The Pre-tricorn Era

This was where hats were going before the population started pinning the brim up:



Which could only lead to this sort of thing:



which, though fine for a portrait, would clearly flop down and generally obscure your vision when galloping through Epping Forest, on a sweating mare, in hot pursuit of the 10:15 from Colchester.

So who was it that first pinned a brim up? Someone must have been first. Someone must have been perhaps struggling to light the fire, their brim getting the way and them knocking it back with a casual back-handed gesture, then it flopping down again blowing the matches out until they got fed up and set to with a needle and thread.

Did they get ridiculed in the street? Did their friends stop buying them drinks in the pub? Did their wife refuse to sleep with them? You bet - it is a hard life for a fashion-monger. But eventually the efficacy of their needlework became apparent and, like a careless match discarded in the Australian Outback, it caught on and spread - from London, England to the New World.


rare colour photograph of American Minutemen preparing for the War of Independance

And did your man receive a penny for his troubles? Nah. He sat in the corner of the pub muttering to himself under his breath "mmnnnarrgg I thought of that mmmnn rrrrr" and he continued to be ridiculed, not bought drinks, and not get laid.

[And Thomas Dolby didn't invent that noise reduction system by the way.]

Cocked hats and the tricorn.

No self-respecting Highwaymen would go out on the road and attempt to relieve the aristocracy of their pocket money, without his tricorn. Mind you everyone wore them, including the military.

It came about as the brims of felt hats became fashionably large and at the same time unfeasibly floppy, so folk took to pinning them up at the sides and the back, creating a three cornered hat. Usually worn with a point pointing forwards. It is, in fact, the orientation of the point that defined headgear [and which side you were on in the war with France] for nearly a hundred years.



For after the tricorn came, not surprisingly, the bicorn, where the brim was even bigger and was pinned up front and back only, being worn with the points facing left and right. Your man Napoleon made this particular chapeau popular.



Not wanting to copy the French Emperor, with whom we were at war, the British turned their bicorns through ninety degrees et voila! le cocked hat was born.

Robbing the Cheapside Coach

For the BENEFIT of SEVERAL VIEWERS
MR. CURTIS & MR. ELTON'S
Much admir'd Comedy
B L A C K A D D E R
T h e T H I R D
OR
AMY and AMIABILITY

SALLY CHEAPSIDE: Honestly Papa. Ever since Mother died you've tried to stop me growing up. I'm not a little girl, I'm a grown woman. In fact I might as well tell you now Papa: I'm pregnant, and I'm an opium fiend, and I'm in love with a poet called Shelley who's a famous whoopsy, and Mother didn't die, I killed her!

DUKE OF CHEAPSIDE: Oh. (cheerily) Well, never mind.

EDMUND: Stand and deliver! (the coach starts to pull up)

DUKE OF CHEAPSIDE: Oh no! Oh no no no no no, disaster! It's the Shadow. We're doomed, doomed!

EDMUND: (draws up outside the window) Ah, good evening Duke, and the lovely Miss Cheapside. Your cash bags please. (the Duke hands him a bag of money) There we are.

DUKE OF CHEAPSIDE: You'll never get away with this, you scoundrel, you'll be caught and damn well hung!

SALLY CHEAPSIDE: I think he looks pretty well-

EDMUND: Madam, please, no jests about me looking pretty well hung already, we have no time.

SALLY CHEAPSIDE: Pity.

EDMUND: Now sir, turn out your pockets.

DUKE OF CHEAPSIDE: Never sir. A man's pockets are his own private kingdom. I'll protect them with my life!

EDMUND: Oh I see, you've got something embarrassing in there have you? Perhaps a particularly repulsive handkerchief, hmm? One of those fellows who has a big blow and then doesn't change it for a week? Let's have a look shall we? (takes the handkerchief and pulls out a jewel) Aha!

SALLY CHEAPSIDE: Highwayman, I also have a jewel. I fear however that I have placed it here, beneath my petticoats, for protection.

EDMUND: Well in that case madam, I think I'll leave it. I'm not sure I fancy the idea of a jewel that's been in someone's pants. A single kiss of those soft lips is all I require.

DUKE OF CHEAPSIDE: Never sir! A man's soft lips are his own private kingdom. I shall defend them with my life.

EDMUND: I'm not talking to you, Grandad.

SALLY CHEAPSIDE: (kisses him long and hard) Oh, I'm overcome. Take me with you to live the life of the wild rogue, cuddling under haystacks and making love in the branches of tall trees!

EDMUND: Madam, sadly I must decline. I fear my horse would collapse with you on top of him as well as me!

A View from the Office:

Highwaymen

- Nature's Free-Market Economists -

have gone Big Business.

Stats and Maps and Pie Charts - oh my.

NOW THAT STUFF REALLY SCARES ME!

A View from 1939...

When the Highwayman became...

... The Saint.

The View from the 1850s...

... though the daily reality of highwaymen was within living memory:

the past was already turning rosy.

"As to the profession of robber in those days exercised on the roads of England, it was a liberal profession, which required more accomplishments than either the bar or the pulpit... - strength, health, agility and exquisite horsemanship, intrepidity of the first order, presence of mind, courtesy, and a general ambidexterity of powers for facing all accidents...

