The historical facts behind the Turpin legend are well documented, and it is equally clear when, and by whom, the popular image was created. Dick Turpin was a butcher’s son, born in Hempstead, Essex, in 1705. He joined a group of violent criminals active on the outskirts of London in 1734. Well armed, they would break into a house, and threaten, beat up, or burn the occupants until they handed over their money. In 1735, most of the group were captured, and hanged or transported. Turpin remained at large, but turned to a different crime, namely highway robbery. On 1 May 1737, in Whitechapel, he accidentally shot one of his own comrades while firing at a man whose horse he had stolen; he then hid in Epping Forest, who killed a man who tried to arrest him.
Using the alias ‘John Palmer’, Turpin moved to Lincolnshire, then to Essex, and finally to Yorkshire. In October 1738, ‘Palmer’ was arrested for threatening to shoot a man during a quarrel, and trading in stolen horses. Horse theft was a capital crime, so he was imprisoned in York Castle to await trial. His real identity was still unknown, but by sheer chance he was identified by someone who recognized his handwriting. On 22 March 1739, Turpin was found guilty of horse-stealing and condemned to death; if he had been acquitted, he would have been transferred to London to meet further charges.
Once Turpin’s identity was known, his notoriety drew crowds to York Castle, where, as the contemporary account records, ‘he continu’d his mirthful humour to the last, spending his time in joking, drinking, and telling stories’. On the day of his execution he put up a equally good show. Well dressed, and ‘bowing to spectators as he passed’, he was driven in a cart to the gallows. He mounted the ladder boldly, declaring that he was indeed guilty of the horse thefts, and also of the murder in Epping Forest and various other robberies. Finally he ‘threw himself off the ladder and expired directly’, showing ‘as much intrepidity and unconcern as if he had been taking horse to go on a journey’.
It was a gallant end to a nasty career, suitable for a legendary hero. Yet Turpin only achieved this status almost a hundred years later, thanks to Harrion Ainsworth’s novel Rookwood (1834). Ainsworth presented highwaymen in general, and Turpin in particular, as romantic, fearless, and gentlemanly. He also virtually invented the most famous episode in the Turpin legend: the hero’s non-stop ride from London to York on Black Bess, and her pathetic death at the very gates of the city. His only sources were a bare mention in a ballad published in 1825 of Turpin riding ‘his black mare Bess’ on Hounslow Heath, and the older tradition of a highwayman riding at breakneck speed from Gad’s Hill, Kent to York, to establish an alibi.
Ainsworth’s fiction was soon mistaken for fact, spawning a host of local legends. By 1911, Ainworth’s biographer S. M. Ellis wrote:
All along the great North Road the legend is truth; every village through which the highwayman galloped (in the imagination of Ainsworth) during that famous ride has its own peculiar tale and relic of Turpin’s feat. From Tottenham to Ware – from Huntington to Stamford – from Newark to York – a volume of Turpinian anecdotes can be collected from innkeepers to ostlers; here, you may learn how Turpin refreshed his mare with strong ale and see the very tankard he used; and there, how he leaped the five-bar toll-gate!
The Spaniards in Hampstead goes further, claiming that he was born there, watched passing coaches from an upstairs room, stabled Black Bess in a nearby toll house, and had an escape tunnel to another inn. The latest scholar to examine the Turpin story, James Sharpe, comments:
There are, indeed, so many pubs alleging Turpin associations that if all their claims were true, the career of England’s most famous highwayman would have been passed in a combination of perpetual motion and a permanent alcoholic haze.
See also: Holme, Loughton, Redbourne, Sally Rainbow’s Dell, Tinwell, Woughton-on-the-Green.