Illicit Stills and Smugglers: Scotland's Hidden Whisky Before 1823

Scotland's illicit whisky trade was not simply the work of isolated outlaws: smaller farming families were deeply involved, and some depended on it to meet their rents.[6] Before the Excise Act of 1823, the boundary between legal and illegal distilling shaped livelihoods across whole communities, leaving traces in parliamentary testimony, excise records and surviving ruins.[2][4][8][12]

Why illicit stills spread across Scotland

The Scotch Whisky Association dates the first taxes on Scotch to 1644 and describes smuggling as standard practice for the following 150 years. Its account places the excisemen, commonly called gaugers, opposite a trade that had become thoroughly embedded in Scottish life.[1]

Tax was only part of the difficulty. The Scottish Archaeological Research Framework identifies grain costs, a small market and minimum production requirements as obstacles that made legal operation impossible for most Highland distillers before 1786.[7] The distinction matters: illicit production was not merely a preference for avoiding duty when an equally workable legal business stood beside it.

The Cabrach offers a particularly clear example. Archaeologists Darroch Bratt and Peter Bye-Jensen describe it as a prolific centre of illicit distillation and smuggling from the 1780s to the 1820s. Their research places smaller farming families at the centre of a practice they describe as endemic in the Highlands and Islands until about 1823.[6]

That connection between farming and distilling changes how the surviving evidence reads. A still was not necessarily the equipment of someone living beyond ordinary society; it could belong within the working life of a household whose obligations continued regardless of whether its whisky was legal.[6]

Families, landlords and the untaxed trade

In testimony from 1823, James Gordon put the relationship bluntly: “the tenantry who do not smuggle do not pay their rents at present”. Bratt and Bye-Jensen also record landlords increasing rents to as much as three times their previous levels.[6] Together, these accounts show why enforcement could reach far beyond an individual distiller.

Verdict: Documented

What the record shows: Gordon gave this testimony in 1823, as reported by Bratt and Bye-Jensen.

Evidence gap: The testimony does not establish how many tenants depended on smuggling.

Earliest known source: Gordon's 1823 testimony, cited in Bratt and Bye-Jensen's research, 2023.

Last checked: 5 November 2026.

Later parliamentary recollections describe communities closely connected with the trade. In March 1832, Mr Cumming Bruce told the Commons that, before 1823, the hill country had been overrun with smugglers and scarcely a family was unconnected with them.[4] This is testimony about the trade's reach, rather than a household census.

Horatio Ross estimated that illicit distilling had been the chief occupation of nine out of ten Highland peasants.[4]

Verdict: Disputed

What the record shows: Ross made the estimate in Parliament.

Evidence gap: No count was opened to test the proportion.

Earliest known source: Ross's speech in the Commons, 30 March 1832. Hansard

Last checked: 5 November 2026.

Ross also said illicit distilling occurred “not merely in the Highlands, but in the Lowlands also”.[4] The Highland emphasis in many accounts should therefore not become a geographical boundary around the practice. Scotland's hidden whisky was wider than its best remembered setting.

Ferintosh: a legal exception to the tax story

Not all untaxed whisky was illicit. According to the North of Scotland Archaeological Society, Duncan Forbes of Culloden secured duty-free distilling on his Ferintosh estate on the Black Isle in 1690, following services to the Crown after the estate was sacked by Jacobites in 1689.[10]

Neighbouring landowners objected to the advantage as early as 1690. The society's history also records the eventual withdrawal of the privilege following objections from other distillers.[10] Ferintosh therefore complicates any simple division between respectable taxpayers and illegal producers: exemption itself could create a contested advantage.

Burns supplied the enduring literary response in “Scotch Drink”: “Thee, Ferintosh! O sadly lost! / Scotland lament frae coast to coast!” In the same poem he attacked the Excise for making whisky stills its prize.[9]

Verdict: Documented

What the record shows: The poem laments Ferintosh and attacks the Excise.

Evidence gap: The poem is not a neutral finding about the fairness of enforcement.

Earliest known source: “Scotch Drink”, dated 1786 in the Project Gutenberg edition.

Last checked: 5 November 2026.

Read the Ferintosh privilege and Burns's lament for the separate history of that exemption. Here its significance is the distinction it exposes: before 1823, untaxed did not always mean unlawful.

What the surviving records actually show

The most useful evidence often has less drama than the familiar smuggling tale. An excise minute can establish a seizure; a parliamentary speech establishes what a member said; an archaeological designation identifies remains and explains their interpretation. Those sources answer different questions and should not be made interchangeable.[4][8][12]

Story box: A still seized on the farm of Lee

Physical remains supply another kind of evidence. At Newe's Craig in Strathdon, Historic Environment Scotland schedules a small sunken hut interpreted as an illicit still site dating to the eighteenth or early nineteenth century.[12] The word “interpreted” matters: the designation records an archaeological assessment, not a witnessed episode of distilling.

For the methods used to recognise and assess such places, continue to what archaeology reveals about lost stills. A surviving structure and a written seizure record illuminate different parts of the same history.

From small legal stills to the 1823 settlement

Parliamentary debate shows that encouraging legal production was already a concern before 1823. In July 1820, Mr Kennedy recalled legislation encouraging small legal distilleries, passed four or five years earlier, which he said had produced beneficial effects. Lord A. Hamilton nevertheless reported that small stills encouraged to counter illicit distillation had stopped working.[5]

The problem was not simply whether legal stills were permitted. In an 1832 retrospective debate, Sir George Clerk linked a substantial increase in malt duty in 1819 with more illicit distilling in 1819, 1820 and 1821. Mr Baring argued that the smuggler could displace the legal distiller because he paid duty on neither malt nor spirit.[3]

The following chronology separates contemporary testimony from later summaries:

Bratt and Bye-Jensen describe the 1823 settlement as introducing a single flat rate for licensing stills. The SWA emphasises reduced opportunities for evading tax.[2][6] The change addressed the relationship between licensed production and illicit competition, rather than merely adding another account of seizures to the record.

