Seeing a money-making opportunity, the then-publican slipped unsuspecting sailors a Mickey Finn (a drink laced with a psychoactive drug) before dropping them through a trapdoor into the cellar, from where they were taken through the tunnel to waiting whale ships on which they would endure years of forced labour.
While countless undocumented kidnappings took place, the most famous crime committed in the hotel was the murder of convict landlady, Anne Kirkman, back in 1849 who was thrown down the cellar steps by her brutish husband after she discovered that he was having an affair with a younger girl who was also pregnant with his child.