The mounted robber on the highways of England, in an age when all gentlemen travelled with firearms, lived in an element of danger and adventurous gallantry; which, even from those who could least allow him any portion of their esteem, extorted sometimes a good deal of their unwilling admiration."

Thomas de Quincey

"At Manchester Grammar School"

Collected Writings

A View from Huddersfield

All the Highwaymen, and Highwaywomen, have gone inside because it looks like rain and soon the road will just be a sticky muddy quagmire and what with the rain dripping from the overhanging trees and the wind blowing in under the cape, Highway Robbery will be a miserable business. Sooner they were all round a log fire in a smoky tavern* with a bowl of good tobacco and a glass or six of Mother's Ruin.

*not shown in this photograph

A View from France

Highwaymen are generally well mounted; one of them will stop a coach containing six or seven travellers. With one hand he will present a pistol, with the other his hat, asking the unfortunate passengers most politely for their purses or their lives... If he receives a reasonable contribution, he retires without doing you any injury.

When there are several highwaymen together, they will search you thoroughly and leave nothing. Others take only a part of what they find; but all these robbers ill-treat only those who try to defend themselves.

I have been told that some highwaymen are quite polite and generous, begging to be excused for being forced to rob, and leaving passengers the wherewithal to continue their journey.

César de Saussure (letter to his family, 1726)


The English, prejudiced in favour of their nation, defend with the utmost warmth their most vicious customs, as well as their wisest laws, and are as sanguine for the defects of their constitution, as for the most essential advantages attached to it.

They will rather joke upon this want of security on their roads, if you reproach them with it, than own it is a scandalous thing, in a government otherwise so well regulated, that a man cannot travel in safety.

There are some Englishmen not less vain in boasting of the address of their highwaymen, than of the bravery of their troops.

Jean Bernard le Blanc (letter, 1738)

Turpin No 593

On 7th September 2002, Carolyn Rauen of Turpin High School, Cincinnati, Ohio, won the Varsity Individual Girls at the Midwest Meet of Champions - hoorah!



and her team won overall 2nd place.



Dick Turpin, though he did a lot of running - mainly through dark streets whilst being chased by various Custodians of the Law, it has to be said - never entered a Cross Country event. Shame, he probably would've won.

Hogarth-ho!

When I suggested yesterday that the subjects of William Hogarth's art were drink-sodden, depraved and lowly citizens of the British Crown, I wasn't thinking of these.

Though, of course, they could be. That baby on the far left appears unsteady on his feet, the two girls look rather befuddled if not positively raddled, and the young gentleman with the 'bird-organ' (no insult; a 'bird-organ' is a musical box designed to imitate the chirping of our feathered friends) is clearly is not in any fit state to be operating machinery. Not to metion the sottish light in the kitten's eyes.

But no. These are the Graham children as they appeared in 1742, progeny of the Doctor of the same name, resident of Pall Mall and apothecary to King George II (God Bless 'im).

Well, look - William had to eat.

No, the sort of thing I had in mind was much more like this:



In tomorrow's post, I intend to explore with you the following conundrum: while, in the 18th century, England's poor were notorious as being the aforementioned drink-sodden, depraved and lowly etc., her highwaymen were praised throughout Europe for the excellence and all-round gentility of their manner...

Riding to York

"Some vain attempts were made to take this notorious offender into custody; and among the rest, the huntsman of a gentleman in the neighbourhood went in search of him with blood-hounds.

Turpin perceiving them, and recollecting that King Charles II evaded his pursuers under covert of the friendly branches of the oak, mounted one of those trees under which the hounds passed, to his inexpressible terror, so that he determined to make a retreat into Yorkshire."

Newgate Calendar:

Or, Malefactor's Bloody Register

1760

I have been away in London since Friday, busy about the work of a very different man: a 14th century German Dominican teacher and preacher, known as Meister Eckhart.

Returning to York, and to Dick, is like entering a different world. Away with the Middle Ages! - and back to the 18th century - the Age of Reason, where the bright light of Scientific Enquiry sends the black beetles of superstition scurrying away...

Hmmm.

Except, of course, it didn't.

As a medievalist, I always considered the Enlightenment - such a smug name! - as my particular enemy. In a way the Rennaissance had not, it rang the death knell of the murky, passionate Middle Ages, which always seemed to me healthily carnal and visceral; somehow more in touch with the brevity of life, and all the more honest for it.

But for the past year now I have been up to my ears in Enlightenment, and found - of course - that nothing really changed. January 1, 1700 did not see the dawn of a brighter age, or at least not in any way that mattered to your average gin-soaked sop weaving his way through the dark streets of London. In the salons and lecture theatres of Europe's capitals, doubtless a new shiny life was being heralded.

Hogarth, and those he painted, did not see it.

The Great North Road

Once the haunt of Highwaymen and connecting London with Edinburgh some 409 miles later, the Great North Road was the first road in Britain to incur a toll. In 1663 turnpike gates were errected in Hertfordshire, though of the three gates used, two were easily avoidable apparently. Unlike Highwaymen.

For most of its length the Great North Road is accompanied by the East Coast Main Line. But unlike the Great North Road, which was mainly a muddy track having evolved through time and trees, the East Coast Main Line was run by three companies: the North British Railway, the North Eastern Railway and the Great Northern Railway.

