John Palmer was charged for shooting a chicken in the street and threatening to shoot its owner as well. On 23 February 1737 Palmer was identified as outlaw Dick Turpin at York Castle by his former teacher James Smith. Smith recognised Turpin’s handwriting on a letter sent from his cell to his brother-in-law, Pompr Rivernall, in Hempstead. Smith collected a £200 reward for identifying Palmer as Turpin.
On the 7th April 1739: Whitechapel-born highwayman John Palmer (Dick Turpin) was hanged in York for murder & horse-stealing. He was born above his father's butcher shop in Aldgate on September 21st 1705 and began an apprenticeship there. Soon he saw a better income as a thief and burglar, eventually becoming a highwayman working with Tom King from their hide-out in Epping Forest.
Dick Turpin fled to York when his gang was arrested. His 220 mile overnight journey on his horse Black Bess was immortalised by Daniel Defoe as well as many others in books, plays, pantomimes and on screen. It is now believed that Turpin ride was in fact fictional. The 200-mile (320 km) overnight ride from London to York on his horse Black Bess, just a story, made famous by the Victorian novelist William Harrison Ainsworth almost 100 years after Turpin's death.
Before his execution, Turpin frequently received visitors, his gaoler was reputed to have earned £100 from selling drinks to Turpin and his guests.
His father John, sent him a letter marked Aldgate and dated 29 th of March, urging him to "beg of God to pardon your many transgressions, which the thief upon the cross received pardon for at the last hour". Dick Turpin refused the efforts of a local clergyman to pray with him.
Turpin bought a new frock coat and shoes, and on the day before his execution hired five mourners for three pounds and ten shillings to be shared between them.
On 7 April 1739, followed by his mourners, Turpin and John Stead -another horse thief, were taken through York by open cart to Knavesmire, which was then the city's equivalent of London's Tyburn gallows.
Turpin "behav'd himself with amazing assurance", and "bow'd to the spectators as he passed". He climbed a ladder to the gallows and spoke to his executioner. York had no permanent hangman, and it was the custom to pardon a prisoner on condition that he acted as executioner.
On this occasion, the pardoned man was a fellow highwayman, Thomas Hadfield. An account in The Gentleman's Magazine for 7 April 1739 notes Turpin's brashness:
"Turpin behaved in an undaunted manner; as he mounted the gallows ladder, feeling his right leg tremble, he spoke a few words to the topsman, then threw himself off, and expir'd in five minutes."
The short drop method of hanging meant that those executed were killed by slow strangulation, and so Turpin was left hanging 5 hours until late afternoon, before being cut down and taken to a tavern in Castlegate for public display, it was also common practice for the clothes and hair of a hanged man to be sold off as souvenirs. By all accounts, the trade was brisk, Turpin was very soon:
''Shave'd to y bone and strypp'd naked to hys shirt''
The next morning, Turpin's body was buried in the graveyard of St George's Church, Fishergate, opposite what is now the Roman Catholic St George's Church.
On the Tuesday following the burial, the corpse was reportedly stolen by body-snatchers. The theft of cadavers for medical research was a common enough occurrence, and was likely tolerated by the authorities in York.
The practice was however unpopular with the general public, and the body-snatchers, together with Turpin's corpse, were soon apprehended by a mob. The body was recovered and reburied, supposedly this time with quicklime.
Many places claim to be Turpin's hometown, yet his apprentice ticket states Aldgate as birthplace. His connection to The Spaniard's Inn at Hampstead is through an uncle.
Some of the Turpin legend can be sourced directly to Richard Bayes' The Genuine History of the Life of Richard Turpin - 1739, a mixture of fact and fiction hurriedly put together in the wake of the trial, to satisfy a gullible public. The speeches of the condemned, biographies of criminals, and trial literature, were popular best-sellers during the late 17th and early 18th centuries; written for a mass audience.
The 19th century novelist, William Harrison Ainsworth wrote this about Dick Turpin in his 1834 work 'Rookwood':
''...Rash daring was the main feature of Turpin's character. Like our great Nelson, he knew fear only by name; and when he thus trusted himself in the hands of strangers, confident in himself and in his own resources, he felt perfectly easy as to the result. Turpin was the ultimus Romanorum, the last of a race, which we were almost about to say we regret, is now altogether extinct. Several successors he had, it is true, but no name worthy to be recorded after his own. With him expired the chivalrous spirit which animated successively the bosoms of so many knights of the road; with him died away that passionate love of enterprise, that high spirit of devotion to the fair sex, which was first breathed upon the highway by the gay, gallant Claude Du-Val, the Bayard of the road - Le filou sans peur et sans reproche - but which was extinguished at last by the cord that tied the heroic Turpin to the remorseless tree.''
No contemporary portrait exists of Turpin, the closest description that exists is that given by witness John Wheeler for a 'Wanted Poster':
"a fresh coloured man, very much marked about with the small pox, about five feet nine inches high ... often wears a blue grey coat and a light coloured wig".
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