Claude Duval Samuel Butler ("A Pindarick Ode"), John Gay ("The Beggar's Opera") and William Harrison Ainsworth ("Rookwood" and "Talbot Harland") to create the iconic image of the gentleman highwayman still beloved today. Mackie, Erin. "Rakes, Highwaymen, and Pirates. The Making of the Modern Gentleman in the Eighteenth Century" Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 2009. Sharpe, James. "Dick Turpin: The Myth of the English highwayman". London: Profile, 2005. . Sugden, John. 'The Merry Dance of the Highwayman', "History Today", March 2017, vol. 67, no. 3, pp. 48–52. Sugden, John and Philip. "The Thief of Hearts: Claude Duval and the Gentleman Highwayman in Fact and Fiction".
Dick Turpin Hadfield. An account in "The Gentleman's Magazine" for 7 April 1739 notes Turpin's brashness: "Turpin behaved in an undaunted manner; as he mounted the ladder, feeling his right leg tremble, he spoke a few words to the topsman, then threw himself off, and expir'd in five minutes." The short drop method of hanging meant that those executed were killed by slow strangulation, and so Turpin was left hanging until late afternoon, before being cut down and taken to a tavern in Castlegate. The next morning, Turpin's body was buried in the graveyard of St George's Church, Fishergate, opposite what is