Pub London's pubs had closed. The closures have been ascribed to factors such as changing tastes, rise in the cost of beer due to applied taxes and the increase in the Muslim population. Inns and taverns feature throughout English literature and poetry, from The Tabard Inn in Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales" onwards. The highwayman Dick Turpin used the Swan Inn at Woughton-on-the-Green in Buckinghamshire as his base. Jamaica Inn near Bolventor in Cornwall gave its name to a 1936 novel by Daphne du Maurier and a 1939 film directed by Alfred Hitchcock. In the 1920s John Fothergill (1876–1957) was the innkeeper of
Jamaica Inn and the main coaching house. A plaque on the walls outside says "The Museum of Smuggling. Presents a record of classical examples in the arts of concealment and evasion". The museum's main focus is its collection of smuggling artifacts that is depicted through the history of the Jamaica Inn and the inn's role in this trade for many years. The Cornwall coast was the most popular location for smuggling of silks, tea, tobacco and brandy into England and operated from the Cornish coast, Polperro (on the south coast) and Boscastle, Trebarwith and Tintagel on the north coast as this coastline