MOLL CUTPURSE

One early criminal who received notoreity was Mary Frith, dubbed Moll Cutpurse for her expertise as a pickpocket. A lusty but plain woman who dressed like a man, she was often drunk and chain smoked. Born in the Barbican, London, in 1584, her parents died when she was a child and her family tried to get rid of her, once tricking her onto a merchant ship as crew. Escaping, she joined a gang of pickpockets, doing the rounds of fairs, before joining highwayman, Captain Hind.
Caught, she went to Newgate Prison but bribed a guard. Released, she bought a house in Fleet Street, setting up as a fence, even advertising stolen goods in her window. Later, the house turned into a brothel and before her death in 1658, she could often be seen walking London, dressed as a man, a huge cigar in mouth, her Mastiff close by.

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DICK TURPIN

The most famous criminal of the 18th century was ‘king of the road’ Dick Turpin, born at the Bell Inn, Hampstead in Essex in 1705. Seen as a romantic figure who once fled from London to York in a night on Black Bess, the reality was very different, the myth born out of a 19th century novel, ‘Rookwood’ by William Harrison Ainsworth. Turpin was apprenticed to a London butcher, eventually marrying and opening his own shop.
However, he was not a good businessman and turned to sheep stealing. Found out, he fled, joining a number of gangs of house-breakers, poachers and smugglers. He thought nothing of pouring boiling water over victims and once took part in a gang rape.
In 1736 he became a highwayman on the Cambridge road out of London, joining up with Robert King. Ambushed, King was shot, but Turpin escaped to Cambridge, Lincoln, and eventually York, where he took the identity of gentleman John Palmer, wining and dining with the gentry until the night he fired off pistols while drunk.
Arrested, he was found to have been sheep stealing. Worried about his real identity being known – he was wanted for the murder of an Epping forester – he wrote to his brother in Hampstead to confirm his Palmer identity. The post-master recognised Turpin’s handwriting and went to identify him, Turpin being hanged in York on 7 April 1739.

(c) Anthony North, December 2008