Of all the highway robbers, it is probably Dick Turpin who has the greatest number of legends, myths and misunderstandings attached to his name. These developed even when he was alive because he seemed the very embodiment of the dashing highwayman and later when he became a hero in literary fiction. There are what seem to be unimpeachable facts such as the place and date of his birth and his death, but a caveat should be issued for most of the other details of his life that are outlined below.
Turpin was born, or at least baptised, at Hempstead in Essex, not far from Saffron Walden, in 1705 and the parish register confirms his baptism. The village is of more than national interest because the parish church contains a number of monuments to the Harvey family, including William Harvey, 1578–1657, who discovered the circulation of the blood. Turpin’s father was landlord of what is now The Rose and Crown in the village, among the oldest continuously licensed pubs in Britain. He was also a butcher and he insisted on his son gaining at least a rudimentary education. Dick was taught to read and write and this was to prove significant at a later and extremely crucial time in his life. Turpin completed an apprenticeship in the butchery trade, at either Whitechapel, Waltham Abbey in Hertfordshire or Thaxted in Essex. He was then twenty-one and was soon to marry a young lady whose name in some accounts is given as Rose Palmer and in others as Elizabeth Millington. She was the daughter of a publican who ran The Rose and Crown at Enfield. This conflicting information is typical of the confusion surrounding Turpin’s life.
Turpin made a promising start in the butchery trade and gained an enviable reputation for the quality of his meat. His problem was that he insisted on enjoying the good things of life although he was unable to afford them. Consequently, he quickly got into serious debt. Soon after he had opened up his business there was an outbreak of sheep rustling in the neighbourhood and a local farmer traced two of his missing beasts through Turpin’s abattoir to a tannery at Waltham Abbey. This is hardly surprising because Turpin had found that producing veal cutlets, dressing chump chops and being polite to customers who clearly despised tradesmen like him was no kind of occupation for a young man who craved excitement and an easy route to wealth. It had occurred to him that the best way of cutting the costs of his business would be to cut out the middleman and rustle or steal the raw material for his butchery business. Rather than staying to face the consequences, however, Turpin left the district knowing that what had happened had ended his career in the butchery trade.
Turpin headed for the Essex coast, and was supported by his wife until he began to make some money through his involvement in a smuggling gang. It seems that whatever he earned was never enough to keep him in the lifestyle to which he aspired and so, totally lacking scruples, he graduated to robbing his supposed colleagues by masquerading as a Revenue Officer. His efforts in this direction were unappreciated by both the Revenue Service and the smuggling fraternity and in due course he wisely decided to decamp. He was probably lucky to leave the area alive and headed for Waltham Forest, now known as Epping Forest. At that time this area was a heavily wooded, ill-frequented and remote district which was close enough to London to offer rich criminal pickings and act as a refuge for a variety of miscreants whose activities had placed them outside the law.
Here Turpin joined a gang of deer-rustlers generally known as ‘Gregory’s Gang’ after their leader. Turpin’s expertise in butchery proved invaluable to the gang because it made sense to cut up the carcasses before taking them to London where there were shady game dealers prepared to buy but ask no questions. Eventually, the gang branched out and started breaking into churches, stealing chalices, patens and other pieces of church plate, and housebreaking. They also brutally assaulted and even raped the occupants and wantonly destroyed their property. When the victims were slow to reveal the location of their valuables, the gang jogged their memories with casual torture. A well-known picture shows a robber placing an old woman on a fire and uttering the immortal words, ‘God damn your blood, you old bitch, if you won’t tell us I’ll set your arse on the grate.’ The robber is supposed to have been Turpin but there is no evidence that he was any more brutal than other gang members. It is also claimed that they poured boiling water over an old man to force him to reveal where he kept his money.
‘Gregory’s Gang’ acquired a well-deserved reputation for exceptional nastiness and a large reward was offered for information leading to their apprehension. This announcement was spiced with the tempting offer of a free pardon for any gang member prepared to turn King’s evidence. Carousing one evening in a Westminster tavern, some gang members were suddenly set upon by the authorities and Gregory and the others were caught. It is said that Turpin evaded capture by jumping out of an upstairs window and that he landed astride his waiting horse before galloping off pell-mell to safety. Turpin lived to see most of his companions hanged at Tyburn after one of the gang turned King’s evidence. He managed to evade the authorities but had a high price on his head.
