A fascinating historical survey of the world’s most infamous outlaws. For as long as human societies have existed there have always been people who have transgressed the laws of their respective societies. It seems that whenever new laws are made, certain people find ways to break them. This book will introduce you to some of the most notorious figures, from all parts of the world, who have committed heinous crimes such as highway robbery, murder, and forgery. Beginning with Bulla Felix, the Roman highwayman, this book traces the careers of medieval outlaws such as Robin Hood and Adam Bell. Early modern murderers also make an appearance, such as Sawney Beane, whose story inspired the cult horror movie The Hills Have Eyes. Learn also about the crimes and daring escapes of Jack Sheppard, an eighteenth-century criminal who escaped from prison on several occasions, and find out if the “gentlemanly” highwayman Dick Turpin was truly a gentleman. This book also includes an appendix of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century thieves’ cant, as well as several historical poems, songs, and ballads relating to the subjects discussed, and the work is prefaced with an essay highlighting the significance of crime literature throughout history.

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For as long as human societies have existed there have always been people who have always transgressed the laws of their respective societies. It seems that whenever new laws are made, certain people find ways to break them.This book will introduce you to some of the most notorious figures, from all parts of the world, who have committed heinous crimes such as highway robbery, murder, and forgery. Beginning with Bulla Felix, the Roman highwayman, this book traces the careers of medieval outlaws such as Robin Hood and Adam Bell. Early modern murderers also make an appearance, such as Sawney Beane, whose story inspired the cult horror movie The Hills Have Eyes (1977). Learn also about the crimes and daring escapes of Jack Sheppard, an eighteenth-century criminal who escaped from prison on several occasions, and find out if the ‘gentlemanly’ highwayman, Dick Turpin, was truly a gentleman. the ruffian Dick Turpin.This book also includes an appendix of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century thieves’ cant, as well as several historical poems, songs, and ballads relating to the subjects discussed, and the work is prefaced with an essay highlighting the significance of crime literature throughout history.

Why does the notorious highwayman Dick Turpin have such an extraordinary reputation today? How come his criminal career has inspired a profusion of often misleading literature and film? This eighteenth-century villain is often portrayed as a hero – dashing, sinister, romantic, daring, a Robin Hood of his times. The reality, as Jonathan Oates reveals in this perceptive, carefully researched study, was radically different. He was a robber, torturer and killer, a gangster whose posthumous reputation has eclipsed the truth about his life. In the early 1700s Turpin progressed from butcher’s apprentice and poacher to become a member of the Gregory gang which terrorized householders around London by robbery and violence. Then came his two-year career as a highwayman robbing travelers, his partnership with Matthew King whom he may have killed in Whitechapel, his murder Thomas Morris in Epping Forest, and his eventual capture and execution. Jonathan Oates recounts the episodes in Turpin’s short, brutal life in dramatic detail, basing his narrative on contemporary sources – trial records and newspapers in particular – and he traces the development of the Turpin legend over 250 years through novels, ballads, plays, television and film. The Dick Turpin who emerges from this rigorous and scholarly biography is in many ways a more interesting man than the legend suggests.

This collection of scholarly essays presents new work from an emerging line of inquiry: modern outlaw narratives and the textual and cultural relevance of food and feasting. Food, its preparation and its consumption, is presented in outlaw narratives as central points of human interaction, community, conflict, and fellowship. Feast scenes perform a wide variety of functions, serving as cultural repositories of manners and behaviors, catalysts for adventure, or moments of regrouping and redirecting narratives. The book argues that modern outlaw narratives illuminate a potent cross-cultural need for freedom, solidarity, and justice, and it examines ways in which food and feasting are often used to legitimate difference, create discord, and manipulate power dynamics.