Dick Turpin, the infamous 18th-century highwayman, has long been a fixture of English folklore – a dashing, gentlemanly rogue who robbed from the rich and charmed the ladies with his daring exploits. But the real Richard Turpin was a far cry from this romanticized image. In reality, he was a brutally violent criminal, whose viciousness was eclipsed only by his audacity.
From Butcher‘s Apprentice to Ruthless Outlaw
Born in 1705 in the village of Hempstead, Essex, Richard "Dick" Turpin seemed destined for a mundane life. The son of a butcher and innkeeper, young Dick apprenticed in his father‘s trade in London‘s Whitechapel district. He even married Elizabeth Millington and opened his own butcher shop in the mid-1720s.
But when business was slow, Turpin‘s dark side emerged. He began stealing cattle and hiding out in the untamed wilds of rural Essex. There, he graduated to robbing smugglers on the East Anglian coast, even impersonating a tax collector to further his ill-gotten gains.
Turpin‘s criminal activities escalated when he fell in with the notorious Essex Gang (also known as the Gregory Gang), a band of deer poachers-turned-housebreakers who needed Turpin‘s butchering skills to dispose of their kills. By 1735, Turpin was a core member of the gang as they launched a spree of ruthlessly violent home invasions across northeast London.
"The Essex Gang": A Reign of Terror
The Essex Gang‘s modus operandi was brutality, pure and simple. In February 1735, they savagely attacked an elderly farmer, beating him senseless and dragging him around his home as they demanded money. They even emptied a boiling kettle over the man‘s head to torture him into compliance. In the same raid, one of the gang members dragged a maidservant upstairs and raped her.
This was no isolated incident. Turpin himself was known for his singular viciousness, once holding a landlady over a roaring fireplace until she revealed the hiding place of her life savings. On another occasion, after a particularly brutal home invasion in Marylebone, a £50 bounty (over £8,000 today) was placed on the gang‘s heads.
| Essex Gang Raid | Date | Location | Notable Crimes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Elderly Farmer | Feb 1735 | Unknown | Brutal beating, torture with boiling water, rape of maidservant |
| Marylebone Raid | Unknown | Marylebone, London | Extreme violence, £50 bounty offered for gang‘s capture |
| Turpin‘s Fireplace Torture | Unknown | Unknown | Holding landlady over fire until she revealed savings |
Faced with mounting pressure from authorities, the Essex Gang was forced to disperse in 1735. But for Dick Turpin, this was merely the beginning of his criminal career.
Highway Robbery and the "Gentleman Highwayman"
With his old gang scattered, Turpin turned to the time-honored tradition of highway robbery. In a twist of fate, his first attempted victim was none other than Matthew King, the self-styled "Gentleman Highwayman" renowned for his courtly manners and fine attire.
Rather than fall victim to the upstart Turpin, King shrewdly took the young ruffian under his wing. The duo became the scourge of the London-Cambridge road, relieving travelers of their coin at gunpoint.
Their partnership was short-lived, however. King was mortally wounded in a botched horse theft, leaving Turpin to continue his highway depredations alone. And continue he did, with increasingly reckless abandon.
Murder, Mayhem, and Life on the Lam
Dick Turpin‘s slide into murderous nihilism reached its nadir in 1737, when he gunned down a servant named Thomas Morris in cold blood. Morris had made the mistake of trying to apprehend the fugitive Turpin in Epping Forest. He paid for this temerity with his life.
Wanted posters bearing Turpin‘s name and description began springing up across England, alongside a staggering £200 reward for his capture (over £30,000 in today‘s money). With the law closing in, Turpin was forced into a desperate life on the run.
Respectable Rogue: Turpin‘s Double Life as John Palmer
Fleeing to the northern county of Yorkshire, Turpin assumed the alias of "John Palmer," a respectable horse dealer and man about town. Incredibly, he managed to ingratiate himself with the local gentry, riding to hounds and living a life of ill-gotten luxury.