What changed after 1823?

Convictions provide evidence of change, although they are not a direct measurement of every still in operation. In February 1832, Mr Gillon told the Commons that one small island had recorded 300 convictions against illicit distilleries in 1821, compared with only three in the year before the debate.[3]

Verdict: Documented

What the record shows: Gillon gave the figures to Parliament.

Evidence gap: The figures are not an independently checked national series, and the island's identity is not reliably established.

Earliest known source: Gillon's speech in the Commons, 17 February 1832. Hansard

Last checked: 5 November 2026.

In a separate debate, Sir George Murray reported that Perthshire's annual Excise convictions had fallen from 200 to 400 before 1824 to eighteen by 1830.[4]

Decline did not mean an immediate end. A newspaper account drawing on a Highland Archive Centre record describes Donald Cameron being jailed in Inverness on 25 September 1827, accused of assaulting excise officers at Tomich, Kiltarlity. The reported confrontation involved about thirty armed men who stoned the officers.[13]

Verdict: Documented

What the record shows: The newspaper reports the incident and Cameron's committal from a court record.

Evidence gap: The account describes an accusation, not a conviction for assault.

Earliest known source: A Highland Archive Centre court record from 1827, reported by Andrew Dixon in the Inverness Courier, 24 May 2020.

Last checked: 5 November 2026.

In 1832, Mr Dixon still told Parliament that smuggling continued extensively in large Scottish districts.[3]

Common mistakes about Scotland's smugglers

The first mistake is treating smugglers as a separate population outside farming society. The evidence about smaller farming families and rent obligations instead places illicit distilling within community life.[6] That helps explain the breadth of involvement described in parliamentary recollections.[4]

The second is assuming illicit spirit was necessarily dismissed as inferior. Elizabeth Grant's memoir recalls the royal household seeking “pure Glenlivet”, which she called “the true contraband”.[11] That records a particular reputation and demand, not a tasting judgement applicable to every illicit still. The related royal visit belongs in the illicit Glenlivet whisky story.

The third is making 1823 an overnight ending. Falling convictions, the Tomich confrontation and parliamentary complaints of continued smuggling show a transition extending beyond the Act.[3][4][13] Scotland's hidden whisky did not disappear on a single date.

Sources

1. Scotch Whisky Association. Story of Scotch. Undated web edition, checked November 2026. https://www.scotch-whisky.org.uk/discover-scotch/story-of-scotch/
2. Scotch Whisky Association. What was the 1823 Excise Act? Undated web edition, checked November 2026. https://www.scotch-whisky.org.uk/discover-scotch/story-of-scotch/the-1823-excise-act/
3. UK Parliament, historic Hansard. Drawback on Malt. HC Deb, 17 February 1832, volume 10, columns 510 to 525. https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1832/feb/17/drawback-on-malt
4. UK Parliament, historic Hansard. Malt Drawback. HC Deb, 30 March 1832, volume 11, columns 1095 to 1112. https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1832/mar/30/malt-drawback
5. UK Parliament, historic Hansard. Scots Malt Duty. HC Deb, 5 July 1820, volume 2, columns 218 to 221. https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1820/jul/05/scots-malt-duty
6. Darroch D. M. Bratt and Peter Bye-Jensen. A Quick Buck: An Early Licensed Whisky Distillery at Blackmiddens Farm in the Cabrach. Internet Archaeology 61, 2023. https://www.intarch.ac.uk/journal/issue61/3/full-text.html
7. Scottish Archaeological Research Framework, Highland Historic Environment Research Framework. 10.5.7 Brewing and Distilling. Undated web edition, checked November 2026. https://scarf.scot/regional/higharf/post-medieval/10-5-craft-and-industry/10-5-7-brewing-and-distilling/
8. National Records of Scotland, ScotlandsPeople. Scottish handwriting poser 292a. Scottish Excise Board minute, 1815, CE2/30, page 48; online transcription. https://www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk/scottish-handwriting/posers/292a
9. Robert Burns. Poems and Songs of Robert Burns. Project Gutenberg ebook 1279, electronic edition supplied in the fact sheet, checked November 2026. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1279
10. North of Scotland Archaeological Society. Visit Mulchaich Distillery. Undated web edition, checked November 2026. https://www.nosas.co.uk/visitmulchaichdistillery
11. Elizabeth Grant of Rothiemurchus. Memoirs of a Highland Lady. Edited by Lady Strachey, John Murray, 1898, digitised edition. https://archive.org/details/memoirsofhighlan00graniala
12. Historic Environment Scotland. Newe's Craig, still 3950m NE of Morven Lodge. Scheduled monument designation SM11469, online record checked November 2026. https://portal.historicenvironment.scot/designation/SM11469
13. Andrew Dixon, Inverness Courier. From the archives: fascinating stories in court records. 24 May 2020. https://inverness-courier.co.uk/news/from-the-archives-fascinating-stories-in-court-records-200628

This desk-researched article uses the site's verified fact sheet, distinguishing archival records, parliamentary testimony, archaeological interpretation and later historical accounts.

Last checked: November 2026