Page:Life of Richard Turpin, a most notorious highwayman.pdf/2

 THE LIFE

transactions of this most notorious offender made a greater noise in the world than those of almost any other malefactor previous to his time.

Richard Turpin was born at Hampstead, in Essex, where his father followed the occupation of butcher, with a fair reputation; and, after being the usual time at school, he was bound apprentice to a butcher in Whitechapel, but did not serve out his time; for his master discharged him from his house for the brutality and egregious impropriety of his conduct, which was not in the least diminished by his parents' improper indulgence in supplying him with money, which enabled him to cut a swell round the town among the blades of the road and turf, whose company he affected to keep. His friends thinking that marriage, and a settlement in life, would bring him over from his irregular courses, persuaded him to marry, which he did, with one Hester Palmer, a young woman of decent family, at East Ham in Essex; but he had not been married long before he fell into his old courses again, and so became acquainted with a gang of thieves, whose depredations terrified the whole county of Essex and the neighbourhood of London. His share of the spoils was not sufficient, it appears, to support him in his extravagance for he joined sheep