Half-hours with the Highwaymen - Vol 2 by Charles G. (Charles George) Harper

Author:Charles G. (Charles George) Harper [Harper, Charles G.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783752349856
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Outlook Verlag
Published: 2020-07-25T00:00:00+00:00

Turpin is indeed said to have at once made for that retreat and to have exclaimed, "What shall I do? where shall I go? d——n that Dick Bayes, I'll be the death of him, for I have lost the best fellow I ever had in my life. I shot poor King in endeavouring to kill that dog."

That is the accepted version, but it seems to be incorrect in several particulars. As before mentioned, Matthew King was the victim of that ill-considered aim. A somewhat different account is given in Turpin's alleged confessions to the hangman, printed in the, in most respects, reliable pamphlet narrating his life and trial, published in York in four editions in 1739. In those pages Turpin "said he was confederate with one King, who was executed in London some time since, and that once, being very near taken, he fired a pistol in the crowd, and by mistake, shot the said King in the thigh, who was coming to rescue him."

TOM KING.

(Skelt.)

That entirely reverses the position, and may or may not be an imperfectly recollected account of what Turpin said.

There is no doubt that a Tom King, a highwayman, was executed at Tyburn, in 1753, many years after the Tom King who was supposed to have been shot dead.

If Turpin had been really so terrified for his safety after the Whitechapel affair as represented, he must speedily have recovered himself, for he was busy all that month in his vocation. Comrades might die tragically, but his own pockets, always leaking like a colander, must be replenished. Really, however narrowly the career of this much-discussed highwayman is scanned, it seems hopeless to paint a consistent picture of him. He was, by the testimony of many witnesses, a cowardly fellow, not often with sufficient resolution to rob unaccompanied, and even on those occasions when he did play a lone hand, he wore a perfect armoury of weapons and attacked only the unarmed. One Gordon, lying at Newgate on a charge of highway robbery, told how he had once proposed to Turpin that himself and his brother, Turpin, and another should seize the money going down to pay the King's ships at Portsmouth. They were to stand in a very narrow pass and with swords and pistols attack the convoy. The scheme recalls the fine mid-seventeenth century exploits of "Mulled Sack" and his contemporaries, and if the enterprise had been undertaken, a splendid booty might have become theirs. But Turpin's courage failed him, and he backed out. Gordon said he was sure Turpin would be guilty of many cowardly actions, and die like a dog. His career, although a busy one, never touched great heights, and was commonly concerned with mean thefts and raids, but he must have been possessed of some nerve to continue actively robbing in the neighbourhood of London where he was so well known, after a hundred pounds was advertised to be waiting for any one who brought about his arrest. It is not merely a tradition that he so continued: we have the facts abundantly in the public prints of the time.

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