Dick Turpin Read online

  So in thinking about Dick Turpin, we will involve ourselves in a lot more than a catalogue of highway robberies. In the centuries following his death, the man whose body swung from the gallows by York racecourse on that chill April morning was to have much more than that to answer for.

  But the legend lay in an unimagined future when Turpin was hanged. Indeed, until six weeks before his execution, nobody had suspected that the alleged horse-thief being held in York Castle was Richard Turpin. He was known as John Palmer and, if the revelation of Turpin’s true identity was a stroke of monstrous bad luck, the only reason he was drawn into the criminal-justice system in the first place was because of an act of childish petulance on his part, an act that might be read as revealing an irrational temper and a taste for violence.

  John Palmer had arrived in Yorkshire in or about June 1737. William Harris, keeper of the Ferry Inn at Brough, just north of the River Humber, deposed to three justices of the peace for the East Riding how at roughly that time

  one John Palmer came to this informant’s house in Brough aforesaid and boarded with this informant at Brough aforesaid four or five months and during that time went from this examinant’s house over the water [i.e. across the River Humber] into the county of Lincoln at divers times and the said times returned to this informant’s house att Brough aforesaid with severall horses at a time which he sold and disposed of to divers persons in the county of York. And this informant inquireing of the said John Palmer the place of his abode the said John Palmer told this informant that he lived at Long Sutton with his father and that his sister kept his father’s house there and the reason for leaving his father was for debt and was feared of being arrested by bailiffs and said that if they once catched him they would kill him.

  Harris replied that ‘it would be very hard to kill a man for debt and that he went unarmed’, but Palmer, his tongue possibly loosened by beer, told Harris that ‘if he went over the water with him the said Palmer, he w’ld shew him such a pair of pistolls as he this informant never saw in his life and that he did not fear the bailiffs … before they’d catch me a great deal of blood shall be spent’.

  The reason why Harris was giving evidence about the man he knew as John Palmer was that the previous day, 2 October 1738, Palmer had threatened to shoot a labourer named John Robinson. Robinson, a Brough man, gave his evidence with another Brough resident, Abraham Green. The justices noted that

  this informant Abraham Green saith that John Palmer of Welton aforesaid did on the second day of October instant at Brough above said with a gunn kill a tame fowl which did belong to Francis Hall of Brough aforesaid neatherd [i.e. cowherd] and did throw the fowl into the fields of Elloughton in the said Riding and Brough aforesaid and this informant John Robinson saith that he did see John Palmer on the said second day of October att Brough aforesaid kill the said fowl belonging to the said Francis Hall and he reprimanding the said John Palmer concerning the same, he the said John Palmer did threaten to shoot this informant.

  Robert Appleton, Clerk of the Peace for the East Riding and a man who was subsequently to take an important part in securing Turpin’s conviction, later provided details about this incident. Palmer, who by now was clearly well integrated in the society of the area, ‘often went out a hunting and shooting with several gentlemen in the neighbourhood’. On this occasion, he was returning from shooting, and, perhaps having had a disappointing day’s sport, shot one of another man’s cocks in the street. Reprimanded for so doing, Turpin replied to the man criticising his conduct that ‘if he would only stay whilst he had charged his piece, he would shoot him too’.

  Hall and Robinson presumably complained to the East Riding justices, three of whom (George Crowle, Hugh Bethell and Marmaduke Constable) came to Brough to take written depositions about the incident and to bind Palmer over to keep the peace. Matters should have ended there: Palmer’s shooting of the cock and threatening of Robinson, in the light of Hall and Robinson’s complaint, obviously merited some official sanction. Conversely, binding over to keep the peace was a fairly common occurrence, and Palmer’s conduct had not caused damage to human life or limb. But being bound over to keep the peace meant finding sureties, and Palmer refused to do so. So, the three justices took the most obvious course open to them and had Palmer committed to the House of Correction at Beverley where petty-nuisance offenders were regularly held. Palmer, escorted by the parish constable of Welton, rode there on his own horse, which was stabled at the Blue Bell inn on arrival at Beverley. It remains unclear why Palmer was unwilling to find sureties, or why, given that he was in fact the hardened criminal Richard Turpin, he made no attempt to escape. Perhaps he was suffering from a lack of confidence, or, conversely, possibly was convinced that the matter was too insignificant to be worth worrying about.

  Our account of what happened next is very dependent on Robert Appleton’s version of events. According to Appleton, the three justices became interested in what they were begin ning to hear about Palmer’s reputation in the locality. The innkeeper William Harris had commented on how Palmer had crossed the Humber into Lincolnshire on numerous occasions, and had returned ‘with several horses which he sold and disposed of to divers persons in the county of York’, while a number of other people in the area had noted the peculiar pattern of Palmer’s movements. There was also some uncertainty about how exactly Palmer made his living. Richard Grassby, later giving evidence at Turpin’s trial, declared that the man he had known as John Palmer ‘had no settled way of living, that I know of at all, though a dealer, yet he was a stranger, and lived like a gentleman’, and being pressed again to describe ‘in what manner of way used he to support himself or, how did he live’, replied simply, ‘he lived like a gentleman’. Overall, Appleton tells us, there was enough opacity about Palmer’s doings to make the trio of justices suspicious that he might have been involved in crime.

