Being a highway man in the eighteenth century must have been a dangerous occupation, not the romantic notion we tend to have of it. We don’t applaud muggers or car-jackers, so why should we think that highway men who might brutalize and murder the people they held up, be any different? it was dangerous for them too because the penalty was usually death if they were caught.
Dick Turpin was perhaps the most famous highwayman, born in Essex,which is where my latest novel begins! In our family there is a legend that an Elsden was a highwayman who was caught and was the last man to be hanged on Caxton gibbet… Caxton is a village in Cambridgeshire on the old Roman Road of Ermine Street. I’ve not been able to discover if this was true or not… probably not… but you never know, some of dad’s other family stories which seemed far-fetched have turned out to have some truth in them!
Thinking of highwaymen, put me in mind of the Dandy Highwayman:
Lois Elsden 