Sometime in the early 1740s Jeremiah Curtis, who had been part of a violent gang in the Hastings area, joined forces with the Hawkhurst Gang, and was one of its most brutal members. It was Curtis who led the whipping and beating to death of Richard Hawkins, a farm labourer from Walberton whom they suspected of stealing two bags of the gang's tea. Hawkins was taken to the "Dog and Partridge" inn at Slindon to be interrogated. When he died of his injuries, his body was found weighted with rocks in a lake away at Parham Park in the spring of 1748. Parham Park was owned by Sir Cecil Bishopp, 6th Baronet.