  The gentlemen having taken several informations from persons of Brough and Welton, about Palmer’s frequently going into Lincolnshire, and usually returning with plenty of money, and several horses, which he sold or exchanged in Yorkshire, had just reason to suspect, that he was either a highwayman or a horse-stealer; and … the next day went to the said John Palmer, and examined him again, touching where he lived, and to what business he was brought up.

  Palmer replied that he was a butcher by trade, and that up to about two years previously he had lived at Long Sutton in Lincolnshire, at his father’s house, and that he had fallen heavily into debt ‘for sheep that proved rotten’, and that he had accordingly absconded and come to live in Yorkshire.

  The three justices proved to be unusually assiduous in pursuing the matter. They directed Appleton to ‘send a messenger into Lincolnshire, to enquire into the truth of this matter’, which he did, sending a letter to a Lincolnshire justice of the peace, a Mr Delamere, who lived at Long Sutton. If falling foul of the authorities by shooting Francis Hall’s cock and threatening John Robinson was Turpin’s first mistake, admitting residence in Long Sutton was his second. Delamere replied that a John Palmer had indeed resided at Long Sutton, although his father had never been a resident of the parish. This Palmer, wrote Delamere, had been suspected for sheep-theft and had escaped the local constable’s custody while being investigated for that offence, while the Lincolnshire justice had also taken several depositions against Palmer for suspected horse-theft. Appleton passed this information on to George Crowle, who by now thought Palmer too serious an offender to be kept in Beverley House of Correction. Crowle required Palmer to find sureties to appear at the next assizes at York, and when Palmer refused to do so had him committed to York Castle, whence he was sent in handcuffs and under guard on 16 October.

  We know of three horse thefts that Turpin, or John Palmer as he was still known in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire, committed there. The first of these, although the least germane to our story, is the most bizarre. The horse in question, described as a ‘bay brown gelding’, belonged to Charles Townsend, son of T
homas Townsend in Pinchbeck in Lincolnshire. Pinchbeck is about twelve miles from Long Sutton, and the younger Townsend was, like his father, in holy orders, and probably act ing as the older man’s curate. Turpin stole his horse in July 1737, but instead of taking it across the Humber to sell in Yorkshire, he took it with him on a surprise visit to his family, his father, John Turpin, then being landlord of the Blue Bell inn at Hempstead in Essex. When Turpin returned to the north, for whatever reason he left the horse he had stolen from Charles Townsend behind him. Everyone in Hempstead was fully aware of the identity of Turpin senior’s son, and the sudden arrival of a strange horse in his stable was calculated to arouse suspicion. Interested parties in Essex conducted enquiries about the horse, which was found to belong to Charles Townsend, and John Turpin accordingly found himself on 12 September 1738 committed to gaol in Essex to await trial for horse-theft. He betrayed a gaol break planned by a group of his fellow-prisoners in early February 1739, a circumstance which probably aided the charges against him being thrown out at Chelmsford assizes on 5 March.

  Turpin’s return to Lincolnshire after his visit home seems to have been the point at which he dabbled in sheep-theft, although the only evidence we have of these activities is Justice Delamere’s letter, as reported by Richard Appleton. This suggests that Turpin was actually arrested for the offence, but escaped. But he did so without a horse, which was obviously going to impede his progress to Yorkshire. His solution was to steal three horses at Heckington, about twenty miles from Long Sutton on the road north. The horses, a mare, her foal and a gelding, belonged to Thomas Creasy, who discovered on 17 or 18 August that the three horses, which he had last seen on Heckington common a day previously, were missing. Creasy hired men to ride in a forty-mile radius around Heckington to make enquiries if the horses had been seen, and also, employing a technique that was being increasingly resorted to by those who had had goods stolen from them, advertised the lost horses in the market towns of the area. These measures proved fruitless, but, as Creasy was later to explain at Turpin’s trial, he had a lucky break.

  One John Baxter, a neighbour of mine told me, that he had been at Pocklington fair in Yorkshire and laying all night at Brough, he happened to hear of a man that was taken up and sent to the House of Correction at Beverley for shooting a game cock, who had such a mare and foal as mine. Upon which information I came to Ferraby [i.e. Ferriby] near Beverley and put up my horse at Richard Grassby’s who kept a publick house; and began to enquire of him about ye mare and foal. Who told me there was such like a mare and foal in their neighbourhood which I thought by the description he gave me, to be mine; so then I told him, I was come to enquire about such a mare and foal.

  Grassby showed Creasy the two horses, which he promptly claimed as his own. Richard Grassby also told Creasy that Palmer had ridden on a black gelding with a star on its forehead, similar to the one he had lost, when he had been committed to Beverley House of Correction. He then went to Beverley, discovered that the gelding was still being stabled at the Blue Bell, and again claimed it as his own. Creasy obtained a justice’s order to recover his horse, and subsequently showed it to Carey Gill, the constable of Welton.

