings sufficiently proves.