Isaac Gulliver (c.1745–1822) was the most successful smuggler of the Dorset coast, styled the 'King of the Smugglers' yet remembered in local tradition as the gentle smuggler who never killed a man. At his height he controlled the shore from Lymington in Hampshire through Dorset to the edge of Devon, running a fleet of luggers laden with gin, brandy, tea, silk and lace from the Continent into Poole Bay.
The story
His gang of forty or fifty men wore a kind of livery — smocks and powdered hair — which earned them the nickname the 'White Wigs'. The most famous tale told of him is that, with the revenue men closing in, Gulliver faked his own death, lying in an open coffin with his face powdered white so that the excise officers, filing past to confirm the body, went away believing the smuggler king was gone.
Gulliver was never hanged. He used his vast wealth to buy estates and farms, turned respectable banker and citizen, and died peacefully at Wimborne in 1822 leaving a fortune of some sixty thousand pounds. He lies buried at St Andrew's, Kinson, where the church tower is said to bear the marks of ropes used to haul contraband.