This experience provided Turpin with a salutary lesson and he resolved to stop working as part of a large gang. He teamed up with another survivor of ‘Gregory’s Gang’, known as ‘Rowden the Pewterer’ and they took to the road as highwaymen. In 1735 they carried out several bold daylight robberies around Wandsworth, Barnes and Putney and in the Blackheath area. The robberies ascribed to Turpin and Rowden certainly carried the stamp of professionalism. They employed no unnecessary violence and they forced their victims to dismount, removing the bridles from their horses and turning the animals loose so that their victims had some distance to walk before they could raise the alarm. They seem to have worked well together but it appears that Rowden left for pastures new, although it is not known why, and then reports started coming in of ‘Turpin the Butcher’, as he became known, holding up travellers single-handed in the Twickenham area. It is worth mentioning that few highwaymen wore the little fancy dress black masks over their eyes with which they are often portrayed in popular fiction. They usually sported large pieces of dark cloth covering the lower parts of their faces and tied at the back of their necks. With their large-brimmed riding hats on, little of their faces could be seen. Their eyes, their voices, their general appearance and their mannerisms might give them away, however.
An event soon occurred that was the very stuff of legend. One evening Turpin was lurking around the Cambridge road out of London when he sighted a solitary traveller approaching on a fine horse and he promptly ordered him to stand and deliver. To his amazement the stranger was not in the least taken aback and actually called on him to do precisely the same. It is said that the stranger laughed uproariously on being challenged and declared: ‘What, dog eat dog? Come, come, Brother Turpin, if you don’t know me, I know you well, and shall be glad of your company.’ This is how Turpin is said to have made the acquaintance of Tom King, himself a highwayman of some notoriety. The meeting led to one of the best-known partnerships among highwaymen. Instead of engaging in a shoot-out, each man obviously liked the cut of the other’s jib and they got on well from the start. Turpin proved a willing pupil for the lessons that the more experienced King could teach him about the techniques of the highwayman. They decided to make a hideaway in a cave in the depths of Epping Forest to the north-east of London which would, however, be close to a number of highways that offered the potential for rich pickings. Turpin’s wife brought food and other necessities to their secret lair. Soon Turpin and King were annoying the authorities around London with a series of audacious and lucrative robberies.
It was inevitable that Turpin’s and King’s hideaway would not remain secret for long. On several occasions posses chased them into the forest but did not manage to locate their hiding place. The Forest was much larger then than now and the cave was cunningly hidden, but they were well aware that the cave might be discovered. They lured posses away from the area on wild-goose chases and even, when the ground was soft and hoofprints could have given them away, rode their horses randomly long distances through the mud creating a spoor that was incomprehensible to any trackers. However, the price on the heads of both Turpin and King tempted a keeper in Epping Forest and an accomplice to try to capture them. Turpin was alone when the bounty hunters crept up on the cave, but he responded quickly, however, and shot and killed one of them. The price on Turpin’s head went up again – he was now worth £200. He decided to evacuate the cave, although not before he had spent an uncomfortable time high up in a tree while a pack of bloodhounds roamed the forest floor trying vainly to sniff him out. The newspapers made great play of this episode and of Turpin’s audacious and continuing villainy.
The partnership of Turpin and King was highly successful and it is said that they only ever had one row. This occurred at Bungay in Suffolk when they came across two young women who had just sold a load of corn for £14. For Turpin the idea of stealing this money appealed strongly because it was so simple. However, King was known for his gallantry and he insisted that these young women be allowed to proceed unmolested. Nevertheless, Turpin lagged behind and proceeded to rob the hapless girls. King found out and this episode caused a rift between the two men that took some time to heal. Eventually the friendship was restored and Turpin and King went on to many other adventures, some of which illustrate the hazards of the highwayman’s life. Near Epping one afternoon they apprehended a private coach. The gentleman to whom the coach belonged was very aware of the dangers of highwaymen in this district and had taken the wise precaution of equipping himself with a range of firearms, all loaded, cocked and ready to fire. As Turpin came alongside the coach, he peered in while the man poked the barrel out of the window and fired at point-blank range. Luckily for Turpin the powder merely flashed in the pan. An enraged Turpin then fired blindly into the dim inner recesses of the coach. Fate that day was impartial – at least his weapon actually fired but the ball passed right though the vehicle between the plucky owner and his wife. This episode clearly disconcerted King and Turpin who then rode off empty handed.