In 1860 they formed the East Coast Joint Stock to allow passengers to travel the entire route without changing carriages. Unlike the Great North Road which sported great coaching inns along its route where travellers would rest for the night while horses and carriages were changed and Highwaymen went through their luggage.

In 1923 the three railway companies merged to form the London and North Eastern Railway, the famous LNER. Today the East Coast Main Line is mainly operated by the Great North Eastern Railway, GNER.

The East Coast Main Line was the route for the record breaking non-stop run of the Flying Scotsman, which sported the green livery of the LNER.


the Flying Scotsman

The other Green Livery came from Lincoln and was mainly sported by Merry Men as they went their merry way following Robin of Loxleigh about in the Forests of Sherwood.


a forest similar to one containing Merry Men

Both the Great North Road and the East Coast Main Line would pass through Sherwood Forest if Sherwood Forest was the wood it was. Robin Hood has a train named after him, unlike Dick Turpin, who doesn't.


Midland mailine: The Robin Hood

The Great North Road was the route of the famous ride by Dick Turpin from London to York, on his trusty steed Black Bess. But unlike the Flying Scotsman this was entirely fictitious, being made up by one William Harrison Ainsworth for his novel Rookwood [1834]

Though Highwaymen plagued the travellers of the Great North Road, they didn't cause much disruption to the East Coast Main Line, largely due to the excessive speeds and general unstoppableness of the trains, but mainly due to the protagonists [Highwaymen and Trains] missing each other by about 100 years. The main disruption to the East Coast Main Line is caused by the wind blowing down power lines.

conclusion of the foregoing:

The Flying Scotsman weighs nearly 100 tonnes and could reach speeds of 100mph. In its working life the engine has travelled some 2.4 million miles. It has recently been sold for 2.2 million pounds to the National Railway Museum, in York, the city in which Dick Turpin was hanged.

Though he hasn't got a train named after him Dick Turpin has a lot of pubs he never visited named after him.

Though Robin Hood stopped travellers on the highway and demanded all their money, he is not generally considered a Highwayman.

Robin Hood was played throughout this post by Errol Flynn.



Unlike Dick Turpin, who was played by Richard O'Sullivan.

A TABLE of Proper Names written very different from their Pronunciation.

Agmondesham - Amersham
Birmingham - Brummigum
Berwick - Barrick
Bristol - Bristo
Christmas - Crismus
Depford - Dedfurd
Dorothy - Dorroty
England - Inglan
February - Feburrery
Guild-Hall - Yeel Hall
Humphry - Umfry
Katharine - Katturn
London - Lunnun
Margaret - Margate
Rotherhith - Redriff
Sarah - Sarey
Southwark - Suthrick
Thames - Tems
Westminster - Westmistur

Extract from: EVERY Young Man's Companion, W GORDON Teacher of Mathematics, 1759

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!

Our Man Flint

A 1718 breech-loading magazine-primed flintlock fowling piece by Robert Rowland.

Of course, when it came to guns, the really scary part wasn't so much the pieces themselves, though the choice for your average highwayman in the mid-18th century was quite extensive:

blunderbusses : two-barreled weapons, good on the short range, set off by flint-lock ignition;

pistols : smaller guns, not much used on horseback;

muskets : non-rifled barrels, good on the short range;

rifles : long guns with rifled barrels, making them more accurate;

carbines : evolved as a cavalry weapon, more accurate than muskets, good for close range from horseback.

No, the really scary part was what you put inside them: nails, glass, lead-shot and whatever else came to hand. Projected 25-50 feet in a scatter-formation, this lacerating miscellany could and did do lethal harm to their targets.

But the highwayman preferred, on the whole, not to shoot. It was far more effective to continue your career as a robber than be hunted down as a murderer... Which is why the night of Wednesday 4 May 1737 was so unlucky for Richard Turpin and one Thomas Morris.

Lock, Stock and Barrel

After the Matchlock - a complicated affair involving a Galiver, a Pan, a Serpentine, a Burning Match, a Priming Flask and an Apostle - the Wheellock - less complicated but still complex involving a Wheel Spring, a Spinning Wheel, a Spanning Lever and a Flash Pan - and the Snaplock, in 1630 we got the Flintlock. [Hoorah! ].



This revloutionised the act of projecting pieces of metal into those you didn't like, and for two hundred years the flintlock hurled steel and lead into people on land and on sea.

Until one autumn morning in 1807 that is, when the Rev.A.J.Forsyth was out on a misty Scottish heath, trying to shoot pigeons for the housekeeper to cook his favourite pie. He noticed, somewhat to his annoyance, that the pigeons invariably flew off before his shot arrived at their plump breasts. This, he determined, was due to the flash of the powder and puff of smoke that prempted the rapid forward movement of lead shot in his flintlock musket, startling said birds and enabling them to make hasty egress and escape the pastry and potatoes.

Luckily for the Rev. A.J.Forsyth, but unluckily for the pigeons it has to be said, in 1800 Edward Charles Howard had discovered fulminates [friction-sensitive pseudohalic anions, if you must know]. So, for many days, down the damp moss-creeping steps, in his back kitchen and much to the annoyance of his housekeeper who was fed up with clearing away the broken glass and tending to his wounds, The Good Reverend, in the great tradition of the church, developed a better way of killing people.

