Dick Turpin Dick Turpin Richard Turpin (bapt. 21 September 1705 – 7 April 1739) was an English highwayman whose exploits were romanticised following his execution in York for horse theft. Turpin may have followed his father's trade as a butcher early in his life but, by the early 1730s, he had joined a gang of deer thieves and, later, became a poacher, burglar, horse thief and killer. He is also known for a fictional overnight ride from London to York on his horse Black Bess, a story that was made famous by the Victorian novelist William Harrison Ainsworth almost 100 years after
Dick Turpin home of a Reverend Mr. Dyde. The clergyman was absent but the two cut his manservant around the face "in a barbarous manner". Another brutal attack occurred on 1 February 1735 at Loughton: The gang lived in or around London. For a time Turpin stayed at Whitechapel, before moving to Millbank. On 4 February 1735 he met John Fielder, Samuel Gregory, Joseph Rose, and John Wheeler, at an inn along The Broadway in London. They planned to rob the house of Joseph Lawrence, a farmer at Earlsbury Farm in Edgware. Late that afternoon, after stopping twice along the way for