This Stone's set up to think upon.
TURPIN'S STONE.
This curious wayside relic may be found on the boundary-line of the parishes of Bulkington and Keevil, near a spot oddly named Brass Pan Bridge, and standing in an evil-smelling ditch that receives the drainage of the neighbouring pigsties. It is a battered and moss-grown object, and its inscription, despite the local version of it given above, is not really decipherable, as a whole. "Turpin" may be read, easily enough, but if the word above it is meant for "Dick," why then the sculptor of it spelled the name "Dicq," a feat of illiterate ingenuity that rather staggers belief. Brake-loads of Wiltshire archæologists have visited the spot in summer, when county antiquaries mostly archælogise, and, braving typhoid fever, have descended into the ditch and sought to unravel the mystery of this Sphinx: without result.
The village of Poulshot, birthplace of Thomas Boulter, a once-dreaded highwayman, is not far off, and it is possible that Boulter, who had a very busy and distinguished career on the highways of England in general, and of Salisbury Plain in particular, [2] may have been named locally "Dick Turpin," after the hero who died at York under tragical circumstances, with the aid of a rope, in 1739. Boulter himself ended in that way in 1778, at Winchester, and so the transference of names was quite possible. He, it is significant to note, had a mare named "Black Bess," which he stole in 1736 from Mr. Peter Delmé's stables at Erle Stoke.
[2] See the "Exeter Road," pp. 217-228.
There are Turpin "relics" and associations at the "Spaniards," on Hampstead Heath, and we find the Times of August 22nd, 1838, saying: "The rear of the houses on Holborn Bridge has for many years been the receptacle for characters of the most daring and desperate condition. There, in a secret manège (now a slaughter-house for her species), did Turpin suffer his favourite Black Bess to repose for many a night previously to her disastrous journey to York." The Times had evidently swallowed the Ride to York story whole, and relished it.
Another, and more cautious commentator says, "He shot people like partridges. Many wild and improbable stories are told of him, such as his rapid ride to York, his horse chewing a beef-steak on the way; but, setting these aside, he was hardy and cruel enough to shine as a mighty malefactor. He seems, to quote the Newgate jest, to have been booked, at his very birth, for the Gravesend Coach that leaves at eight in the morning."
"Many years ago," we read in Pink's History of Clerkenwell, "a small leather portmanteau was found at the 'Coach and Horses' tavern, at Hockley-in-the-Hole, with the ends of wood, large enough to contain a change of linen, besides other little etceteras. On the inner side of the lid, lightly cut in the surface of the leather, is the name, 'R. TVRPIN.' Whether or no this portmanteau (such an one as horsemen formerly carried behind them, strapped to the saddle), belonged to that famous highwayman," says Pink, "we will not attempt to decide."