The Charleston Gunpowder Plot of 1731, Part 1

Every successful thief (and screenwriter) knows that a daring robbery requires a powerful and well-coordinated distraction. That criminal axiom was evident in Charleston during the spring of 1731, when a gang of house-breakers allegedly planned to blow up the town’s brick magazine used for the storage of gunpowder. Authorities foiled the audacious plot, which might have destroyed the town, by arresting and incarcerating the villains, but deficiencies in South Carolina’s criminal court system delayed their prosecution and jeopardized the administration of justice.

You won’t find any history books containing references to this compelling story, which I’ve reconstructed from a slim body of evidence scattered among neglected sources created nearly three centuries ago. Despite the paucity of firm details, I suspect the long-forgotten gunpowder plot of 1731 will soon become part of the repertory of Charleston tour guides—not simply because it’s a good local yarn, but because it contains echoes of the famous English Gunpowder Plot of 1605. In that well-known story, a group of militant Catholics allegedly plotted to kill the Protestant king, Charles I, by blowing up the House of Lords during the ceremonial opening of Parliament on November 5th. The infamous Guy Fawkes was arrested and executed for his part in that treasonous plot, but, as we shall see, his explosive preparations involved a fraction of the firepower nearly unleashed in colonial Charleston.

Our story begins with a small gang of burglars active in urban Charleston at the beginning of the year 1731. No definite record of their targets or victims survives because there was no newspaper in the colonial capital before the debut of the South Carolina Gazette in January 1732, and because no South Carolina criminal court records survive from the era in question. Local newspaper reports from the early months of 1732 mention the prosecution of three men named Peter French, George Keith, and Joseph Somers, but do provide any details of their crimes or their arrests. I’ve found a few biographical details for just one of the suspects. Joseph Somers (also spelled Summers) was an Englishman around thirty years old who was orphaned at an early age and spent nearly half his life at sea in the Royal Navy and as a merchant mariner before he settled in Charleston. Here he married one Elizabeth Roll at St. Philip’s Church in September 1729, fathered a child, and embarked on a criminal career with Peter French, George Keith, and perhaps others.[1]

A newspaper published in Boston in the spring of 1731 included a short paragraph of text forwarded from “Charlestown, South Carolina,” dated April 8th, describing a shocking discovery: “A few days past was taken up here a company of thieves, who had broken open several shops and stores, and stole large quantities of goods; but that their villany [sic] they thought not sufficient, or their income large enough, so they contrived to blow up the magazine of powder which is in the town, that when the people were in the utmost confusion, then they would make their prizes.”[2]

The target of the criminal gang’s proposed distraction was a square brick structure standing along what was then the largely-vacant northern edge of urban Charleston. Commissioned by South Carolina’s provincial government in 1712 and completed in 1713, the magazine stood within the boundaries of the town’s fortified enceinte and served as South Carolina’s principal depot for gunpowder reserved for public defense. The building has survived for than three centuries and is now a flourishing museum adjacent to the south side of Cumberland Street, which did not exist before 1747.[3]

Although it was designed for passive storage, Charleston’s colonial magazine was the scene of regular activity as the measure of its contents waxed and waned nearly every week. The facility was under the supervision of the provincial Powder Receiver, a part-time post created by the South Carolina legislature in 1687.[4] A law ratified at that time and enforced until the American Revolution required the master of every merchant vessel arriving in the Port of Charleston to deliver to the receiver one half-pound of gunpowder for every ton of the vessels’ cargo capacity (or the cash equivalent). The object of the provincial “powder duty” was to accrue and maintain a stock of gunpowder sufficient to defend the frontier colony with cannons and muskets in case of invasion or military emergency. As the ship traffic in the port increased over the years, so too did the volume of powder lodged in a succession of magazines.

In addition to its role as a government warehouse, the magazine was also used to hold gunpowder belonging to other parties. South Carolina’s colonial government prohibited private citizens from possessing more than one quarter of a barrel of powder necessary for hunting and maritime commerce, but allowed them to store much larger quantities in the public magazine for a fee. Merchant vessels of that era sailing to and from the Port of Charleston routinely carried cannons and significant quantities of gunpowder to protect their cargo against pirates and to fire signals and salutes to other ships and coastal batteries. When in port, the owners or local agents of such vessels routinely offloaded the bulk of their volatile powder and paid for its storage in the local magazine. Warships of the Royal Navy assigned to the Carolina Station also carried robust quantities of black powder that they stored onshore without charge during long periods of statis in Charleston Harbor.

