During their year-long incarceration, the criminal trio accused of plotting to blow up Charleston’s powder magazine had ample time to argue among themselves and plan their escape from the insecure jail. Only two of the villains survived to face the king’s law in the spring of 1732, prompting suspicion of foul play at the prison. In the dramatic conclusion of this explosive story, we’ll learn who escaped the gallows and why the government’s efforts to close the dangerous magazine dragged on to the summer of 1746.
Peter French, Joseph Somers (also spelled Summers), and George Keith were evidently indicted by a grand jury in October 1731, but the paper records containing details of their prosecution are no longer extant. Despite this archival loss, we can glean a few important facts from sparse newspaper reports published in 1732. Local authorities alleged that the trio had formed a conspiracy to blow up the powder magazine standing on the northern edge of urban Charleston, but because that plot was never executed, and because the government apparently possessed insufficient evidence of such a conspiracy, the king’s attorneys in South Carolina charged the men with lesser crimes. Peter French was indicted for “a burglary and robbery,” while Joseph Somers was charged with “accessary before the fact, to a burglary and robbery” committed by French. The charge against George Keith is unknown, but was evidently of a similar nature. In the world of Anglo-American criminal justice in the early eighteenth century, rooted in British jurisprudence of that era, these were capital crimes punished by hanging to discourage people from transgressing the king’s law.
Although the three alleged conspirators were captured in the spring of 1731 and indicted that October, their respective trials did not take place until the subsequent semi-annual term of South Carolina’s Court of General Sessions, which convened in Charleston in March 1732. The reasons motivating this delay are now lost, but the provincial government might have been handicapped by an insufficient number of names in the jury pool—a problem, as I mentioned last week, that delayed their prosecution during the early months of this story. At any rate, the trio languished in the provincial prison in King Street throughout the summer, autumn, and winter of 1731.
During their incarceration, at least one of the alleged house-breakers tried to escape from the insecure, rented building that served as South Carolina’s only jail. Information recorded in the journal of the provincial Commons House of Assembly noted that Joseph Somers, a husband and father under indictment “for felony,” repeatedly tried to abscond from prison during the autumn of 1731 without success. Immediately after his latest attempt during the night of November 18th, members of the Commons House sent a message expressing their concern to Governor Robert Johnson: “This House being informed that one Joseph Summers [sic] a felon now in goal [i.e., jail] hath several times attempted to make his escape & last night endeavoured the same, which wee apprehend may be of ill consequence to several of the inhabitants of this province and the town in particular, wee therefore desire your Excellency will be pleased to order such a sufficient guard to be kept at the said goal as may effectually prevent his escape from prison, and this House will take care to provide for the charge thereof.”[1] Governor Johnson complied with their request, posting two armed men to stand guard at the jail every night during the remainder of the felons’ incarceration.[2]
The three men facing the hangman’s noose apparently argued amongst themselves in prison during the subsequent winter. The topic of their private quarrels was not recorded, but it likely concerned George Keith’s decision to turn state’s evidence and testify as the principal witness against his alleged co-conspirators.[3] His bargain with the provincial government was evidently known to his jailors and prison staff, which included enslaved people who performed the most unpleasant physical and sanitary tasks within the makeshift facility. Peter French and Joseph Somers could not have been unaware of Keith’s betrayal, and might have threatened to end his life before they came to trial.
