Page 26 - Top Cover Issue 6
P. 26
26 TOP COVER ISSUE 6
POLICE HISTORY SERIES
Over the coming issues, Mike Waldren QPM looks at a timeline of
Policing and Firearms, starting with 1684 - 1784
1684 1713 1739
Parish Constable Darcy A highwayman, Jack Shrimpton, A highwayman, Richard (Dick)
Fletcher (Batley, West is drinking late at night in a Turpin, is executed at Knavesmire
Yorkshire) is shot and ‘bawdy-house’ in Bristol when in York. A fictional, romanticised
killed trying to arrest a a watchman (name unknown) version of his career will be
highwayman, John (William) doing his rounds hears him created but he is actually nothing
Nevison, near Howley making ‘a great noise of swearing more than a brutal robber and
Hall. Nevison is executed and cursing’. The watchman a confederate of Mathew King,
at Knavesmire in York. He takes him into custody but on another highwaymen, who may
will often be mistakenly their way to the watch-house have been shot and killed by Turpin
credited with a 230-mile Shrimpton, fearing that he by mistake (accounts differ). Turpin
‘Ride to York’ in less than may be identified, shoots and then tries to hide in a cave in Epping
a day in 1676 to provide kills him. He is caught almost Forest in Essex but when he is found
an alibi for himself after immediately and taken to he shoots and kills Thomas Morris,
he robbed a traveller at Newgate prison in Bristol. At his a servant of one of the forest’s
Gads Hill in Kent, a feat (if trial he is convicted of murder keepers, who has borrowed a gun
it happened at all) that will and five highway robberies. He and tries to arrest him. He heads
also be wrongly attributed is executed at Gallows Acre at north where he is discovered living
in popular folklore to the top of St. Michael’s Hill. under the name of Palmer.
Richard (Dick) Turpin.
1704 1733 1755
A member of the London A report to the Treasury Three officers from the
night watch (name by the Commissioners Bow Street public office,
unknown) is shot and of Customs identifies London, rush a room in
killed by Thomas Sharp, that immense smuggling which two highwaymen
a persistent thief. Sharp’s operations are being named Joseph Gill and
speciality is stealing from undertaken in Kent, Sussex, William Burk are hiding.
coaches at night by cutting Essex and Suffolk by well- Principal Officer Hind is
off trunks that are tied armed gangs. During the shot resulting in ‘a wound
on the back for which he previous twelve months which caused his arm to
is said to have already 54,000 lbs of tea and be cut off, in consequence
been in Newgate prison 123,000 gallons of brandy of which he died’. Gill
eighteen times. Sharp have been impounded. It gives up and Burk ‘though
shoots the watchman when asks for an additional 106 his hand that held the
he is caught breaking into dragoons to supplement pistol was almost cut off’
a shoemaker’s shop. He is the 185 who are already with a cutlass is arrested
executed at the end of Long patrolling the coast. when ‘vast loss of blood
Acre in Drury Lane. rendered him incapable of
further resistance’. Both are
executed (along with six
others) on the same day at
Tyburn.