By combining fulminate of mercury with chlorate of potash, sulphur and charcoal, he invented a Percussive Cap which exploded when hit. Across the world, in arsenals and gunrooms everywhere, Flintlocks were converted to Caplocks.

Not that caplocks weren't complicated, they were. Here's a list of parts:

Mainspring retainer
Lockplate
Hammer Nose recess
Tumbler screw
Upper limb of mainspring
Lower limb of mainspring
Claw of mainspring
Lower pivot stud
Stirrup
Upper pivot stud
Tumbler axle pivot
Tumbler
Fly
Half-cock notch
Pawl of sear
Sear pivot screw
Body of the sear
Arm of the sear
Sear spring
Sear spring screw
Bridle
Bridle screws
Hammer
Bolster
Retainer stud
Hammer spur
Hammer head
Stirrup arm of tumbler
Bolster

His Nibs

Handwriting is an art which demands "all the forms which spirit can furnish and hand can execute."

Denis Diderot

Pictorial Encyclopedia of Trade and Industry

Art of Penmanship

Writing a Letter?...

... first, make your Quill.

After you have gotten you a good pen-knife well edg'd and smooth'd upon a hoane, and a good second quill, either of goose or raven, scraped with the backe of your knife, begin to make your pen thus:

1. First, holding your quill the right side upwards, cut off about the third part of it flat along the end.

2. And turning it on the backe side, cut off the very end of it asloape; which being done, it will be forte.

3. Then, holding it still on the backe, make a little cut in the very midst of the quill.

4. When you -have done so, take the end of your knife if it have a pegg, or else another quill, and make a slit up suddenly, even in the cut you gave before.

5. Which being done, turne your quill on the right side againe, and begin to cut a little thought above the slit, on the side which is next to your left hand, and so continue cutting by degrees, till you thinke you have sufficiently cut that side. But herein you must be very wary you cut not off too much of the slit; for then your pen will be too hard, and if you leave too much also, it will be too soft.

6. Then even against the place you baganne to cut the first side, cut the other likewise, till you have made them both of an equall thinnesse: and then trying it by lifting up the slit upon the nail of your thumbe, you shall see whether it be too soft or too hard: if either, bring it to a meane by adding more slit to it, if you see it bee too hard; or by taking some away, if you perceive it to be too soft.

7. Lastly, herein lies the difficulty, viz. in the nibbling of the pen, wherein I observe this rule, that placing it on the naile of my thumb, or middle finger I hold my knife somewhat sloaping, and cut the end of the nibbe, not quite off, but before my knife comes off, I turne him downe-right, and so cut the nibbe clean away, on both sides alike; contrary to that old rule, dextra pars penna, &c. Now if my pen be to write full, I cut off so much more of the nibbe; if small, so much less.

Martin Billingsley
The Pens Excellencie: Or, the Secretaries Delighte (1618)

The three-legged mare

Gallows Humour

ACORN. You will ride a horse foaled by an acorn, i.e. the gallows, called also the Wooden and Three-legged Mare. You will be hanged.--See THREE-LEGGED MARE.
CHATTS, CHATES. According to the canting academy, the gallows.
CLIMB. To climb the three trees with a ladder; to ascend the gallows.
To DANGLE. To be hanged: I shall see you dangle in the sheriff's picture frame; I shall see you hanging on the gallows.
DEADLY NEVERGREEN, that bears fruit all the year round. The gallows, or three-legged mare. DERRICK. The name of the finisher of the law, or hangman about the year 1608.--'For he rides his circuit with the Devil, and Derrick must be his host, and Tiburne the inne at which he will lighte.' Vide Bellman of London, in art. PRIGGIN LAW.--'At the gallows, where I leave them, as to the haven at which they must all cast anchor, if Derrick's cables do but hold.' Ibid.
DISMAL DITTY. The psalm sung by the felons at the gallows, just before they are turned off.
To DIE DUNGHILL. To repent, or shew any signs of contrition at the gallows.
DIE HARD, or GAME. To die hard, is to shew no signs of fear or contrition at the gallows; not to whiddle or squeak. This advice is frequently given to felons going to suffer the law, by their old comrades, anxious for the honour of the gang.
GREGORIAN TREE. The gallows: so named from Gregory Brandon, a famous finisher of the law; to whom Sir William Segar, garter king of arms (being imposed on by Brooke, a herald), granted a coat of arms.
HOLBORN HILL. To ride backwards up Holborn hill; to go to the gallows: the way to Tyburn, the place of execution for criminals condemned in London, was up that hill. Criminals going to suffer, always ride backwards, as some conceive to increase the ignominy, but more probably to prevent them being shocked with a distant view of the gallows; as, in amputations, surgeons conceal the instruments with which they are going to operate. The last execution at Tyburn, and consequently of this procession, was in the year 1784, since which the criminals have been executed near Newgate.
KETCH. Jack Ketch; a general name for the finishers of the law, or hangmen, ever since the year 1682, when the office was filled by a famous practitioner of that name, of whom his wife said, that any bungler might put a man to death, but only her husband knew how to make a gentleman die sweetly. This officer is mentioned in Butler's Ghost, page 54, published about the year 1682, in the following lines:

Till Ketch observing he was chous'd,
And in his profits much abus'd.
In open hall the tribute dunn'd,
To do his office, or refund.

