Dick Turpin loses his fresh-faced image as a dashing highwayman

Folklore might have cast him as a fine and dashing highwayman but Dick Turpin was a common, uncommunicative thug with a particularly bad complexion who deserves none of our admiration, social historians declared yesterday.

Folklore might have cast him as a fine and dashing highwayman but Dick Turpin was a common, uncommunicative thug with a particularly bad complexion who deserves none of our admiration, social historians declared yesterday.

Turpin's reputation was cut down to size in York, the city where he hanged on the Tyburn for the crime of horse rustling in April 1739.

In an event coinciding with National Museums' month, historians at the York Castle Museum - formerly the prison where Turpin was thrown in a dungeon to await death - revealed his "true adventures" and ascribed the idealised myths which have surrounded him to the whim of a 19th century romantic novelist.

Harrison Ainsworth's 1834 melodrama Rockwood cast Turpin as a flamboyant figure who famously rode his horse, Black Bess, from London to York.

He rode no such horse and made no such journey, said Michelle Petyt, assistant curator of social history at the museum, where Turpin's cell has been renovated. But the novel spawned many stories about sallow, handsome Turpin kissing handsome maidens and escaping through upstairs windows of coaching inns.

Since no contemporary artist had the presence of mind to sketch Turpin as he rode to the gallows, the best evidence of him comes from a police informer and one-time gang member who described him as "a tall, fresh-coloured man, very much marked by the small pox" who wore a light wig.

"It's not particularly flattering," said Ms Peyt. "He seems to have been a quiet, dour figure." His crimes were equally unappetising, say Ms Petyt and Professor James Sharpe, criminal history lecturer at York University, who is preparing a book on Turpin.

He started as a butcher who sold game meat stolen by poachers, then fell in with Samuel Gregory, an armed robber, and his 20-strong gang and helped stage attacks on large, isolated houses.

In one farmhouse robbery, an old man was beaten, burned and had a kettle of boiling water thrown over him while his maid servant was raped, show contemporary newspaper reports. An 18th century woodcut also depicts Turpin and his henchmen throwing an old lady on a fire to force her to hand over her jewels.

After many gang members were captured Turpin - aka John Palmer, born in Hampstead, Essex - turned to highway robbery. His non-stop ride from London to York on Black Bess is part of the legend but there seems to be no evidence of it. That ride was completed by a Yorkshire-born highwayman, John Nevison, York's historians believe.

Professor Sharpe says the romanticised Rookwood version of Turpin's life was published at a point when highway robbery ceased to be a crime in England. "It is an example of crime being romanticized at a time when it stops being dangerous," he said.

Turpin's many shortcomings had much to do with his arrest and execution, which he did bear with courage. Through frustration he shot a cockerel, threatened a neighbour and was arrested and imprisoned at York.

His identity, which had concealed was discovered only after he was foolish enough to write to his family from York Castle prison. The letter was intercepted by his former schoolmaster who recognised the handwriting and formally identified him.