The Turpin and King partnership came to an abrupt and unexpected end in May 1737. Turpin, King and an associate named Potter were riding into London and as they were nearing The Green Man at Epping found that Turpin’s horse was showing signs of discomfort. A rider came towards them, a Mr Major, astride a splendid horse called ‘Whitestockings’. Turpin told him to dismount and hand the beast over, which was foolhardy because ‘Whitestockings’ was a very well-known steeplechaser of distinctive appearance. He compounded the misjudgment by also appropriating Major’s riding whip, which bore his name. A crestfallen Major then went to The Green Man and told the landlord, a Mr Boyes or Bayes, what had happened. Boyes saw the stamp of Turpin on this escapade and advised Major to have some handbills printed and circulated offering a handsome reward for the recovery of the horse. A few days later, Boyes heard that ‘Whitestockings’ had been seen in stables attached to The Red Lion in Whitechapel. Boyes, who had some scores of his own to settle with Turpin, galloped off hotfoot to Whitechapel where he recognised the horse. He summoned a constable and they hid away to watch who came to reclaim ‘Whitestockings’. A man turned up and they seized him but it was not one of the trio they were looking for. It was Matthew King, Tom’s brother who, despite the fact that he was brandishing Major’s whip, said he knew nothing about the horse having been stolen and had merely been told to fetch it. Matthew, who was visibly quaking in his boots, could not cope with this totally unexpected turn of events and was easily persuaded to lead Boyes and the constable to where they could find Turpin and the others.
What happened next is extremely unclear, there being so many varying accounts. Apparently, Boyes spotted King who in turn recognised the landlord and fired at him. Boyes then rode up to King who called on Turpin to shoot him. Turpin loosed off a shot but somehow he managed to miss Boyes and hit his friend Tom King instead, injuring him mortally. Some accounts say that it was Matthew King who was hit by Turpin’s bullet. Whoever it was that Turpin had shot, it seems that he was full of contrition and soon afterwards he told a friendly publican that all this unpleasantness was the fault of Boyes who had caused him to lose the best companion he ever had. Other accounts say that Tom survived, but there is no record of Tom King being hanged and it seems unlikely that he would have emerged unscathed and simply faded away. It has even been suggested that Boyes killed King in a fight in prison.
Turpin got away and one account says that he was so appalled by what had happened that he retired to the country and took a smallholding. Saddened and chastened as he must have been by the loss of his companion, Turpin nevertheless was quickly on the road again and carrying out a series of audacious robberies that led to an even greater sum being placed on his head. This made life extremely hazardous for Turpin because his appearance was well known and he presented a tempting prize to those who wanted to get rich quickly by alerting the authorities to his whereabouts. He certainly had some close shaves. He took lodgings in London but someone unknown must have informed on him. The authorities broke into the house and the landlady who was loyal to him managed to delay them long enough to enable Turpin, who had been asleep, to throw on a few clothes, climb out of an upstairs window and make his way over the rooftops and down to safety in the street. It was about this time, when highway robbery was probably at its peak, that Turpin gained his reputation as something of a ‘Scarlet Pimpernel’. He apparently managed to carry out robberies in two or more places at the same time and yet to outwit the most ingenious efforts made by the authorities to bring him to justice. Turpin must have chuckled when he read newspaper accounts of his arrest and imprisonment awaiting trial. Then, when his depredations were at their height and the mere mention of his name was enough to cause nervous travellers to come out in goose pimples, Turpin suddenly disappeared.
Rumours were rife and as usual those who ventured most knew least. He was reported stealing horses and sheep near Long Sutton in Lincolnshire where someone answering his description narrowly missed arrest. Then the scenario shifts to the East Riding of Yorkshire around Beverley and a certain John Palmer who had moved into the area, from Lincolnshire it was said. He was in business as a horse-dealer, the eighteenth-century equivalent of a second-hand car-dealer, but he always seemed to have plenty of money. He affected the style of a country gentleman, hobnobbing with the local gentry, but there were those who felt that he did not quite fit in socially. These intuitions were startlingly confirmed in October 1738 when Palmer, returning with a party from a shoot, suddenly shot his landlord’s gamecock when it strutted across the road in front of his horse. Another version of the story says that he stole the gamecock. Now a gamecock was no mere farmyard fowl but an asset that could bring its owner considerable wealth at a time when cockfighting had never been more popular. Palmer’s action seemed entirely pointless and provocative and when another member of the party pointed this out, Palmer boorishly threatened to shoot him too.