The proprietor of the jail, Provost Marshal William Bampfield, was therefore justifiably concerned when his staff found Keith dead on the afternoon of 16 January 1732. A news report printed a few days later alluded to the possibility of some mysterious circ*mstances leading to his demise: “On Sunday last, about 2 o’clock, died suddenly, in the prison in this town, one George Keith who seem’d, a few hours before, to be in good health. Which, with some other particular circ*mstances, gave suspicion, that he came to his end unfairly.”[4]
Marshal Bampfield immediately summoned the unidentified coroner of St. Philip’s Parish, who in turn summoned an ad-hoc jury to perform a physical inquest. At an unspecified location, perhaps within the provincial jail, a group of men gathered around Keith’s naked corpse, “which being opened, & carefully inspected, by two able surgeons, they gave it in as their opinion, upon oath, that the died of a natural indisposition; caused, as they had reason to believe, by his intemperate way of living.” The coroner and jurymen also heard testimony from several unidentified parties, whom they questioned about recent events transpiring in the jail and potentially acrimonious conversations among the three alleged conspirators. “Upon which, as likewise upon the strictest examination of witnesses that could be made, in relation to this affair,” the jury concurred with the verdict of the surgeons, judging that Keith had died of natural causes rather than murder. His corpse was buried the following day in the town’s public cemetery at the expense of the parish.[5]
The spring term of the South Carolina Court of General Sessions commenced on 15 March 1732 at the rented “Court Room” within a tavern at the northeast corner of Broad and Church Streets, then under the management of Huguenot vintner Henry Gignilliat.[6] Peter French was evidently the first of the two surviving defendants to be tried and condemned, though no details of his case survive. The trial of Joseph Somers commenced on Saturday, March 18th, and concluded before the end of the day.[7] One week later, the South Carolina Gazette published a brief summary of the proceedings:
“On Saturday last at the session of Oyer and Terminer, and General Gaol [i.e., Jail] delivery, came on, before the Hon. Robert Wright, Esq; Chief Justice of this Province, Eleazar Allen, [Thomas] Cooper, and Tweedie Somerville, Esqrs; his Assistant Judges, the trial of Joseph Summers [sic], who stood indicted as accessary before the fact, to a burglary and robbery, committed by one Peter French, now under condemnation for the said fact. After a long and full hearing of the evidence on both sides, as well in behalf of the prisoner, as on the part of the Crown, the jury brought in their verdict — Guilty.[8]
Somers’ trial evidently attracted the attention of the local newspaper because of a curious argument mooted by his unidentified defense attorney at his sentencing, which took place at the rented Court Room on Thursday, March 23rd. When the prisoner was “brought again to the bar, to receive sentence pursuant to the said verdict,” his counsel “moved in arrest of judgment,” citing “a variance in the record.” The attorney pointed to the text of Somers’ indictment, which stated that the members of the grand jury had all sworn an oath to judge the facts truthfully. Some of the jurors were religious dissenters, he noted, and had therefore taken a “solemn affirmation” rather than the customary oath. Chief Justice Wright overruled that argument, however, opining that the clerk’s lack of distinction between affirmation and oath was a minor technicality that did not undermine the evidence of the defendant’s guilt.[9]
Having dispensed with that last-ditch effort to save the life of Joseph Somers, “the Court proceeded to judgment, and passed sentence of death upon the prisoner.” The following morning, March 24th, Governor Johnson signed the customary death warrant confirming the sentence of the court and ordering the provost marshal “to erect a gallows for that purpose in the usual place” to hang Joseph Somers by the neck until he was dead on March 30th.[10] The local Gazette later published an intriguing synopsis of the pathetic scene:
“On Thursday last, between the hours of 11 and 12 in the forenoon, Joseph Somers was executed on a gallows erected for that purpose, at the usual place of execution, near the Prison, in Charlestown, pursuant to the sentence passed on him as mentioned in our last [newspaper]. His wife and child went with him to the gallows, where he took his last farewel of them. He denied, to the last, that he was guilty of the fact for which he was to suffer, but acknowledg’d that he had too often committed crimes for which he deserved death, and that lying, swearing, theft, whoring, and a general neglect of divine ordinances, were the vices that filled up the unhappy measure of his life. By the death of his father and mother, when he was yet not a year old, he was left on the parish, where he was born, which was near Sherborn in Dorsetshire, and about the year [16]99, put out to a shoemaker, and at about 14 years of age he left his master, and first used the sea, and continued in the king’s and the merchant’s service, at different times, ’till he came into this colony: But he wou’d neither confess, nor deny, that he had been tried for crimes in England, or transported from thence on any such account. [He] said he was no ways guilty of what was alledged against him concerning the blowing up of the magazine, or the death of George Keith, who was to have been the principal evidence against him. When cut down he was put into a grave, ’till a coffin was provided, in which he was buried that afternoon.”[11]
Peter French was evidently hanged as well, though no details survive naming the time and place. As with his trial, French’s execution was likely relatively straightforward and devoid of drama, since he probably did not have any local family to lament his ignominious end. Neither Joseph Somers nor Peter French appear in the burial register of St. Philip’s Church, but the parish likely paid for their interment in the public cemetery as it had done for George Keith.
