In Praise of Essex Part 4 (well sort of) – Essex Man

Like Essex girl, Essex man is another well worn stereotype , Basically he is portrayed as a xenophobic Sun reader who drives a Dagenham dustbin (Ford to you), and is set on material gain (and minimal taxes): In the eighties Essex Man was at the (white)vanguard of Thatcherism.

Loadsamoney

Being an Essex man myself (well Romford was still part of Essex when I was born), I consider it to be an unfair portrayal. Unfortunately there have been “Essex men” for centuries.

Dick Turpin

Dick Turpin (as found on the Highways Agency website of all places!)

Change the Ford to a horse and the material gain to thuggery and highway robbery and you have Dick Turpin. Turpin was born in 1706 in rural Essex, the son of John Turpin, a small farmer and some-time innkeeper. Young Dick probably served an apprenticeship with a butcher in Whitechapel (later the hunting ground of Jack the Ripper). When his apprenticeship was over, he opened a butcher shop, and began to steal sheep, lamb and cattle. Caught in the act of stealing two oxen, he fled to Essex to save himself. He then tried his hand at smuggling, but proved as inept at this as he had at cattle rustling.

At this point Turpin was part of what was known as the Essex or Gregory Gang. The gang started raiding isolated farmhouses, terrorizing and torturing the occupants into giving up their valuables. Robbing remote farmhouses became the Gang's speciality, and it was only towards the end of his criminal career that Turpin was actually involved in highway robbery.

After the capture members of the gang Turpin returned to East Anglia where he began working with 'Captain' Tom King, one of the best-known highwaymen of the day.. One night, while on the road to London, he took a fancy to a particularly fine horse ridden by a man called Major. Mr. Major didn't take the loss lying down and the horse was finally traced to the Red Lion pub in Whitechapel. When Tom King came to collect the horse, he was arrested. Turpin, who had been waiting nearby, rode toward the constables holding King and fired at them. Unfortunately, he was a dreadful shot, and the bullets hit King rather than his captors.

Realising that he would not escape capture if he remained in the London area, Turpin set off for Yorkshire., where he settled under the name of John Palmer, financing his fancy lifestyle with frequent excursions into Lincolnshire for more horse and cattle rustling and the occasional highway robbery. One day, returning from an unsuccessful hunt he shot his landlord's rooster. When the landlord complained he threatened to kill the landlord and he was taken into custody. Things might not have gone badly for Turpin had he not written a letter to his brother, requesting him to 'procure an evidence from London that could give me a character’

Unfortunately for Turpin, his brother was too mean to pay the postage and returned the letter to the Post Office. By a great coincidence Turpin's former schoolmaster saw the letter recognised the handwriting. He took the letter to the local magistrate and, with his permission, opened it. Despite the fact that it was signed John Palmer the author was identified as Turpin. Convicted on two indictments, Turpin was sentenced to death and hanged in York in April 1739.

The legend of Dick Turpin as a dashing highwayman was sealed with the novel Rookwood (1834) by Harrison Ainsworth in which the highwayman 'Dauntless Dick Turpin' with his horse Black Bess is a secondary character. Ainsworth's description of an epic ride from Westminster to York caught the popular imagination and turned a fairly average pot-boiler into a runaway best-seller. History, romance, and legend rapidly blurred and, eventually, the fictional ride of Ainsworth's Turpin totally eclipsed the villain's real exploits. The metamorphosis of Dick Turpin, house-breaker, torturer, murderer, horse-stealer and all-round real nasty piece of work into Dick Turpin, Highwayman and Knight of the Road was complete.

For what it’s worth the great ride to York was actually made by a 17th-century highwayman John Nevison, who early one morning in 1676 robbed a homeward-bound sailor on the road outside Gads Hill, Kent. Deciding he needed to establish an alibi, Nevison set off on a ride that took him more than 190 miles in about 15 hours.

Source: Stand and Deliver

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