A complaint was made to the local magistrate and Palmer was arrested. He was bailed to appear at the next quarter sessions but he could not provide the necessary surety from any of the local gentry so he was placed in the local house of correction pending further investigations. These revealed that Palmer was wanted elsewhere in Yorkshire and also in Lincolnshire for a string of offences involving the rustling of livestock, especially horses, but also that nothing whatever seemed to be known about his life before he arrived in the county. Clearly there were questions about Palmer that needed answering and he was therefore transferred to the gaol at York Castle. The mysteries surrounding Palmer deepened when a witness came forward to say that Palmer had recently shown him a cache of firearms that included many of the types favoured by highwaymen. Some were beginning to say that there might be a connection between Palmer and the notorious Turpin who had so unexpectedly and completely disappeared. He resided in the gaol for a few months during which time he wrote to his brother or his brother-in-law, asking him to act as a character witness at the forthcoming trial, and this letter proved to be his undoing. He omitted to pay the postage and his relation, not recognising the handwriting, refused to pay. Back the letter went to the local post office at Hempstead, Turpin’s parish of origin where, by the faintest of chances, it was recognised by the very person who had taught him his letters twenty or more years earlier, a schoolmaster named John Smith. It can only be supposed that the highwayman had very distinctive handwriting and that Smith was both sure of himself and anxious to secure the reward money. A local magistrate was alerted and things moved very quickly.
Here was the country’s most notorious highwayman incarcerated in York Prison for the mundane crime of horse stealing. The offence was a capital one, however, and upon being found guilty, Turpin was sentenced to death. Ancient proverbs about it being as well to be hanged for a sheep as for a lamb come to mind at this point but here in real life was Turpin the highwayman about to be executed for the theft of a horse. The authorities could scarcely believe their luck on discovering that the prisoner Palmer was in fact the notorious Turpin. He conducted himself with admirable sang-froid, both in his cell, where he had a large number of visitors who enjoyed wining, dining and joking with him, and during his last moments on the scaffold. A chaplain in the prison wrote of Turpin: ‘He seemed to pay but little regard to the serious remonstrances and admonitions of the reverend gentlemen who attended him, and whatever remorse he had on his conscience for his villainies, he kept them to himself.’ Determined to impress, Turpin bought an entire new suit of fustian and a pair of expensive new shoes for the occasion and paid five mourners, sporting black hatbands and mourning gloves, to follow his cart to the gallows. He was executed at the Knavesmire, the traditional place where felons were executed just outside York, on 7 April 1739, at the age of thirty-three. He demonstrated his courage by chatting genially with the hangman and the crowd, although close eyewitnesses said that they distinctly saw his right knee tremble. He calmly and quietly took the option of throwing himself off the ladder, expiring within minutes.
Turpin’s body was taken first of all to The Blue Boar Inn in Castlegate, York, and the next day it was buried at St George’s Church. An attempt was made to disinter the body and sell it to teachers of anatomy and surgery at some distant medical school but the villains were seen and chased and, becoming hard-pressed, they unceremoniously dumped Turpin’s uncomplaining corpse in a handy back garden. The cadaver was recovered and restored to its grave but then covered in quicklime. This may sound disrespectful but would have had the very practical effect of rendering it useless to any other ‘resurrection-men’.
The rumbustious, swashbuckling Turpin was the hero of numerous legends and ballads. The aura of romance that surrounds him is largely the product of fiction, especially the pen of Harrison Ainsworth, a now largely forgotten but once widely read novelist. His first novel Rookwood, published in 1824, gave a very fanciful and imaginative account with highly distinctive illustrations by George Cruikshank of Turpin’s activities, including his headlong gallop from London to York on ‘Black Bess’ in order to establish an alibi. This ride never took place but the myths and fantasies about Turpin had appeared and multiplied well before Ainsworth created his own version of events. Here was the dashing, debonair, devil-may-care highwayman of whom fantasies and legends are made and it helped that he was also possibly the most successful of all the highwaymen, evading attempts to capture him for so many years. He was resourceful and he was brave and legend has it that single-handed he simultaneously stopped and robbed two coaches, which between them contained no less than twenty passengers. With a high price on his head, there were few he could trust but it says something about Turpin that nobody effectively betrayed him while he was at liberty. This may have been because they were scared of the consequences but it could be because he was actually respected, although it is difficult to identify anything about him that is particularly admirable.
In real life Dick Turpin seems to have been a vicious, highly able horse-thief, highway robber and murderer to whom gallantry and concern for his victims was unknown. He was tall by the standards of the time and strongly built and his facial appearance was not helped by the fact he was severely pockmarked. It is unlikely that Turpin bandied witticisms with his victims or that he even had a roguish twinkle in his eye, and he does not seem to have allowed his eye to rove in a predatory way over the female sex in the fashion that we often associate with highwaymen.