The deaths of George Keith, Peter French, and Joseph Somers in the early months of 1732 buried the memory of Charleston’s gunpowder plot, but local anxiety about the magazine’s potential danger lingered for many years. Although members of South Carolina’s Commons House of Assembly had briefly debated its possible removal in the spring of 1731, immediately after the discovery of the plot to ignite the facility, the local government passively deferred that conversation to a later season. The topic resurfaced in late March 1735, when the Commons House received a petition from the vestry, churchwardens, and residents of the urban Parish of St. Philip, urging the government to remove the dangerous magazine. The Speaker of the House then charged a committee with the task of investigating the feasibility of the proposal. On April 26th, representative Charles Pinckney stood before his colleagues and read aloud the following report:
“The committee on the petition of the inhabitants of Charles Town for removing the magazine of gun powder to some more convenient place, Report, That having consider’d of a place for building a new magazine, are of opinion that the point of land on the back [i.e., west side] of Charles Town, formerly used as a burying ground, will be the most safe & fit place for that purpose, it lying a little out of town and having a boggy marsh of half a mile (as near as your comm’ee could compute by the eye) deep lying before it, which will prevent any ship or vessel in case of an attack coming within that distance to bomb it, and your comm’ee further report that having consulted workmen thereon, they agree on the annex’d model [i.e., plan or design] as the fittest for that purpose.”[12]
By April 1735, therefore, the legislature possessed a plan for a new magazine of unknown dimensions, drafted by an unknown designer. Both houses of the provincial assembly thereafter adopted the plan and agreed to fund the project, but it stagnated for many months while the government addressed a number of other pressing issues. Although the Commons House contracted with several “work men” in the spring of 1736 to erect the proposed building on the public site already selected, laborers did not break ground until the following winter.[13] Master bricklayer James Withers supervised the construction at a marsh-front site now forming the southeast corner of Franklin and Magazine Streets. The resulting circular structure was largely completed by December 1737, at which time a legislative committee inspected the work and presented a brief report to the Commons House. “Notwithstanding the several cracks which appear in it,” the committee described the new magazine as “a good and substantial building and very fit and sufficient for the purposes for which it was intended.”[14]
References to the new magazine do not appear in the legislative records of 1738, likely due to an epidemic of smallpox that ravaged Charleston and arrested the progress of all public business during that year. The new magazine, meanwhile, stood empty on the northwestern fringe of town waiting to receive a supply of gunpowder. The map known as The Ichnography of Charles-Town, published in London in June 1739, depicts two magazines—one near St. Philip’s Church labeled “Old Magazine” and another, 2,200 feet to the west, labeled “New Magazine”—but only one actually contained explosive materials at that time. The provincial government’s neglect of the new magazine continued as escalating tension between Britain and Spain led to the eruption of a new war between the rival crowns. At a moment of intense public anxiety about the security of South Carolina, a bloody slave uprising known as the Stono Rebellion monopolized the government’s attention during the autumn of 1739.
In contrast to the mildly positive review of the new magazine made in December 1737, a subsequent inspection in December 1739 condemned the empty building. A visiting legislative committee reported that it was “intirely unfit to keep gun powder in; as it is so damp within, that water is constantly dripping from the moisture of the walls, although there has been no rain there for this 8 or 10 days past.” Cracks in the walls, noted during the initial inspection two years earlier, had expanded and weakened the structure. They opined that it would be easier to pull down and rebuild the structure than to attempt costly repairs. Some money was still due to the contractor, James Withers, but “as the work is at present useless,” the committee recommend he not be paid. Although the “old magazine” near St. Philip’s Church was in “a very bad state,” they suggested that it could be repaired and rendered “fit to contain the powder until a new magazine shall be finished.”
