DICK TURPIN: THE HIGHWAYMAN (1730)

LOCATION: England

PERPETRATORs: Turpin and his criminal associates

MOTIVATION: Murder, robbery

BACKGROUND: 

The criminal career of Dick Turpin spanned about seven or eight years, beginning in the early 1730's and ending on April 7, 1739, when he was hanged in the English city of York after being convicted of horse theft.

He would become much more famous after his death as a consequence of the publication of numerous accounts of his life, beginning within days of his execution when Richard Bayes, elaborating some details and inventing others to present Turpin as a heroic figure, in the process establishing the character of the dashing highwayman.

Turpin began as a petty criminal in the English county of Essex before graduating to more serious crimes, including burglary, armed robbery, and murder, with little to suggest that he bore any resemblance to a later depictions of him as being a "knight of the road".

He followed his father as a butcher and it would appear that this line of business first brought him into contact with the criminal gang he would later join.

Over the course of 1734, the gang became more ambitious staging raids against isolated farms in Essex and in other places  around London.

A reward of £50 was issued for information, leading to the arrest of three members of the gang.

By the summer of 1735, all of them, with the exception of Turpin and one other, Thomas Rowden, had been caught, put on trial, and either executed or transported to the American colonies.

The robberies continued over the course of the following months until Rowden was arrested towards the end of 1735.

After losing his partner, Turpin disappeared from the view for more than a year, perhaps laying low to avoid arrest himself or living under an assumed name without committing any crimes that could be traced back to him. In February 1738 he remerged in the company of another man sometimes identified as the well-known highwayman Tom King and sometimes as his younger brother Matthew King.

Rather than being taken to either Essex or London to face charges of murden and highway robbery, Turpin remained in York to stand trial for horse theft. The trial occurred on March 22, 1739, at the York Assizes.

The sentence was carried out on April 7 in front of a large crowd at York racecourse. The account goes on to say that it took five minutes for him to die and then his body left hanging for several hours to make sure he was dead.

OUTCOME: The death of the highway man and the birth of a legend.