Dick Turpin - Essex Gang

Essex Gang

Turpin most likely became involved with the Essex gang of deer thieves in the early 1730s. Deer poaching had long been endemic in the Royal Forest of Waltham, and in 1723 the Black Act (so called because it outlawed the blackening or disguising of faces while in the forests) was enacted to deal with such problems. Deer stealing was a domestic offence that was judged not in civil courts, but before Justices of the peace; it was not until 1737 that the more severe penalty of seven years' transportation was introduced. However, in 1731 seven verderers became so concerned by the increase in activity that they signed an affidavit which demonstrated their worries. The statement was lodged with Thomas Pelham-Holles, 1st Duke of Newcastle, who responded by offering a £10 reward to anyone who helped identify the thieves, plus a pardon for those thieves who gave up their colleagues. Following a series of nasty incidents, including the threatened murder of a keeper and his family, in 1733 the government increased the reward to £50 (about £6,900 as of 2012).

The Essex gang (sometimes called the Gregory Gang), which included Samuel Gregory, his brothers Jeremiah and Jasper, Joseph Rose, Mary Brazier (the gang's fence), John Jones, Thomas Rowden and a young John Wheeler, needed contacts to help them to dispose of the deer. Turpin, a young butcher who traded in the area, almost certainly became involved with their activities. By 1733 the changing fortunes of the gang may have prompted him to leave the butchery trade, and he became the landlord of a public house, most likely the Rose and Crown at Clay Hill. Although there is no evidence to suggest that Turpin was directly involved in the thefts, by summer 1734 he was a close associate of the gang, which may indicate that he had been known to them for some time.

By October 1734 several in the gang had either been captured or had fled, and the remaining members moved away from poaching, raiding the home of a chandler and grocer named Peter Split, at Woodford. Although the identities of the perpetrators are unknown, Turpin may have been involved. Two nights later they struck again, at the Woodford home of a gentleman named Richard Woolridge, a Furnisher of Small Arms in the Office of Ordnance at the Tower of London. In December Jasper and Samuel Gregory, John Jones, and John Wheeler, attacked the home of John Gladwin (a higler) and John Shockley, in Chingford. On 19 December Turpin and five other men raided the home of Ambrose Skinner, a 73-year-old farmer from Barking, leaving with an estimated £300.

Two days later, the gang—minus Turpin—attacked the home of a Keeper, William Mason, at Epping Forest. During the robbery Mason's servant managed to escape, and returned about an hour later with several neighbours, by which time the house was ransacked and the thieves long gone. On 11 January 1735 the gang raided the Charlton home of a Mr. Saunders. For the robbery of a gentleman named Sheldon, one week later at Croydon, Turpin arrived masked and armed with pistols, with four other members of the gang. In the same month two men, possibly from the same gang, raided the home of a Reverend Dyde. The clergyman was absent but the two cut his manservant around the face "in a barbarous manner". Another brutal attack occurred on 1 February 1735 at Loughton:

On Saturday night last, about seven o'clock, five rogues entered the house of the Widow Shelley at Loughton in Essex, having pistols &c. and threatened to murder the old lady, if she would not tell them where her money lay, which she obstinately refusing for some time, they threatened to lay her across the fire, if she did not instantly tell them, which she would not do. But her son being in the room, and threatened to be murdered, cried out, he would tell them, if they would not murder his mother, and did, whereupon they went upstairs, and took near £100, a silver tankard, and other plate, and all manner of household goods. They afterwards went into the cellar and drank several bottles of ale and wine, and broiled some meat, ate the relicts of a fillet of veal &c. While they were doing this, two of their gang went to Mr Turkles, a farmer's, who rents one end of the widow's house, and robbed him of above £20 and then they all went off, taking two of the farmer's horses, to carry off their luggage, the horses were found on Sunday the following morning in Old Street, and stayed about three hours in the house. —Report from Read's Weekly Journal (8 February 1735),

The gang lived in or around London. For a time Turpin stayed at Whitechapel, before moving to Millbank. On 4 February 1735 he met John Fielder, Samuel Gregory, Joseph Rose, and John Wheeler, at an inn along The Broadway in London. They planned to rob the house of Joseph Lawrence, a farmer at Earlsbury Farm in Edgware. Late that afternoon, after stopping twice along the way for food and drink, they captured a shepherd boy and burst into the house, armed with pistols. They bound the two maidservants, and brutally attacked the 70-year-old farmer. They pulled his breeches around his ankles, and dragged him around the house, but Lawrence refused to reveal the whereabouts of his money. Turpin beat Lawrence's bare buttocks with his pistols, badly bruising him, and other members of the gang beat him around the head with their pistols. They emptied a kettle of water over his head, forced him to sit bare-buttocked on the fire, and pulled him around the house by his nose, and hair. Gregory took one of the maidservants upstairs and raped her. For their trouble, the gang escaped with a haul of less than £30.

Three days later Turpin, accompanied by the same men along with William Saunders and Humphrey Walker, brutally raided a farm in Marylebone. The attack netted the gang just under £90. The next day the Duke of Newcastle offered a reward of £50 in exchange for information leading to the conviction of the "several persons" involved in the two Woodford robberies, and the robberies of the widow Shelley and Reverend Dyde. On 11 February Fielder, Saunders, and Wheeler, were apprehended. Two accounts of their capture exist. One claims that on their way to rob the Lawrence household the gang had stopped at an alehouse in Edgware, and that on 11 February, while out walking, the owner noticed a group of horses outside an alehouse in Bloomsbury. He recognised these horses as those used by the same group of men who had stopped at his alehouse before the Lawrence attack, and called for the parish constable. Another account claims that two of the gang were spotted by a servant of Joseph Lawrence. Regardless, the three, who were drinking with a woman (possibly Mary Brazier) were promptly arrested and committed to prison. Wheeler, who may have been as young as 15, quickly betrayed his colleagues, and descriptions of those yet to be captured were circulated in the press. In the London Gazette Turpin was described as "Richard Turpin, a butcher by trade, is a tall fresh coloured man, very much marked with the small pox, about 26 years of age, about five feet nine inches high, lived some time ago in Whitechapel and did lately lodge somewhere about Millbank, Westminster, wears a blue grey coat and a natural wig".