  Although the mare and the foal were still at Welton, Turpin had already been able to sell them on. The buyer was Captain George Dawson of Brigadier General Harrison’s Regiment. This unit was stationed at Bristol, but Dawson was on leave at Ferriby, some two miles from Welton, when he saw a man walking a mare and a foal. According to the account he gave the court at Turpin’s trial, he saw the two horses when a man was walking them, who, on enquiry, said that they ‘belonged to one Palmer’. Turpin, in his identity of Palmer, ‘was coming up the street … who told me it was his mare and foal, and that they were bred in Lincolnshire’. Dawson asked if Palmer was willing to sell the foal, to which Palmer replied that he would prefer to sell the mare and the foal together. Dawson said he ‘had no occasion for the mare, only for the foal’, and when Palmer responded that he wanted three guineas for the foal, Dawson replied that this was too much, and offered two. The negotiations broke off, but were resumed when the two men came across each other again a little later. Turpin obviously had a good sales technique (‘the prisoner being a little pressing about it’, in Dawson’s words), for Dawson decided to take the mare with the foal for four guineas, also throwing in ‘a horse of no great value’. ‘Being obliged to go to my regiment’, Dawson explained, ‘I left the place soon after’, leaving the mare and the foal in the custody of Richard Grassby. Dawson’s statement was later to prove crucial at Turpin’s trial.

  By the autumn of 1738 evidence was therefore building up against John Palmer, prisoner in York Castle, with rumours of his shady goings-on now becoming crystallised by the specific accusation that he had stolen three horses from Thomas Creasy. Horse-theft was a capital offence, but it was unusual for a first offender to be executed for it. John Palmer, despite his lack of contacts in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire, and despite such evidence as Justice Delamere from Long Sutton might have been able to provide, might well have been able to escape the noose in that lottery which the workings of the eighteenth-century criminal-justice system constituted. Richard Turpin, the notorious malefactor, would have stood little chance of escaping execution on this or any other indictment for felony.

  1. The title page of a pamphlet published at York immediately after Turpin’s trial and execution. This is the main source for the last few months of his life (Dean and Chapter of York: By kind permission).

  Early in February 1739 Turpin wrote a letter to his brother-in-law, identified as ‘Pompr’ Rivernall, who like Turpin’s father lived at Hempstead in Essex. Rivernall’s Christian name is uncertain (his surname also appears in variant spellings), although it is known that he was married to Turpin’s sister Dorothy. The letter was addressed to the Blue Bell inn at Hempstead, and it is probable that John Turpin’s daughter and her husband were running the establishment while its owner, John Turpin, languished in Chelmsford gaol. The letter (despite claims to the contrary) has not survived, but it seems likely that it was meant to let the family know that Turpin was held in York Castle, and to ask them to mobilise character witnesses on behalf of the fictitious John Palmer from the London area.

  In this period the postal service in the modern sense did not exist. Letters were sent to local post offices (normally located in inns or shops) where they were kept until their recipients came to collect them, the recipient being responsible for paying the postal charges. Rivernall was alerted to the letter’s arrival, but saw the York post stamp on the letter, and refused to take it, declaring that ‘he had no correspondent at York’. It may be simply that he wished to avoid the relevant postal charges, although there is also a possibility that he recognised the handwriting, and was anxious to avoid any enmeshment in the affairs of his decidedly problematic brother-in-law. Whatever Rivernall’s motives, there was somebody who definitely did recognise the handwriting, another Hempstead resident named James Smith. As Smith explained at Turpin’s trial,

  happening to be at the post office where I saw a letter directed to Turpin’s brother-in-law who, as I was informed, would not loose [i.e. loosen, take] the letter and pay postage, upon that account taking particular notice thereof, I thought at first I remembered the superscription, and concluded it to be the handwriting of the prisoner, Turpin; whereupon I carried the letter before a Magistrate who broke the same open (the letter was subscribed John Palmer) I found it sent from York Castle; I had seen several of Dick Turpin’s bills and knew his hand.

  Smith, in fact, had taught Turpin, at that point his younger schoolmate, to write while he was at school. His presence in Hempstead post office was a piece of massive bad luck for the highwayman.

  An earlier statement by James Smith, taken at York on 23 February, presumably the day of his arrival in the city, told how the letter had been sent to the post office at Saffron Walden, the main market town in the area, after Rivernall had refused to take it, and the justice of
the peace whom Smith had alerted, Thomas Stubbing of Helion’s Bumpstead, had paid the postage on it. After he and Smith had examined the letter, and Smith had expressed his opinion that it was written in Turpin’s hand, Stubbing and three other justices asked Smith ‘to go to York Castle to see whether it was the said Turpin or not’. Smith subsequently swore to the York authorities that the person shown to him as John Palmer ‘is Richard Turpin and no other person’. He declared that he had been raised in the same township as Turpin, had been to school with him, ‘and hath constantly for several years since been in company with him till these three or four years’. In fact, Smith’s later testimony at Turpin’s trial suggests that he identified him in some sort of forerunner of a modern identity parade: asked if he had recognised Turpin on his coming to York Castle, Smith replied, ‘Yes I did, upon the first view of him, and pointed him out from amongst the rest of the other prisoners.’