Mr. Ketch had not long been elevated to his office, for the name of his predecessor Dun occurs in the former part of this poem, page 29:

For you yourself to act squire Dun,
Such ignominy ne'er saw the sun.

The addition of 'squire,' with which Mr. Dun is here dignified, is a mark that he had beheaded some state criminal for high treason; an operation which, according to custom for time out of mind, has always entitled the operator to that distinction. The predecessor of Dun was Gregory Brandon, from whom the gallows was called the Gregorian tree, by which name it is mentioned in the prologue to Mercurius Pragmaticus, tragi-comedy acted at Paris, &c. 1641:

This trembles under the black rod, and he
Doth fear his fate from the Gregorian tree.

Gregory Brandon succeeded Derrick. See DERRICK.
MORNING DROP. The gallows. He napped the king's pardon and escaped the morning drop; he was pardoned, and was not hanged.
NEWMAN'S LIFT. The gallows.
NUBBING. Hanging. Nubbing cheat: the gallows. Nubbing cove; the hangman. Nubbing ken; the sessions house.
PIT. The hole under the gallows, where poor rogues unable to pay the fees are buried.
SCAPEGALLOWS. One who deserves and has narrowly escaped the gallows, a slip-gibbet, one for whom the gallows is said to groan.
SUSPENCE. One in a deadly suspence; a man just turned off at the gallows.
THREE-LEGGED MARE, or STOOL. The gallows, formerly consisting of three posts, over which were laid three transverse beams. This clumsy machine has lately given place to an elegant contrivance, called the NEW DROP, by which the use of that vulgar vehicle a cart, or mechanical instrument a ladder, is also avoided; the patients being left suspended by the dropping down of that part of the floor on which they stand. This invention was first made use of for a peer.
TOPPING CHEAT. The gallows.
TOPPING COVE. The hangman.

from A Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue

Captain Grose (1811)

Silly boys

... after reading the adventures of Jack Sheppard or Dick Turpin, pillage the stalls of unfortunate apple-women, break into sweet-shops at night, and alarm old gentlemen who are returning home from the city by leaping out on them in suburban lanes, with black masks and unloaded revolvers.
This interesting phenomenon, which always occurs after the appearance of a new edition of either of the books I have alluded to, is usually attributed to the influence of literature on the imagination. But this is a mistake.
The imagination is essentially creative, and always seeks for a new form. The boy-burglar is simply the inevitable result of life's imitative instinct. He is Fact, occupied as Fact usually is, with trying to reproduce Fiction, and what we see in him is repeated on an extended scale throughout the whole of life.

OSCAR WILDE

The Decay of Lying

Diptych

"Let's bung our Eyes in Drink."

A tall, fresh-coloured Man, very much marked

with the Small Pox, about 26 Years of Age,

about five Feet nine Inches high.

He wears a blue-grey Coat and a natural Wig.

"Only detain our Bird five Minutes at the Star,

and if I don't pluck him to the Pin-Feathers,

call me a Bungler, that's all."

They gave out it was Turpin, but that Fellow,

having done much Mischief of late,

runs in Everybody's Head.

"You have done Wrong in shooting your

Landlord's Cockerel."

"If you'll stay till I reload, I'll shoot you too."

“It having been represented to the King,
that Richard Turpin did,

on Wednesday, the 4th of May last,
barbarously murder Thomas Morris,

Servant to Henry Thompson,
one of the Keepers of Epping Forest,

and commit other Notorious Felonies
and Robberies, near London,

his Majesty is pleased to promise
His most gracious Pardon to

any of his Accomplices, and a Reward of 200 l.
to any Person or Persons

that shall discover him,
so that he may be apprehended and convicted.

Turpin was born at Thackstead, in Essex, is about thirty,

by Trade a Butcher, about five Feet nine Inches high,

very much marked with the Small-Pox, his Cheek-Bones broad,

his Face thinner towards the bottom; his Visage short,

pretty Upright, and broad about the Shoulders.”

The Shadow

There was a rustle,
a snap of a twig,
then a glimpse
a shape behind a tree.

I walked on
holding the few coins I had
tight in my hand
as it grew darker.

There it was again
a scuff on stone
a moving branch
then stillness.

I felt watched
who was waiting for me?
who was watching?
behind the trees.

I pulled my cloak
around me
and my hat, down hard.
over my eyes.

A sudden flurry
bustle of leaves
in front of me.
a thump
a dash,
a trip
soft sickening sweet
disappearing pink

Fuck! - it was the Easter Bunny
I thought it was Dick Turpin.

Mud, blood and horse

A Welcome Inn...

... the hillside.

Bucket Hill-side, to be precise.

Dick, son and grandson of landlords, was landlord of a little pub of his own for about eighteen months while the majority of the Gregory Gang were singing the jailhouse rock. For the purposes of fiction, and as a doff of the cap to Mr. Dickens (who put it in Barnaby Rudge), in Dick I make this inn the King's Head on Epping High Street. It is still going - a fine building, boasting even more gables today than when Dickens marvelled at their profusion.

