Dick Turpin in York in 2009. Turpin is best known for his exploits as a highwayman, but before his execution the only contemporary report of him as such was in June 1737, when a broadsheet entitled "News news: great and wonderful news from London in an uproar or a hue and cry after the Great Turpin, with his escape into Ireland" was published. Although some of his contemporaries became the subject of chapbooks, names such as James Hind, Claude Duval and William Nevison, are not nearly as well-known today as the legend of Dick Turpin, whose fictionalised exploits first began to appear
Dick Turpin natural wig". Once Wheeler's confession became apparent, the other members of the gang fled their usual haunts. Turpin informed Gregory and the others of Wheeler's capture, and left Westminster. On 15 February 1735, while Wheeler was busy confessing to the authorities, "three or four men" (most likely Samuel Gregory, Herbert Haines, Turpin, and possibly Thomas Rowden) robbed the house of a Mrs St. John at Chingford. On the following day Turpin (and Rowden, if present) parted company with Gregory and Haines, and headed for Hempstead to see his family. Gregory and Haines may have gone looking for Turpin, because on