Dick Turpin Turpin arranged the meeting by letter, which was intercepted by the authorities. While Turpin eluded his enemies, making his escape to Cambridge, the others were arrested on charges of "violent suspicion of being dangerous rogues and robbing upon the highway". They were imprisoned at Hertford gaol, although the women were later acquitted (Nott was released at the next Assize). Although one report late in March suggests, unusually, that Turpin alone robbed a company of higlers, in the same month he was reported to be working alongside two other highwaymen, Matthew King (then, and since, incorrectly identified as Tom King, and
Dick Turpin a robbery in Kent in 1676, William Nevison apparently rode to York to establish an alibi, and Defoe's account of that journey became part of folk legend. A similar ride was attributed to Turpin as early as 1808, and was being performed on stage by 1819, but the feat as imagined by Ainsworth (about 200 miles in less than a day) is impossible. Nevertheless, Ainsworth's legend of Black Bess was repeated in works such as "Black Bess or the Knight of the Road", a 254-part penny dreadful published in 1867–68. In these tales, Turpin was the hero, accompanied by his