The members of the Commons House, appalled by the latest report, asked to see the written agreement made with the undertaker of the new magazine, James Withers. Noting that his contract specified that the work was to be completed “in such manner as to be fit to keep gun powder in,” the members of the House dispatched delegates to advise Withers that unless he finished the building properly at his own expense, or agreed to “pull down the same, and scrape the bricks, so as to make them fit to be laid again,” they would ask Lieutenant Governor William Bull to commence suit against him.[15]
One week later, the delegates reported that Withers had “acknowledged that the magazine was insufficient, and not agreeable to his contract, which was owing to his being unacquainted with buildings of that sort; and that he was very willing and ready to comply with the proposal made by the House on that occasion.” The legislators appreciated the contractor’s humility, but thereafter informed Lt. Gov. Bull of their determination to sue Withers for “nonperformance of his contract” if he did not pull down the new magazine and salvage all the bricks at his own expense.[16] The contrite contractor, no doubt reluctant to destroy his own handiwork, dragged his feet into the spring of 1740. He returned to the legislature that April seeking clarification about the preferred method of demolition. After a brief unrecorded debate, the Commons House resolved “that it was the intention of this House that the said magazine be totally pulled down by hand, and not blown up with gun powder,” as Withers had evidently proposed.[17]
More than ten years after the discovery of Charleston’s wicked gunpowder plot, the town still lacked a proper plan for a replacement magazine that would ensure the safety of both its valuable contents and the neighborhood. In February 1742, the provincial legislature approved a plan submitted by a local “artificer” named John Wood and confirmed that the new structure was to be “placed near the old Burying Ground, whereon that magazine stood which was lately pulled down.”[18] Lt. Gov. William Bull in 1743 solicited an alternate plan from Peter Henry Bruce, Chief Engineer of the Bahamas, and later received a manuscript draft in the mail.[19] Bull then submitted Bruce’s plan to the consideration of Charleston’s resident amateur engineer, Colonel Othniel Beale, who produced a modified version in January 1744.[20] Newly-arrived Governor James Glen then reviewed these drafts and asked a joint committee of the General Assembly to help him decide among the “several plans for building a new powder magazine now lying before me.”[21] Unsatisfied with the available options, the committee advised Glen to send to Britain for another plan drawn by a better-qualified military engineer.[22] A few months later, however, the members of Glen’s advisory Council reconsidered the “uneasy condition of the present magazine, and the dangerous consequence it would be off [sic], should any accident happen thereto, by fire or otherwise.” They advised the governor to proceed with Othniel Beale’s magazine plan “to quiet the minds of the inhabitants of this place.”[23]
The execution of Colonel Beale’s plan at that moment was retarded by a stunning development in international diplomacy. In the spring of 1744, the King of France threw his military might behind Spain to expand the global conflict now called the War of Jenkins’ Ear. South Carolina’s General Assembly thereafter focused the bulk of its energy and money on the construction of new fortifications around Charleston and the management of Hispanic and French prisoners of war in the capital.
