Dick Turpin

Lore & Background

Turpin was born at the Blue Bell Inn in Hempstead, Essex, the fifth of six children to John Turpin and Mary Elizabeth Parmenter. He was baptised on 21 September 1705. His father was a butcher and innkeeper. Several stories suggest Turpin may have followed his father into these trades; one hints he was apprenticed to a butcher in Whitechapel, another that he ran his own butcher's shop in Thaxted. Testimony from his trial in 1739 suggests he had a rudimentary education and that around 1725 he married Elizabeth Millington. After his apprenticeship they moved to Buckhurst Hill, Essex, where Turpin opened a butcher's shop. Turpin most likely became involved with the Essex gang of deer thieves in the early 1730s. The gang, sometimes called the Gregory Gang, included Samuel Gregory, his brothers Jeremiah and Jasper, Joseph Rose, Mary Brazier, John Jones, Thomas Rowden, and John Wheeler. By summer 1734 Turpin was a close associate. The gang moved from deer poaching to home invasions, raiding homes in Woodford, Chingford, Barking, Charlton, Croydon, Loughton, Edgware, and Marylebone. During the Edgware robbery on 4 February 1735, Turpin beat the 70-year-old farmer Joseph Lawrence's bare buttocks with his pistols, badly bruising him, and other gang members beat him around the head. They emptied a kettle of water over his head, forced him to sit bare-buttocked on the fire, and pulled him around the house by his nose and hair. Gregory took one of the maidservants upstairs and raped her. The gang escaped with less than £30. Turpin's involvement in highway robbery followed the arrest of other gang members in 1735.

Reader's Guide

Dick Turpin became the subject of legend after his execution, romanticised as dashing and heroic in English ballads and popular theatre of the 18th and 19th centuries and in film and television of the 20th century. His fictional 200-mile overnight ride from London to York on his horse Black Bess, invented by William Harrison Ainsworth nearly a century after Turpin's death, cemented his popular image as a daring highwayman. In reality, Turpin was a violent criminal involved in deer poaching, burglary, horse theft, and murder. He was hanged at Knavesmire on 7 April 1739 after being found guilty on two charges of horse theft. His true identity was revealed when a letter he wrote from prison to his brother-in-law fell into the hands of the authorities. The romanticisation of Turpin's life overshadows the brutality of his crimes, illustrating how historical figures can be transformed by folklore and popular culture.

Did You Know?

• Turpin was baptised on 21 September 1705 in Hempstead, Essex, the fifth of six children to John Turpin and Mary Elizabeth Parmenter.
• During the Edgware robbery on 4 February 1735, Turpin beat the 70-year-old farmer Joseph Lawrence's bare buttocks with his pistols, and the gang escaped with less than £30.
• Turpin's true identity was revealed when a letter he wrote from prison to his brother-in-law fell into the hands of the authorities.
• The fictional 200-mile overnight ride from London to York on his horse Black Bess was invented by Victorian novelist William Harrison Ainsworth nearly 100 years after Turpin's death.
• Turpin was hanged at Knavesmire on 7 April 1739 after being found guilty on two charges of horse theft.

From Butcher's Son to Criminal

Richard Turpin entered the world at the Blue Bell Inn in Hempstead, Essex, the fifth of six children born to John Turpin and Mary Elizabeth Parmenter. His baptism took place on 21 September 1705 in the same parish where his parents had wed more than a decade earlier. His father worked as both a butcher and an innkeeper, and several accounts suggest young Dick followed in those footsteps. One tradition holds that he served as a teenager's apprentice to a butcher in Whitechapel, while another claims he operated his own meat shop in Thaxted. Around 1725, he married Elizabeth Millington, and the couple eventually relocated north to Buckhurst Hill, where Turpin set up a butcher's shop of his own. Testimony recorded at his 1739 trial indicated he possessed only a rudimentary education. This seemingly unremarkable provincial life—rooted in trade, family, and a small Essex village—would soon give way to a far darker trajectory, as the young butcher drew into the orbit of one of the era's most notorious criminal enterprises.

The Gregory Gang and the Waltham Forest

In the early 1730s, Turpin's world intersected with a gang of deer thieves operating in the Royal Forest of Waltham, a region where poaching had long been endemic. The 1723 Black Act, which criminalised the blackening of faces while in the forests, had been enacted to combat the problem, yet by 1731 seven verderers felt compelled to lodge a formal affidavit with the Duke of Newcastle, Secretary of State, expressing alarm at the escalating activity. The government responded with a £10 reward for identifying the thieves, later raising it to £50 in 1733 after incidents including a threatened murder of a forest keeper and his family. The gang—often called the Gregory Gang after Samuel Gregory and his brothers—needed local contacts to dispose of stolen deer, and a young butcher trading in the area was a natural fit. By summer 1734, Turpin had become a close associate of the group, and he may have traded his butchery for the landlordship of a public house at Clay Hill. As the gang's fortunes shifted in late 1734, its members turned from poaching to a string of armed home robberies across Essex, with Turpin present at several of the most violent raids.

Flight, Murder, and the Fall of John Palmer

After the arrest of his gang's other members in 1735, Turpin vanished from public view by year's end. He reappeared in 1737 with two new accomplices, but the partnership turned deadly when he may have accidentally shot and killed one of them. Fleeing the scene, Turpin then killed a man who attempted to seize him. He crossed into Yorkshire and reinvented himself as John Palmer, lodging at an inn where his lifestyle attracted the scrutiny of local magistrates. Suspicion of horse theft led to his imprisonment in York Castle, awaiting trial at the next assizes. The fatal blow to his disguise came from a letter he penned to his brother-in-law from his cell; it fell into the hands of the authorities, and his true identity was exposed. On 22 March 1739, a court found him guilty on two counts of horse theft and sentenced him to death. Nine days later, on 7 April 1739, Turpin was hanged at Knavesmire in York, ending a life that had spiralled from a small Essex butcher's shop to the gallows.

The Myth of Black Bess and the Dashing Highwayman

The Dick Turpin who entered history's imagination bears little resemblance to the man who stood before a York court in 1739. The most enduring element of his legend—the supposed 200-mile overnight ride from London to York on his horse Black Bess—is entirely fictional, a story that gained its famous form through the pen of Victorian novelist William Harrison Ainsworth, nearly a century after Turpin's execution. Following his death, English ballads and popular theatre of the 18th and 19th centuries recast him as a dashing, heroic figure, stripping away the poaching, the accidental killing of an accomplice, and the murder of a would-be captor. By the 20th century, the romanticised highwayman had migrated into film and television, cementing the myth for new generations. The real Turpin, a butcher's son from Hempstead with a rudimentary education, was far less glamorous than the swashbuckling legend that outlived him by more than two centuries.