In Real Life the location of Dick's pub is disputed, as the shorthand writing expert taking down Turpin's trial verbatim had problems hearing the name. He thought it sounded like 'Boxhill or some such Name'. Derek Barlow, Turpin-scholar, thinks Bookers Hill, alias Buckhurst Hill, alias Bucket Hill, in the parish of Chigwell, might have been the place.

This 18th Century map by Cary shows an inn in the right lcoation called the Rain Deer.

Land Pyrates:

Arch-Rogue
Bully Ruffin
Captain
Colt
Collector
Dimber-Damber
Gentleman's Master
High Pad
Kiddey
Knight of the Road
Land Pirate
Rank Rider
Royal Scamp
Rum Padder
Scamp
Snaffler
Toby Gill
Uprightman

HIGHWAYMEN

Highseamen

or as most people call them: PIRATES

Robbing from the Rich at the same time as our man Turpin was.


John Rackam, called Calico Jack because of his loud striped trousers [though when this picture was taken they must have been in the wash]


Edward Teach - more commonly known as Blackbeard


Mary Read, one of two known female pirates

When we've finished Turpin, and Rebecca's written her series of 18th Century crime thrillers, and everyone's forgotten the Black Pearl [though not of course the Black Pig] we might tackle the mighty subject of Robbery on the High Seas.

Last Seen At...

... virtually the centre of this Map.

REWARD OFFERED:

STOLEN on Saturday 30 April near the Green Man inn at Leytonstone:

Whitestockings

a Thoroughbred Racehorse, property of Mr. Joseph Major.

If Any Man has Information as to the Whereabouts of this Sorrel Mare, with curled Tail and her two Hinder Feet White, he should apply either to Mr. Richard Bayes, propr. at the Green Man, to Constable Pullen of Tothill, Westminster, or to Mr. Major himself, currently residing in the parish of St. Sepulchre, London.

The Principal Suspects are Richard Turpin and Matthew King, Highwaymen.

a letter for...

...wait a minute I know that handwriting...

Alias Palmer

York, Feb. 6, 1739

Dear Brother,

I am sorry to acquaint you that I am now under Confinement in York Castle, for Horse-stealing. If I could procure an Evidence from London to give me a Character, that would go a Great Way towards my being acquitted. I had not been long in this Country before my being apprehended, so that it would pass off the Readier. For Heaven's Sake, dear Brother, do not neglect me; you will know what I mean, when I say,

I am yours,

John Palmer

Further Instructions in the Art of Penmanship

a LETTER from an elder to a younger Brother, representing to him the fatal Consequences that must unavoidably attend him, in case he persists in his Extravagance.

Dear Dick,

AS you are my only Brother, you must imagine, if you give yourself the least Time for Reflection, that your Misfortunes affect me next to my own. You are sensible, tho' have aquaintence and association with some who are not, I have met with too many; but then you know very well, at the same Time, that they must be ascribed to unforeseen Accidents, and not to any wilful Acts of Profusion.

This consideration supports me under the Weight of them; but as to those that have befallen me on Account, they must be imputed indeed to my indiscretion. Whilst my Father and Mother were living, they both supplied you, not only with the Conveniences of Life, but indulged you, if I may be so free as to say so, in your Levity and Extravagance.

My Love for you inclines me, I must own, to serve you to the utmost in my Power; but, dear Dick, which Way can I effectually do it? Were I to send you the hundred Guineas according to your Request, of what real Advantage would it be to you? It would prove no other Service in the World, than to lengthen your Credit, and make you run deeper into Debt.

However, notwithstanding all your repeated Provocations, you may assure yourself, when I have any convincing Proof of your Reformation, no reasonable Assistance with be denied you, by

Your affectionate, tho' much injur'd Brother

General Instructions in the Art of Penmanship

Some General Directions in regard to Epistolary Writing

The Style peculiar to such Letters as consist only of Compliment, Wit and Address, should be always gay indeed, but free and easy, void of all studied Graces, and as near a Copy of Nature as possible.

The Mannered Man

In your person you must be accurately clean; and your teeth, hands, and nails, should be superlatively so; a dirty mouth has real ill consequences to the owner, for it infallibly causes the decay, as well as the intolerable pain of the teeth, and it is very offensive to his acquaintance, for it will most inevitably stink. I insist, therefore, that you wash your teeth the first thing you do every morning, with a soft sponge and warm water, for four or five minutes; and then wash your mouth five or six times. Mouton, whom I desire you will send for upon your arrival at Paris, will give you an opiate, and a liquor to be used sometimes.

Nothing looks more ordinary, vulgar, and illiberal, than dirty hands, and ugly, uneven, and ragged nails: I do not suspect you of that shocking, awkward trick, of biting yours; but that is not enough: you must keep the ends of them smooth and clean, not tipped with black, as the ordinary people's always are. The ends of your nails should be small segments of circles, which, by a very little care in the cutting, they are very easily brought to; every time that you wipe your hands, rub the skin round your nails backward, that it may not grow up, and shorten your nails too much.

The cleanliness of the rest of your person, which, by the way, will conduce greatly to your health, I refer from time to time to the bagnio. My mentioning these particulars arises (I freely own) from some suspicion that the hints are not unnecessary; for, when you were a schoolboy, you were slovenly and dirty above your fellows.