The provincial government resumed consideration of the magazine in the spring of 1745 when the inhabitants of Charleston again petitioned for the closure of the thirty-two-year-old structure. The text read before the Commons House that May opined “that if it should please God to strike the same with lightning, it would in all probability destroy the lives of most of the inhabitants of this town, and that two of the principle [sic] places of divine worship which stand very near to the s[ai]d magazine [i.e., St. Philip’s Church and the Congregational Meeting House] had been very lately twice struck with lightning, which added greatly to the uneasiness and apprehensions of the petitioners.” Furthermore, the petitioners noted that the old magazine was “in so very bad repair that great quantities of the powder for the public use as well as that belonging to private persons had suffered great damage, which they conceived proceeded from some defect in the said magazine.” Finally, the citizens believed that an earlier legislature had resolved to build a replacement structure, but because “no new magazine is yet begun to be built, the petitioners fear their said information was not well grounded, or that some more urgent occasion has diverted” the government from commencing the work.[24] In response to these rational arguments, Governor Glen ordered Colonel Beale to commence immediate construction of a new magazine according to the plan already in his hands, and instructed the provincial Attorney General to prosecute James Withers for his failure to scrape the mortar from the bricks of the dismantled magazine, as he had promised to do five years earlier.[25]
The work of erecting another “new magazine” commenced sometime during the summer of 1745, just before the death of Charleston’s venerable Powder Receiver, Colonel Michael “Miles” Brewton. His son and successor, Robert Brewton, witnessed the completion of a rectangular brick structure located approximately two hundred feet to the south of the dismantled 1737 magazine, a site now occupied by the Old Marine Hospital on the east side of Franklin Street.[26] In early June 1746, Brewton reported to the Commons House of Assembly that laborers had transferred from the old to the new facility 12,869 pounds of gunpowder belonging to the colony, plus an unspecified quantity of private stock belonging to local citizens and the gunpowder belonging to His Majesty’s warships then in Charleston Harbor.[27]
The General Assembly thereafter returned custody of the old magazine property to the Izard family, who, as I mentioned in in Episode No. 173, were the rightful owners of the land on which it stood. The Izards then negotiated with their neighbors to create a new east-west pathway that was named Cumberland Street in the spring of 1747. Henry Izard (ca. 1717–1749) soon afterwards erected a grand townhouse immediately to the west of the now-empty magazine on the south side of Cumberland Street, the brick kitchen of which (long mis-identified as “Trott’s Cottage”) still stands next to the present Power Magazine Museum.
Whether or not the criminal gang of 1731 really planned to blow up Charleston’s powder magazine, the prospect of such a horrific plot alarmed the community and initiated a prolonged effort to close the alleged target. War, pestilence, and architectural conundrums delayed the completion of a replacement magazine until 1746, during which time the town’s growing population rendered the site of the new facility less remote than desired. The government of South Carolina built several subsequent magazines in the Charleston area both before and after the American Revolution, taking care to situate each at a more comfortable distance from existing residences.
The narrative of Charleston’s gunpowder plot might not be familiar to modern audiences, but it represents one of many intriguing yet-untold stories scattered among the early records of our community. If you love puzzles and paper-chases leading down documentary rabbit holes, I encourage you to visit your local library or archive to explore our shared past. Then treat yourself to a luxury made possible by Charlestons deep history—a stroll down a remote country lane or a narrow city street leading to the scene of the historic crime.
[1] Journal of the South Carolina Commons House of Assembly, CO 5/433, second part of folio 4 (19 November 1731), held at the British National Archives, Kew. I have retained the original spelling in this quotation but expanded several abbreviations for the sake of clarity. The felon’s surname, for example, appears here as “Sumers” with an elongation symbol over the “m” indicating “Summers.”
[2] In a letter to the editor, printed in the South Carolina Gazette (hereafter SCG), 4–11 October 1735, page 1, Charles Pinckney mentioned the hire of “two men . . . under arms every night . . . when Summers was in goal [sic]” in 1731–32.
[3] Keith’s cooperation with the prosecution is mentioned in the report of the execution of Joseph Somers in SCG, 25 March–1 April 1732, page 3.
[4] SCG, 15–22 January 1731/2 (Saturday), No. 3, page 4.
[5] SCG, 15–22 January 1731/2 (Saturday), No. 3, page 4 (emphasis original); A. S. Salley Jr., ed., Register of St. Philip’s Parish, Charles Town, South Carolina, 1720–1758 (Charleston, S.C.: Walker, Evans & Cogswell Co., 1904), page 238. A letter “P” next to Keith’s name in the manuscript register indicates that the parish paid for his interment, as with paupers and itinerate strangers. For more information about Charleston colonial-era public cemetery, see Charleston Time Machine Episode No. 200, “The Forgotten Dead: Charleston’s Public Cemeteries, 1672–1794.”
[6] The report of the commencement of the court session on March 15th, in SCG, 11–18 March 1731/2 (Saturday), No. 11, page 3, represents the earliest evidence of Gignilliat’s tenure at the venerable corner tavern. For more details about the “court room” space, see Charleston Time Machine episode No. 283, “Drama at the Court Room in 1735: Charleston’s First Theater.”
[7] SCG, 11–18 March 1731/2 (Saturday), No. 11, page 4. James Abercromby held the title of attorney general at this time and likely prosecuted French and Somers.
