Dick Turpin's Grave
Opposite St. George's Church which stands not far from Walmgate Bar, lies a small graveyard which contains the last resting place of the notorious eighteenth century highwayman Dick Turpin.
whose body was carried there for burial following his execution at the York Tyburn.
Richard "Dick" Turpin, the most famous highwayman of all time, was born at the Blue Bell Inn in Hempstead, Essex, the fifth of six children to John Turpin and Mary Elizabeth Parmenter and was baptised there on 21 September 1705. John Turpin was a butcher and inn-keeper. Several accounts suggest that Turpin may have followed his father as a butcher, in about 1725 he married Elizabeth Millington. After his apprenticeship they moved north to Buckhurst Hill, Essex, where Turpin opened a butcher's shop.
Dick Turpin probably became involved with the Essex gang of deer thieves in the early 1730s. The members of the gang moved away from poaching to robbery. When most of the Essex gang were captured by the authorities, Turpin turned instead to the crime for which he has gone down in history, highway robbery and soon had a bounty placed on his head.
As the authorities began to close in on him, he hid in Epping Forest, where he was seen by Thomas Morris, a servant of one of the Forest's Keepers. Turpin shot and killed Morris on 4 May 1737 with a carbine when, armed with pistols, Morris attempted to capture him. A contemporary description relates that he was 'about Thirty, by Trade a Butcher, about 5 Feet 9 Inches high, brown Complexion, very much mark'd with the Small Pox, his Cheek-bones broad, his Face thinner towards the Bottom, his Visage short, pretty upright, and broad about the Shoulders.....wears a blue grey coat and a light coloured wig".' An E-fit of Turpin, derived from such reports, was published by the Castle Museum in York in 2009.
Dick Turpin then fled to Yorkshire under the alias of John Palmer, he was imprisoned at Beverley for shooting a man's cockerel and issuing threats to kill a man in October 1738 and was later transferred to York Castle jail when evidence emerged which linked him to more serious crimes.
At the end of March 1739 he was tried at York Assizes, convicted and condemned to death. Before his execution, Turpin frequently received visitors, the gaoler was reputed to have earned £100 from selling drinks to Turpin and his guests, although he refused the efforts of a local clergyman who offered him "serious remonstrances and admonitions."The bleak condemned cell where he spent his last days can still be seen today, preserved in the Debtors' Prison of the York Castle Museum.
On Saturday, April 7, 1739, Turpin was taken from the jail and paraded through York in an open cart to the gallows at Knavesmire, he wore a frockcoat and shoes for the occasion as he wished to look stylish for his execution. He paid five mourners three pounds and ten shillings to follow his cart and "bow'd to the spectators as he passed". He spoke calmly to his executioner then threw himself off the ladder and was dead within five minutes. His body was later laid out in the Blue Boar in Castlegate, where it attracted a crowd of curious spectators. It was soon after reported as stolen; however, the body-snatchers together with Turpin's corpse were soon apprehended and the body was reburied.