Provincial law required the Powder Receiver to maintain accounts expressing the quantity, quality, and ownership of the combustible powder stored in the local magazine. None of the receiver’s ledgers survive from the colonial era, but numerous summaries can be found in the periodic reports of a committee appointed by the South Carolina Commons House of Assembly to audit his accounts. The longest-serving receiver was Colonel Michael “Miles” Brewton (ca. 1675–1745), who held the lucrative position from December 1717 until his death in July 1745.[5] According to an audit report submitted to the Commons House in mid-March 1731, Brewton’s ledger recorded the presence of 9,844 pounds of powder belonging to the provincial government.[6]

That total, however, did not include various quantities belonging to private citizens and visiting merchant vessels, nor did it include the hundreds of barrels of powder belonging to the five Royal Navy warships then moored in Charleston harbor—the twenty-gun ships Aldborough, Fox, and Lowestoft, and the smaller sloops-of-war Happy and Cruizer, armed with ten and eight carriage guns, respectively. In short, archival records suggest that the quantity of gunpowder stored within the Charleston magazine in March 1731 was likely in the range of fifteen to twenty thousand pounds.

To put that figure in a historical context, consider the case of the English Gunpowder Plot of 1605. On the morning of November 5th, London authorities discovered Guy Fawkes in an undercroft or cellar below the House of Lords guarding thirty-six wooden barrels containing more than two thousand pounds of gunpowder designed to blow up the king. A full-scale recreation of that scenario, filmed and measured in 2005, demonstrated that the resulting blast, if the murderous plot had been executed, would have killed everyone in and adjacent to the Parliament building. In comparison, the Charleston magazine targeted by a criminal gang in the spring of 1731 contained somewhere between six to ten times the amount of gunpowder staged by the infamous Guy Fawkes in 1605.

How powerful would such a blast have been? Gunpowder, a granulized mixture of charcoal, sulfur, and potassium nitrate, is a “low explosive,” meaning that it burns with a high rate of combustion but does not produce a supersonic shock wave like dynamite, TNT, and later forms of “high explosive.” If the criminals of 1731 had set fire to Charleston’s magazine, the contents would have ignited in a massive fireball producing a large cloud of expanding gas confined within a low brick shell. The structure’s stout walls, more than three feet thick, might have channeled most of the explosive energy upward, blowing the roof sky-high.

If the contents of the magazine ranged between seven and ten tons of black powder in the spring of 1731, the explosive energy released would have been equivalent to approximately four to five tons of TNT, which is comparable to the destructive power of eight to ten modern Tomahawk cruise missiles.[7] The initial blast would have destroyed a significant portion of Charleston around Meeting, Church, and Queen Streets—including several churches—and killed many of the town’s three thousand inhabitants. In the moments after that hypothetical explosion, a shower of shrapnel and smoldering debris would likely have injured more residents and ignited numerous fires across the urban landscape dominated by wooden buildings roofed with wooden shingles. The capital of South Carolina did not yet have an organized fire brigade and the citizens did not possess any fire suppression equipment other than buckets. In the hours after the initial blast, unchecked fires might have consumed the rest of the town while the survivors tended hundreds of dead and injured neighbors.[8]

Joseph Somers, who might have been the leader of the criminal gang active here in early 1731, likely gained some experience with gunpowder during his years of service aboard warships and merchant vessels, and might have once been among the mariners assigned the dangerous task of ferrying barrels of powder to and from Charleston’s magazine. Such familiarity with the site and with Powder Receiver Miles Brewton might have inspired Somers to propose the idea of blowing up the magazine as a means of distracting the townsfolk, allowing his partners-in-crime ample time to pillage a number of vacant houses, shops, and churches.[9]

Regardless of who hatched the gruesome plan, we know that it did not meet universal approval. The first news report of the Charleston plot, published in Boston in April 1731, stated that “one of the company not agreeing to it, prevented its being done.”[10] That someone might have been gang member George Keith, who likely informed some local figure—perhaps Colonel Miles Brewton—and named names. Perhaps Brewton observed the suspects casing the joint, as they say in the movies, grabbed Keith, and squeezed a confession out of him. The alleged co-conspirators were probably arrested by members of the town’s paramilitary night watch, who delivered them to Provost Marshal William Bampfield for incarceration.[11] The marshal was South Carolina’s chief law-enforcement officer at the time and the proprietor of the colony’s sole jail. By the spring of 1731, the provincial prison was located within a moderately-secure rented house on the east side of King Street, approximately one hundred feet north of Moore Street (now called Horlbeck Alley).[12]

On 3 April 1731, two weeks after reviewing the latest audit of the contents of the magazine, members of the Commons House heard a related message from Governor Robert Johnson: “There has lately been discovered a set of villains, who have comitted several robberys & burglarys, in & about this towne. I have taken all possible care to secure them in prison, by ordering an additional guard, to attend the goale; so [I] desire that you will forthwith settle the ordinance to draw the jurys, that they may be brought to a speedy tryall, to prevent their escapes, & that justice may be executed upon them.”[13]

Governor Johnson’s instructions to the Commons House alluded to a chronic political conundrum that stymied the execution of criminal justice at that time. His administration of South Carolina, which commenced in mid-December 1730, represented the colony’s first fully-fledged provincial government under the direct oversight of the British Crown. It followed a long and turbulent period of transition from Proprietary government to provisional Royal government that commenced under Governor Francis Nicholson in 1721 and continued in 1725 under President Arthur Middleton. During the last four years of Middleton’s administration, political differences between the upper and lower houses of assembly led to near-total paralysis of the provincial government. No taxes were collected, no laws were passed, no courts convened, and the local militia threatened to remove Middleton from office. When Robert Johnson convened the members of a newly-elected Commons House in January 1731, the government held no list of free white males qualified to serve as potential jurymen. To prosecute Joseph Somers and the other members of Charleston’s criminal gang, therefore, the South Carolina legislature had to draft a new law to revive the rusty wheels of criminal justice.

