Highwayman highway robbers as heroes. Originally they were admired by many as bold men who confronted their victims face-to-face and were ready to fight for what they wanted. The most famous English robber hero is the legendary medieval outlaw Robin Hood. Later robber heroes included the Cavalier highwayman James Hind, the French-born gentleman highwayman Claude Du Vall, John Nevison, Dick Turpin, Sixteen String Jack, William Plunkett and his partner the "Gentleman Highwayman" James MacLaine, the Slovak Juraj Jánošík, and Indians including Kayamkulam Kochunni, Veerappan and Phoolan Devi. In 17th- through early-19th-century Ireland, acts of robbery were often part of a tradition
Dick Turpin suspect provenance. No contemporary portrait exists of Turpin, who as a notorious but unremarkable figure was not considered sufficiently important to be immortalised. An engraving in one edition of Bayes' 1739 publication, of a man hiding in a cave, is sometimes supposed to be him, but the closest description that exists is that given by John Wheeler, of "a fresh coloured man, very much marked with the small pox, about five feet nine inches high ... wears a blue grey coat and a light coloured wig". An E-FIT of Turpin, created from such reports, was published by the Castle Museum