Dick Turpin 7 May, he committed two highway robberies near Epping. Turpin may also have lost his mount; on 7 May Elizabeth King, the wife of Turpin's accomplice, attempted to secure two horses left by Matthew King, at an inn called the Red Lion. The horses were suspected as belonging to "highwaymen" and Elizabeth King was arrested for questioning, but she was later released without charge. Morris's killing unleashed a flood of Turpin reports, and a reward of £200 was offered for his capture. Sometime around June 1737 Turpin boarded at the Ferry Inn at Brough, under the alias of John Palmer
Dick Turpin around the turn of the 19th century. It was, however, the story of a fabled ride from London to York that provided the impetus for 19th-century author William Harrison Ainsworth to include and embellish the exploit in his 1834 novel "Rookwood". Ainsworth used Turpin as a plot device, describing him in a manner that makes him more lively than the book's other characters. Turpin is introduced with the pseudonym Palmer, and is later forced to escape on his horse, Black Bess. Although fast enough to keep ahead of those in pursuit, Black Bess eventually dies under the stress of the