Crime and Punishment

Celebrated criminals

• The criminal biography. Capt Alexander Smith’s Compleat History of the Lives and Robberies of the Most Notorious highwaymen, foot-pads, shop-lifts and Cheats (1719); Capt Charles Johnson’s General history of the Lives and Adventures of the Most Famous Highwaymen, Murderers, Street-robbers and …Pyrates (1734); The Tyburn Chronicle (1768)
• John Rann, Sixteen String Jack because of the silk strings he tied to the knee of his breaches; he robbed only the rich.
• Jonathan Wild, b. 1682, hanged 1725. instructed thieves to steal from people they could identify since they would pay for return of goods.
• Highwaymen eg Dick Turpin, who operated in early C18th Epping Forest; hung 1739

The Newgate Calendar

• RICHARD TURPIN
• A famous Highway Robber, who shot dead one of his own Comrades and was executed at York On 7th of April, 1739
• This notorious character was for a long time the dread of travellers on the Essex road, on account of the daring robberies which he daily committed; was also a noted house-breaker, and was for a considerable time remarkably successful in his desperate course, but was at length brought to an ignominious end, in consequence of circumstances which, in themselves, may appear trifling. He was apprehended in consequence of shooting a fowl, and his brother refusing to pay sixpence for the postage of his letter occasioned his conviction.
•  He was the son of a farmer at Thackstead in Essex; and, having received a common school education, was apprenticed to a butcher in Whitechapel; but was distinguished from his early youth for the impropriety of his behaviour, and the brutality of his manners. On the expiration of his apprenticeship, be married a young woman of East Ham, in Essex, named Palmer: but he had not been long married before he took to the practice of stealing his neighbours' cattle, which he used to kill and cut up for sale.
•  Having stolen two oxen belonging to Mr. Giles, of Plaistow, he drove them to his own house; but two of Giles's servants, suspecting who was the robber, went to Turpin's where they saw two beasts of such size as had been lost: but as the hides were stripped from them, it was impossible to say that they were the same: but learning that Turpin used to dispose of his hides at Waltham-Abbey, they went thither, and saw the hides of the individual beasts that had been stolen.
•  No doubt now remaining who was the robber, a warrant was procured for the apprehension of Turpin; but, learning that the peace-officers were in search of him, he made his escape from the back window of his house, at the very moment that the others were entering at the door.
•  Having retreated to a place of security, he found means to inform his wife where he was concealed; on which she furnished him with money, with which he travelled into the hundreds of Essex, where he joined a gang of smugglers, with whom he was for some time successful; till a set of the Custom house officers, by one successful stroke, deprived him of all his ill-acquired gains.