Bang Bang

While legend has it that Dick killed two men - his partner, Matthew King and gamekeeper's servant, Thomas Morris - it is in fact only poor Tom that Turpin caused to bite the Big One. The illustration above, taken from an early edition of the Newgate Calendar, shows Turpin shooting - in self-defence, it might be argued - Morris, the man who had come to take him in.

Matthew King was actually shot by Richard Bayes, a bankrupt innkeeper from Leytonstone who was after a spot of notoriety and ready cash by bagging himself a Turpin.

The shooting occurred during a hectic fracas in the middle of the night in Red Lion Street, Whitechapel, where the two highwaymen had fallen into an ambush. They had returned to the stable of the Red Lion to collect Whitestockings, a racehorse King had stolen. King, on foot, was blasted by Bayes to prevent him from running away. Turpin, on horseback, galloped off to safety. King was told that it was Turpin who had betrayed him, and in the days it took him to die from his stomach-wound he spilled the beans on his former comrade.

Bayes never got the Blood Money he had been banking on, but after Turpin's execution two years later in 1739, he capitalised on his - however brief - association with Dick, by writing the highwayman's biography...

... a shameless piece of glamourised true-crime from beginning to end.

Sic transit gloria mundi!