I must add another caution, which is that upon no account whatever, you put your fingers, as too many people are apt to do, in your nose or ears. It is the most shocking, nasty, vulgar rudeness, that can be offered to company; it disgusts one, it turns one's stomach; and, for my own part, I would much rather know that a man's fingers were actually in his breech,than see them in his nose. Wash your ears well every morning, and blow your nose in your handkerchief whenever you have occasion; but, by the way, without looking at it afterward.

There should be in the least, as well as in the greatest parts of a gentleman, 'les manieres nobles'. Sense will teach you some, observation others; attend carefully to the manners, the diction, the motions, of people of the first fashion, and form your own upon them. On the other hand, observe a little those of the vulgar, in order to avoid them: for though the things which they say or do may be the same, the manner is always totally different: and in that, and nothing else, consists the characteristic of a man of fashion.

The lowest peasant speaks, moves, dresses, eats, and drinks, as much as a man of the first fashion, but does them all quite differently; so that by doing and saying most things in a manner opposite to that of the vulgar, you have a great chance of doing and saying them right. There are gradations in awkwardness and vulgarism, as there are in everything else.

The Earl of Chesterfield, to his son

London, November 12 1750

Daylight Robbery

Of DIFFICULTIES and DISEASES of the HORSE

Of BLEEDING, PURGING and CLYSTERS
Of the PLEURISY and INFLAMMATION of the LUNGS
Of a BROKEN-WIND
Of the STAGGERS, CONVULSIONS and PALSEY
Of the STRANGLES and VIVES
Of the GLANDERS
Of the GRIPES
Of the LAX and SCOURING
Of WORMS and BOTS
Of the YELLOWS
Of the STRANGURY and PISSING of BLOOD
Of MOLTEN GREASE
Of SURFEITS, MANGE and being HIDE-BOUND
Of the FARCY
Of STRAINS
Of SPLENTS
Of the POLL-EVIL
Of WITHERS, WARBLES and SIT-FASTS
Of WIND-GALLS and the BLOOD-SPAVIN
Of the MALLENDERS and SALLENDERS
Of the GREASE
Of the CANKER
Of SAND-CRACKS and QUITTERS
Of the RUNNING FRUSH

Extract from: EVERY Young Man's Companion, W GORDON Teacher of Mathematics, 1759

Speed Demon

Some people will tell you that slow is good -

and it may be, on some days -

but I am here to tell you that fast is better.

I've always believed this, in spite of the trouble it's caused me.

Hunter S. Thompson

Horseplay

Flump - an abrupt or heavy fall
Send for a horse ladder - send on a fool's errand
Horse's meal - food served without drink
Who put that monkey on horseback without tying his tail? - said of a very bad horseman
Ride the forehorse - to be early
Saddle the wrong horse - lay blame on the wrong person
Saddle one's nose - wear spectacles
Go a snail's gallop - move very slowly
Scarlet horse - a hired horse

Whistlejacket

George Stubbs, 1762
oil on canvas
2920mm x 2464mm
National Gallery London

Black Bess

If blood can give nobility,
A noble steed was she;
Her sire was blood, and blood her dam,
And all her pedigree.

There was no redundancy of flesh, 'tis true; her flanks might, to please some tastes, have been rounder, and her shoulder fuller; but look at the nerve and sinew, palpable through the veined limbs! She was built more for strength than beauty, and yet she was beautiful. Look at that elegant little head; those thin tapering ears, closely placed together; that broad snorting nostril, which seems to snuff the gale with disdain; that eye, glowing and large as the diamond of Giamschid! Is she not beautiful? Behold her paces! How gracefully she moves! She is off! no eagle on the wing could skim the air more swiftly.

Rookwood
William Harrison Ainsworth, 1856

Hobbyhorse

hobby (hob/ee) n. a small horse [Middle English: Hoby, derivation of Robin used as a horses' name as with Dobbin]

Black Bess
*
Horse
*
Pony
*
Hobby
*
Hobbyhorse
*
Dandyhorse
*
Boneshaker
*
Draisine
*
Bicycle
*
Triumph Bonneville

The Riot Act

An act for preventing tumults and riotous assemblies, and for the more speedy and effectual punishing the rioters.

To be read to any group of twelve or more persons unlawfully, riotously, and tumultuously gathered together allowing them one hour to disperse:

Our Sovereign Lord the King chargeth and commandeth all persons being assembled immediately to disperse themselves, and peaceably to depart to their habitations or to their lawful business, upon the pains contained in the act made in the first year of King George for preventing tumultuous and riotous assemblies. God save the King.


not a riot


a riot

The Riot Act was repealed in 1973

Mind your Ps and Qs... peas and queues... piece and cues...

