The Wood for the Trees

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

ROBERT FROST

The Road Not Taken

Mountain Interval

1920

Turpin's first foray into crime came courtesy of the deerstealing Gregory Gang, who persuaded him to sell game they had poached from Epping Forest and Enfield Chase in the butchery he ran in Thaxted. Dick had served a six-year apprenticeship to a butcher in Whitechapel before being set up with his own shop in Thaxted, Essex by his father John.

Until the age of 25 Dick seems to have led a normal family life. His encounter with the Gregories changed everything, bringing him an immortality unknown to his siblings Thomas, John, Christopher, Mary and Dorothy.

Two years before his death, they were singing of Dick on the London streets:

Of all the famous Robbers

That doth in England dwell

The noted Richard Turpin

Doth all the Rest excel.