Family Myth or Truth? The Dick Turpin Case

I've mentioned before that everything my father told me about our family has (so far) proved to be true — and surprisingly accurate in its truth, although it may not have been what I expected.

One of my father's stories was that our family was related to infamous English highwayman Dick Turpin, who was hanged in Yorkshire where much of my family hails from. Dick Turpin is immortalized in stories, poems, songs, books, and films, so there were many opportunities for my father to remind us of this connection. Unfortunately, most tales about Dick Turpin were romanticised and ignored his notorious brutality. A novel written in 1824 took the deeds and attributes of several highwayman and merged them into one character identified as Dick Turpin, which set the tone for his legend. 

In the late 1970s, an English television show depicted a fictional Dick Turpin, who was given many of characteristics of Robin Hood. But my father never missed an episode, and it was fun to watch and wonder about our relationship to this antihero.  

I travelled to the United Kingdom for the first time in 1988 and added Dick Turpin to my itinerary. I visited several family-related locations in Yorkshire including the highwayman's grave in the city of York and the castle prison where he was hanged.

When I started genealogy research of my family many years later, Dick Turpin was on that itinerary too. But right away I discovered that Turpin was not born in Yorkshire. He had been born in Essex and spent most of his life in the London area. He ran away to the north of England in 1737 to escape the law and was hanged as a horse thief in the city of York in 1739. As soon as I read that the highwayman had not been born in Yorkshire, I discounted my father's story completely. I'd always believed our connection to Turpin was in the north, where many of my ancestors were born. But it seemed he had little to no relationship to Yorkshire other than being tried, convicted and hanged there. I set the story aside as a family myth and moved on.

I remembered the history of Dick Turpin again when a name appeared in my tree that was similar to his alias, John Palmer. Remember that few people could read or write so names were 'fluid' and written as they sounded. Surnames often changed slightly from person to person in the same family depending on how they pronounced words. When the name Palmerly appeared in our tree, I wondered if this was close enough to Palmer to be our connection to the highwayman. But our Palmerlys were in the county of Durham, so again I decided there was no connection. 

I continued to research and eventually found ancestors from the early 1700s when Dick Turpin lived. One of these was my 7th great-grandfather, Richard Collit. As there are few records from that period, I looked at every instance of his surname in databases. I found a parish record for a marriage between a woman named Elisabeth Collit and a man named Richard Turpin in 1737 in Wakefield Yorkshire. Interestingly, 1737, the year of the marriage, is the same year that Dick Turpin escaped from London and hid out in the north of England to avoid capture.

My ancestor Richard Collit was likely born in the first decade of the 1700s and also lived in Wakefield. He certainly could have been related to the Elisabeth who married the man named Richard Turpin. In fact, based on her estimated age, Elisabeth could have been my seventh great-grandfather's sister. But she might also have been a cousin.

However, this marriage record is likely for a different Richard Turpin. The highwayman had been hiding out, so he would not have been married under his own name, exposing his true identity. Especially since by then he was living as John Palmer. In addition, a church burial register shows a man named Richard Turpin being interred in Whitkirk, St Mary, Yorkshire in 1801. Since the highwayman had been hanged 62 years earlier, there must have been more than one man with that name. 

But the appearance of two people named Richard Turpin begs the question: were they related to each other? Maybe they were cousins. If a relationship between them is possible, then it is also possible that the reason highwayman Dick Turpin chose to run north was because he had relatives there who would give him a place to hide. Is our connection to Dick Turpin that his cousin married my 7th great-grandfather's sister? If yes, could that story have been passed down eight generations to my father, born in 1920? Dick Turpin was quite famous at the time of his death, although he was nearly forgotten after that until the 1824 novel brought his legend back to life. But then again, family stories often endure when public memory fades.

At the moment, I cannot prove or disprove that there were two different Richard Turpins, and that if there were two, that they were related. I also cannot prove or disprove that the Elisabeth Collit who married a man named Richard Turpin is directly related to my family. Although that is quite likely. 

The bottom line is that we might be related to a woman who married a man named Richard Turpin — regardless of whether that man was the highwayman, a relative of his or completely unrelated but with the same name. 

As I researched this connection, however, I was reminded again that my father's stories had borne fruit.