Richard Turpin was an English highwayman whose exploits were romanticised following his execution in York for horse theft. He is also known for a fictional 200-mile (320km) overnight ride from London to York on his horse Black Bess. Turpin may have followed his father's trade as a butcher early in his life but, by the early 1730s, he had joined a gang of deer thieves and, later, became a poacher, burglar and horse thief.