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 (TV series) ripped off by the establishment and suffered the tragic loss of his parents, a good moral starting point. This also meant that the writers did not have to use any events from Turpin's real life in the series. The TV story begins after the presumed death by hanging of Dick Turpin at York. It is made clear at the beginning of the series that the man who was hanged merely claimed the famous name. Captain Nathan Spiker, working for Sir John Glutton, threatens to evict Mary Smith and her son Nick from their inn 'The Black Swan' if they do