But Turpin‘s hair-trigger temper betrayed him in 1738, when he drunkenly shot a gamecock after a hunting expedition. When an associate noted the rashness of his action, Turpin flew into a rage, threatening to shoot the man as well.
Arrested and hauled before a local magistrate, Turpin gave his "John Palmer" alias and was duly imprisoned for the relatively minor offense. He might have dodged the hangman‘s noose entirely, had a letter to his brother-in-law asking for character references not fallen into the hands of his former schoolteacher, James Smith.
Smith recognized Turpin‘s handwriting at once. The jig was up, and Turpin was destined for the gallows.
"Laughing in the Face of Death": Turpin‘s Macabre Final Act
Sentenced to death in 1739, an unrepentant Dick Turpin was determined to turn his execution into a defiant piece of gallows theater. He paid five unemployed men to act as "mourners," ordered a fine new frock coat for the occasion, and had himself driven through the streets of York in an open cart, bowing to the crowds.
At the scaffold, Turpin bantered with his executioner – a convicted highwayman himself, offered a pardon in exchange for his services. Then, with a final jaunty quip, Turpin leaped off the ladder and into legend, ending his life on his own terms.
The story might have ended there, had Turpin‘s corpse not been snatched from its fresh grave, likely by body-snatchers hoping to sell it off for medical dissection. An angry mob managed to retrieve the notorious outlaw‘s earthly remains and reinter them under a thick layer of quicklime, ensuring he would not rise again.
The Making of a Legend: Turpin‘s Posthumous Fame
Ironically, it was in death that Dick Turpin‘s fictitious reputation as a dashing, noble rogue began to take shape. Beginning with 1739‘s sensationalized "penny dreadful" pamphlet, The Genuine History of the Life of Richard Turpin, the brutal reality of Turpin‘s life was gradually papered over with romanticized myth.
Subsequent novels, ballads, and poems further burnished the Turpin legend, recasting the vicious killer as a courtly, square-jawed hero. None was more influential than William Harrison Ainsworth‘s 1834 novel Rockwood, which grafted the tale of a legendary 200-mile, one-day ride from London to York onto Turpin‘s biography.
This epic feat – never attempted or even mentioned during the highwayman‘s lifetime – became the keystone of the Turpin mythos, cementing his image as a bold and daring adventurer thumbing his nose at authority.
The Enduring Allure of the Highwayman Hero
So how did such a brutally savage criminal become one of England‘s most enduringly popular folk heroes? The answer lies in the public‘s eternal fascination with the figure of the romantic outlaw.
Like Robin Hood before him and Jesse James or Bonnie and Clyde in later centuries, Dick Turpin offered a vicarious thrill to those chafing under the strictures of polite society. His devil-may-care attitude, sartorial flair, and daring exploits provided a fantasy outlet for the law-abiding masses.
Never mind that the real Turpin was a thuggish rapist and murderer. In the popular imagination – as stoked by the pens of balladeers and hack novelists – he became an avatar of roguish rebellion, sticking it to the man with a wink and a smile.
This romanticized image of Turpin persists to the present day, far outliving the grim reality of his crimes. Immortalized in everything from children‘s storybooks to television dramas, Turpin has become the archetypal highwayman hero, the "Prince of the Road" whose legend eclipses his own brutal life and ignominious death.
A Rogue‘s Legacy
The true story of Dick Turpin – of a violent criminal refashioned into a dashing antihero through the alchemy of folklore and popular fiction – stands as a cautionary tale. It reminds us of the human tendency to romanticize even the most reprehensible figures, blurring the lines between fact and legend.
But perhaps more than anything, the enduring myth of Dick Turpin speaks to the abiding allure of the outlaw archetype. In a world bound by rules and conventions, there will always be a place in the collective imagination for the rogue who breaks them with style – even if the reality is far darker than the dream.