[8] SCG, 18–25 March 1731/2 (Saturday), No. 12, page 3 (emphasis original).
[9] SCG, 18–25 March 1731/2 (Saturday), No. 12, page 3.
[10] SCG, 18–25 March 1731/2 (Saturday), No. 12, page 3.
[11] SCG, 25 March–1 April 1732, page 3. I have retained the original spelling in this quotation. This same text also appeared in The [Philadelphia] American Weekly Mercury, 6–13 July 1732, page 3.
[12] A. S. Salley Jr., ed.,Journal of the Commons House of Assembly of South Carolina, November 8, 1734–June 7, 1735 (Columbia: State Commercial Printing Company for the Historical Commission of South Carolina, 1947), 147 (27 March 1735), 199–200 (26 April 1735), 203–4 (28 April 1735). I have retained the original spelling and added several commas to the text.
[13] South Carolina Department of Archives and History (hereafter SCDAH), Journal of the Commons House of Assembly, No. 9, Part 2, pages 593–94, 599–601 (27 March 1736); J. H. Easterby, ed., The Colonial Records of South Carolina: The Journal of the Commons House of Assembly, November 10, 1736–June 7, 1739 (Columbia: State Commercial Printing Company for the Historical Commission of South Carolina, 1951), 162 (17 December 1736).
[14] Easterby, Commons House Journal, 1736–1739, pages 351, 383 (8 and 16 December 1737).
[15] J. H. Easterby, ed., The Colonial Records of South Carolina: The Journal of the Commons House of Assembly, September 12, 1739–March 26, 1741 (Columbia: State Commercial Printing Company for the Historical Commission of South Carolina, 1952), 70–71 (1 December 1739).
[16] Easterby, Commons House Journal, 1739–1741, pages 84, 88 (7–8 December 1739).
[17] Easterby, Commons House Journal, 1739–1741, page 312 (30 April 1740).
[18] J. H. Easterby, ed., The Colonial Records of South Carolina: The Journal of the Commons House of Assembly, May 18, 1741–July 10, 1742 (Columbia: State Commercial Printing Company for the Historical Commission of South Carolina, 1953), 382–83, 400 (17 and 20 February 1741/2).
[19] SCDAH, Journal of His Majesty’s Council for South Carolina, No. 10, pages 272–74 (17 August 1743).
[20] SCDAH, Journal of His Majesty’s Council for South Carolina, No. 11, part 1, pages 54–56 (18 January 1743/4).
[21] J. H. Easterby, ed., The Colonial Records of South Carolina: The Journal of the Commons House of Assembly, September 14, 1742–January 27, 1744 (Columbia: South Carolina Archives Department, 1954), 544 (21 January 1743/4).
[22] Easterby, Commons House Journal, 1742–1744, pages 555–56 (27 January 1743/4). The three plans in question included those drafted by Bruce, Beale, “and a third by Mr. [Hector] Vaughn,” a lieutenant of marines who came to Charleston with the crew of His Majesty’s Ship Loo.
[23] SCDAH, Journal of His Majesty’s Council for South Carolina, No. 11, part 1, pages 272–73 (25 May 1744).
[24] SCDAH, Journal of His Majesty’s Council for South Carolina, No. 14, page 210 (3 May 1745).
[25] SCDAH, Journal of His Majesty’s Council for South Carolina, No. 14, pages 211, 220–21 (3 and 8 May 1745). For Beale’s commission as chief engineer, dated 23 July 1742, see Easterby, Commons House Journal, 1742–1744, page 100 (4 December 1742).
[26] The location of this magazine is clearly depicted in Joseph R. Purcell’s 1799 survey of the block bounded by Queen Street, Back (now Franklin Street), Magazine Street, and Mazyck Street (now Logan Street); see plat No. 173 in the John McCrady Plat collection held by the Charleston County Register of Deeds Office.
[27] J. H. Easterby, ed., The Colonial Records of South Carolina: The Journal of the Commons House of Assembly, September 10, 1745–June 17, 1746 (Columbia: South Carolina Archives Department, 1956), 240 (17 June 1746).
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