Quite what Turpin’s appeal was is difficult to define. However, there is scarcely an ancient inn on the roads out of London to the east, west or north that does not have its fables about Turpin, who either ate, drank or slept there or used the place as his headquarters. There are innumerable hostelries that claim that Turpin stopped off there briefly while under close pursuit to have his horse’s shoes reshod so that they pointed backwards. Turpin is then supposed to have hurried away on the redoubtable ‘Black Bess’, giving his pursuers the slip as they set off eagerly following the hoof-marks that had led them there in the first place. Never was there a better example of the willing suspension of disbelief. The wide dispersal and frequent occurrence of this particular story should not be taken as evidence of its authenticity.
Turpin’s resting place can be viewed in the churchyard of St George in York but it seems that his spirit still roams free. Many sites along the Great North Road report his tricorn-hatted, caped and spurred figure astride the ever-faithful ‘Black Bess’, lurking hopefully by the roadside waiting for well-heeled travellers. There are those who swear that he regularly rides a phantom horse down Traps Hill in Essex, not far from Epping Forest. Clinging on to Turpin’s form, literally like grim death, is a spectral woman who he is said to have tortured and murdered for her money.
It is probable that Turpin never owned a horse called ‘Black Bess’ and it is almost definite that he did not make the dash between London and York to create an alibi. This is often ascribed to William Nevison (see pp. 81–2) but it could have been carried out by a highwayman named Harris. He was recognised while carrying out a robbery although this time the location was somewhere in Surrey. He likewise rode to York and made his way to a public bowling green where he made a point of asking a number of gentlemen for the time, saying that he wanted to check whether his own timepiece was accurate. In his case the court was unimpressed and things looked bad for Harris until a wealthy and influential aristocrat interceded on his behalf. Harris lived happily ever after, first of all setting up a fencing school and then having the good fortune to marry a wealthy heiress. This story bears too many similarities to those of Nevison and Turpin to make it entirely credible. The inclusion of the sympathetic aristocrat and the heiress stretch the plausibility even further.
Ainsworth makes the most of the ride to York, creating a swashbuckling and, eventually, tear-jerking episode. Turpin rides hell-for-leather out of London and, remarkably, brandishing his pistols in his hands and gripping the bridle at the same time, clears the Hornsey Tollgate in one mighty, inspired bound. Turpin careers up the Great North Road calling in a number of inns en route. Dramatically, he reaches York, 196 miles from London, just as the Minster bells sound the hour of six when, to his total consternation, tragedy strikes. His faithful steed has literally reached her journey’s end – ‘Black Bess’ collapses with exhaustion and expires quickly, but not before Turpin, beside himself with sorrow, looks lovingly into her glazing-over eyes and reverentially kisses her foam-flecked lips. He then delivers a heartfelt, deeply touching valediction for the horse and the benefit of any passers-by who cared to listen. With some difficulty the mourning Turpin is separated from his beloved mount by a gypsy who agrees to dispose of the horse’s inert form. Then our hero suddenly remembers why he has put himself and his horse to so much trouble. Turpin rushes off breathlessly to the bowling green where he ensures that he is seen by as many of York’s leading citizens as possible.
Any resemblance between this account and historical actuality is of course purely coincidental. Does it matter? Ainsworth claimed that he wrote the whole story of the ride to York, amounting to nearly 20,000 words, in a day and a night. This is not easy to believe but he was a novelist, not a historian and people flocked in tens of thousands to buy, read and reread what at the time was considered to be an exciting adventure story. It would have been churlish to point out how unlikely it is that such a journey could have been performed by just one horse in that length of time.
The legendary Turpin was a handsome highwayman of the gentlemanly kind. Brave, almost buccaneering, he was admired for his exploits in cocking a snook at authority and robbing the rich. Destitute, frail widows and farm labourers down on their luck, so it was averred, had nothing to fear from this ‘gentleman of the road’. In fact, when appealed to, he might prove only too happy to fling the odd coin their way. This kind of behaviour almost certainly bore no resemblance to the activities of the real Turpin. However, if a now largely forgotten Victorian novelist chose to take Turpin’s story and weave a tale based on a number of existing legends, producing a bestselling novel, then the historian is provided with many interesting insights into the Victorian interpretation of the man who was probably the most famous highway robber in British history.