PRISON, play, pretend, purse, pistol, PULLEN, poet, people, perverse/perversion/pervert, peace, period, PENALTY, planets, St. Peter, pamphlet, peddler, pick-pocket, popular, poplar, propensity ("Positive propensity to commit certain kinds of violent crime" - John Clavell, re. gentlemen), padding, polite, PRESTIGE, place, property, poor, profligate, "PULL'D TO HEAVEN ON A STRING" (= hanged), power, presence, pebble (in mouth to alter voice), presume, prayers, pardon, pass, pub, prepare, pronounce, pardon, pleasure, prize, price, pirate, pike, profession, pulpit, pliable, post-chaise, possibilities, PURSUE, PENITENT, Pompadour Rivernall (Dick's brother-in-law, husband of Dorothy Turpin - in 1739 he refuses Dick's letter, bringing about indirectly his unmasking and his death), path, pug, painter, posse, puzzled, pride, pound, pouch, paunch, punch, perch, piss, penis, prick, pock-mark, pox, pillory...

Thoughts for Chapter 7, DICK

Trumph T140 "Bonneville" flattracker

"Although motorcycle riding is romantic, motorcycle maintenance is purely classic."

Robert M Pirsig

Horsy, horsy: Don't You Stop

An horse is a vain thing for safety: neither shall he deliver any by his great strength.

Psalm 33: 17

Hast thou given the horse strength?
hast thou clothed his neck with thunder?
Canst thou make him afraid as a grasshopper?
the glory of his nostrils is terrible.
He paweth in the valley, and rejoiceth in his strength:
he goeth on to meet the armed men.
He mocketh at fear, and is not affrighted;
neither turneth he back from the sword.
The quiver rattleth against him,
the glittering spear and the shield.
He swalloweth the ground with fierceness and rage.

Job 39: 19-24

Of FARRIERY

Or the Method of curing the DISEASES of HORSES.

The beft Method of treating Horfes is never to bleed, purge, or to give them any other Medicine, unlef in Cafes of Neceffity; but to keep them in Health by fuitable Feeding, careful Dreffing, and daily Exercife; the beft Hay fhould be procured, if poffible; beans are the ftrongeft Nourifhment, but are moft fit for laborious Horfes. Bran is fit for fick Horfes, but weakens thofe that are well. Oats are a more hearty Food than Barley, as appears from Experience. Horfes who eat their Litter fhould have cut Straw and powder'd Chalk given them to correct their Appetities.

Extract from: EVERY Young Man's Companion, W GORDON Teacher of Mathematics, 1759

Let it be Known

An Highwayman

is a wild Arab, that lives by robbing of small Caravans, and has no Way of living but the King’s High-Way. Aristotle held him to be but a kind of Huntsman; but our Sages of the Law account him rather a Beast of Prey, and will not allow his Game to be legal by the Forest Law. His chief Care is to be well mounted, and when he is taken, the Law takes care he should be so still while he lives. His Business is to break the Laws of the Land, for which the Hangman breaks his Neck, and there’s an End of the Controversie. He fears Nothing, under the Gallows, more than his own Face, and therefore when he does his Work conveys it out of Sight, that it may not rise up in Judgement, and give Evidence against him at the Sessions.

SAMUEL BUTLER

Spontaneity

ESTRAGON:
What about hanging ourselves?

VLADIMIR:
Hmm. It'd give us an erection.

ESTRAGON:
(highly excited). An erection!

VLADIMIR:
With all that follows. Where it falls mandrakes grow. That's why they shriek when you pull them up. Did you not know that?

ESTRAGON:
Let's hang ourselves immediately!

Waiting For Godot
Samuel Beckett



"He gives up the ghost. A violent erection of the hanged sends gouts of sperm spouting through his dead clothes on to the cobblestones. Mrs. Bellingham, Mrs. Yelverton Barry, and the Honorable Mrs. Mervyn Talboys rush forward with their handkerchiefs to sop it up."

The hanging of the Croppy Boy,
from Ulysses by James Joyce.

In the times of public executions it was common knowledge that hangings occasionally provoked erection and ejaculation. This reflex is probably caused by the snapping of the spine, but it could easily be misinterpreted as a sign of sexual pleasure.

Then the ultimate fix of strangulation and death is introduced, disclosing that it was the notorious Jonathan Wild who first discovered, while examining the pockets of hanged felons, that "They evinced certain emotions and commotions, which ... proved that all flesh must die to live again."

extracts from:
Please Be Tender When You Cut Me Down
KR Joergensen, 1995.

Rose & Crown

Innkeeping ran in Dick's family...

John Turpin, his father, ran the Blue Bell in Hempsted after retiring as a butcher.

Dick's grandfather Robert Nott, formerly a huntsman to Squire Harvey of Chigwell, in later years ran the Rose and Crown in Clay Hill, Middlesex.

Its proximity to the royal deerpark, Enfield Chase, will have been useful to Dick when arranging rendezvous to collect poached venison from the Gregorys. I suspect Granddad got a lot more visits then.

Tsk!

WOMBLE-Ty-Cropt

The indisposition of a Drunkard after a Debauch in Wine or other Liquors: As, He is Womble-Ty Cropt; He is Cropsick, &c

Old Tom

"Old Tom, a lightly sweetened gin, popular in 18th-century England. The name comes from what may be the first example of a beverage vending machine. In the 1700s some pubs in England would have a wooden plaque shaped like a black cat (an "Old Tom") mounted on the outside wall. Thirsty passersby would deposit a penny in the cat’s mouth and place their lips around a small tube between the cat’s paws. The bartender inside would then pour a shot of Gin through the tube and into the customer’s waiting mouth."