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Almost everything people know about Dick Turpin and highwaymen is myth. The historical truth is much nastier, more brutal and bloody. As Dick Turpin went to the scaffold in York in 1739 he was determined to look his best. The previous day he had had a new frock coat and pumps delivered to him in the condemned man's cell in York Castle Prison. And he paid £3 and 10 shillings for five men to act as mourners. Who was this notorious highwayman and why did he become so famous? What did he do to become the subject of such extraordinary myths? Most of all, why are highwaymen romantic figures? We have highwayman now: we call them muggers and car-jackers and we don't sing ballads about them or eulogise them for their brave exploits. This is a masterly biography of one of Britain's best-known criminals - but it is also an examination of the cult of the highwayman, of crime in the 18th century and the treatment of criminals. In the absence of any police force how were crimes solved? Who did the detective work? And did the criminals get a fair trial - an important question if you were going to hang from the neck for a relatively minor misdemeanour. Was there a criminal underclass and did people really live in terror of going on the roads at night? Looking at the underbelly of society and the nastier aspects of life that many historians ignore, James Sharpe creates a vivid picture of life on the edges in 18th century Britain.
The true story of the highwaymen has never been written, nor can it be. The chroniclers were slavishly faithful to their authorities—flatteringly so, in fact; for these authorities consisted of a lot of chapbooks, broadsheets, penny dreadfuls and twopenny bloods, “dying confessions” that had come in for a good deal of posthumous editing, and the contemporary gutter Press—which was even more unreliable then than it is today. Many of these ‘authorities’ were so contradictory that the truth-at-all-costs chroniclers left out some of the best bits of highway lore in their vain attempts to keep faithful to their ridiculous principles. Our own ambition is more modest. We have not sought the El Dorado of absolute truth. We have gone back to the same sources that the chroniclers used—and we have taken pains to ignore the latter gentlemen whenever contemporary reports are still extant. We have not moralized, like the chroniclers, nor have we embellished, like the novelists. We have added nothing—but we have taken away a good deal. We have tried to use our discretion in selection, and our judgment in discrimination between contradictory versions of the same events. Since it was impossible to be faithful to the letter, we have tried to recapture the spirit of the Age of Highwaymen.
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