Execution
In a slight nod to the later tradition of Turpin the dapper highwayman, Turpin purchased himself a new frock coat and shoes for his execution. He also hired five professional mourners to follow his procession to the scaffold and to oversee his body’s interment. After giving a range of other gifts to people, including a gold ring and several pairs of shoes to a married woman with whom he had had an affair whilst in Brough, Turpin was transported by a cart from York Castle to be hanged on 7th April 1739. The vehicle was strongly guarded to prevent escape.
Appropriately, given his conviction for horse-stealing, the site of the execution, Knavesmire, was the York racecourse, and it still used for the purpose today. A small stone marks the spot where the gallows once stood. As he passed spectators, Turpin nodded politely to them. Astride the ‘Three-Legged-Mare’, as the gallows was nicknamed, Turpin looked out at the assembled crowd with ‘undaunted courage’. Ironically, the hangman for the day was Thomas Hadfield, a highwayman himself who had been sentenced to death but pardoned. Turpin then ‘spoke a few words to the topsman, then threw himself off, and expir’d in five minutes’.
Turpin was left hanging for most of the afternoon, then interred at St George’s Church, Fishergate, in the city of York. His body was swiftly stolen by body-snatchers, but they were apprehended and Turpin was laid to rest for a second time. Thus ended the appalling life of England’s most famous highwayman. Perhaps the only person in York sad to see him go was his jailer, who allegedly made over £1000 selling tickets to visit Turpin at York Castle as he awaited execution. Even before his death, the foundations were laid for the modern myth of Turpin the celebrity highwayman.