The Commons House made no immediate reaction to Johnson’s message of April 3rd because the legislature thereafter adjourned for several days. Nevertheless, they evidently followed the governor’s instruction and drafted an ordinance to jump-start the creation of a new jury list. When the Commons House reconvened on April 7th, the members re-read Johnson’s message relating to the villains and composed a reply to the governor: “This house having taken under consideration yor. message of Saturday last, do in answer thereto return [to] yor. Excelly. our thanks for the care you have taken for the security of the villains who have committee those robberies. As wee have the greatest regard to the speedy execution of justice as well as to yor. Excellys. recommendation, wee have this morning read a second time the ordinance for jurys &ca but finding some amendments absolutely necessary to be made therein which wee conceive not to be so suitable to the nature of an ordinance, wee have therefore ordered a committee to bring in a bill this afternoon to answer & the better to effect all the ends & purposes intended by the ordinance, which wee hope will meet with yor. Excellys. approbation.”[14] In other words, the Commons House chose to pursue a longer route to their political goal rather than the legislative shortcut suggested by Governor Johnson.

The following day, April 8th, an unidentified member of the Commons House made a motion “that the magazine nigh the Church [i.e., the state-supported Anglican Church of St. Philip] in Charles Town be removed to a more convenient place.” The Clerk of the House recorded no explanation of the reasons behind the novel proposal regarding the eighteen-year-old powder magazine, but it was undoubtedly inspired by the recent arrest of the criminal gang accused of plotting its destruction. The motion spawned an unrecorded debate in the Commons House, after which the Speaker of the House, John Lloyd, called for a vote on “whether the said magazine of powder should be removed farther out of town.” The Clerk of the House counted the ayes and nays and reported that the motion “carried in the negative.” The legislators were not oblivious to the inherent danger of the urban magazine, but it appears they were unwilling to levy additional taxes sufficient to build a new magazine at that moment. Instead, the Commons House appointed a committee of nine men to study the matter and “to propose an expedient for securing the magazine from any accident.”[15]

On April 10th, while Governor Johnson was indisposed, the Commons House received a message from Arthur Middleton of the Upper House of Assembly: “Wee not agreeing to your bill for appointing jurys on the third reading, have sent it back rejected; but as there has been for some time past, a failure of justice, for want of a sufficient number of names in the box, to constitute grand & petite jurys, wee are of opinion that a short ordinance may pass both houses to day, appointing a list; especially as there are now in custody, some persons, who seem to be guilty of crimes of an extraordinary nature, who may (for want of a prison, & by protraction of time) make their escape.”[16]

The Commons House, perhaps still harboring resentment from Middleton’s troubled  tenure as President of South Carolina, ignored his proposal and thereafter adjourned for nearly a month. When the assembly reconvened in early May, Governor Johnson again urged the elected representatives to expedite the jury bill: “As there are several notorious malefactors now in goal who cannot come to a tryal nor any courts be held until a jury box is filled, I must earnestly again recommend this affair to your imediate consideration that the jury may be forthwith drawn to prevent any further delay of justice.” The house then drafted a reply to Johnson stating that they had appointed a committee to bring in a bill for the said purpose, “to wch. wee shall give all possible dispatch.”[17]

Despite the promise of dispatch, the upper and lower houses of the provincial legislature argued over the text of the revised jury bill in successive meetings throughout the summer. The new law, finally ratified on 20 August 1731, revived a judicial calendar established in 1701 that included semi-annual sessions of criminal adjudication commencing on the third Wednesday of every March and October.[18] Joseph Somers, George Keith, and Peter French meanwhile languished in jail during the late spring, summer, and early autumn of 1731, and were evidently indicted by a grand jury that convened in Charleston in mid-October. For reasons unknown, however, their respective trials were postponed to the following term in March.

During their incarceration lasting nearly a year, the three men accused of plotting to blow up the powder magazine had ample time to argue among themselves and plan their escape from the insecure jail. As a result of the deficiencies in South Carolina’s criminal justice system, only two of the villains survived to face the king’s law in the spring of 1732. Tune in next week for the dramatic conclusion of this explosive story to learn who escaped the gallows and why the government’s efforts to close the dangerous magazine dragged on to the summer of 1746.

NEXT: The Charleston Gunpowder Plot of 1731, Part 2
PREVIOUSLY:  Drama at the Court Room in 1735: Charleston’s First Theater
See more from Charleston Time Machine