Highwayman facts for kids
A highwayman was a type of robber who attacked people who were travelling. They were common in the British Isles from the time of Elizabeth I to the 1800s. Highwaymen rode on horses. They were thought to be socially superior to footpads (who robbed on foot).
Some highwaymen robbed alone but others worked in gangs. They often targeted coaches because they did not have much defence. They stole money, jewellery and other valuable items. The penalty for robbery with violence was execution by hanging.
One of the most famous highwaymen was Dick Turpin, who was hanged for his crimes in 1739. The Australian bushranger Ben Hall was said to be one too. The worst place for highwayman were Shooter’s Hill and Finchely Common.
Highwayman were not only just men but woman too.
The word highwayman was first used around 1617. Terms such as "knights of the road" and "gentlemen of the road" were sometimes used by people interested in romanticizing them. In the 19th-century American West, highwaymen were sometimes known as road agents. In Australia, they were known as bushrangers.
Robbing
The great age of highwaymen was the period from the Restoration in 1660 to the death of Queen Anne in 1714. Some are known to have been disbanded soldiers, and even officers, of the English Civil War and French wars. What favoured them most was the lack of governance and absence of a police force: parish constables were almost entirely ineffective, while detection and arrest were very difficult. Most of the highwaymen held up travellers and took their money. Some had channels by which they could dispose of bills of exchange. Others had a 'racket' on the road transport of an extensive district; carriers regularly paid them a ransom to go unmolested.
They often attacked coaches for their lack of protection, including public stagecoaches; the postboys who carried the mail were also frequently held up. The demand to "Stand and deliver!" (sometimes in forms such as "Stand and deliver your purse!" "Stand and deliver your money!") was in use from the 17th century to the 19th century. The phrase "Your money or your life!" is mentioned in trial reports from the mid-18th century.
Dangerous places
English highwaymen often laid in wait on the main roads radiating from London. They usually chose lonely areas of heathland or woodland. Hounslow Heath was a favourite haunt: it was crossed by the roads to Bath and Exeter. Bagshot Heath in Surrey was another dangerous place on the road to Exeter. One of the most notorious places in England was Shooter's Hill on the Great Dover Road. Finchley Common, on the Great North Road, was nearly as bad.
To the south of London, highwaymen sought to attack wealthy travellers on the roads leading to and from the Channel ports and aristocratic arenas like Epsom, which became a fashionable spa town in 1620, and Banstead Downs where horse races and sporting events became popular with the elite from 1625. Later in the 18th century the road from London to Reigate and Brighton through Sutton attracted highwaymen. Commons and heaths considered to be dangerous included Blackheath, Putney Heath, Streatham Common, Mitcham Common, Thornton Heath – also the site of a gallows known as "Hangman's Acre" or "Gallows Green" – Sutton Common, Banstead Downs and Reigate Heath.
During the late 17th and early 18th centuries, highwaymen in Hyde Park were sufficiently common for King William III to have the route between St James's Palace and Kensington Palace (Rotten Row) lit at night with oil lamps as a precaution against them. This made it the first artificially lit highway in Britain.
Executions
The penalty for robbery with violence was hanging, and most notorious English highwaymen ended on the gallows. The chief place of execution for London and Middlesex was Tyburn Tree. Highwaymen whose lives ended there include Claude Du Vall, James MacLaine, and Sixteen-string Jack. Highwaymen who went to the gallows laughing and joking, or at least showing no fear, are said to have been admired by many of the people who came to watch.
Decline
After about 1815, mounted robbers are recorded only rarely, the last recorded robbery by a mounted highwayman having occurred in 1831. The decline in highwayman activity also occurred during the period in which repeating handguns, notably the pepper-box and the percussion revolver, became increasingly available and affordable to the average citizen. The development of the railways is sometimes cited as a factor, but highwaymen were already obsolete before the railway network was built. The expansion of the system of turnpikes, manned and gated toll-roads, made it all but impossible for a highwayman to escape notice while making his getaway, but he could easily avoid such systems and use other roads, almost all of which outside the cities were flanked by open country.
Cities such as London were becoming much better policed: in 1805 a body of mounted police began to patrol the districts around the city at night. London was growing rapidly, and some of the most dangerous open spaces near the city, such as Finchley Common, were being covered with buildings. However, this only moved the robbers' operating area further out, to the new exterior of an expanded city, and does not therefore explain decline. A greater use of banknotes, more traceable than gold coins, also made life more difficult for robbers, but the Inclosure Act of 1773 was followed by a sharp decline in highway robberies; stone walls falling over the open range like a net, confined the escaping highwaymen to the roads themselves, which now had walls on both sides and were better patrolled. The dramatic population increase which began with the Industrial Revolution also meant, quite simply, that there were more eyes around, and the concept of remote place became a thing of the past in England.
Images for kids
-
Asalto al coche (Robbery of the coach), by Francisco de Goya.
-
English highwayman James Hind depicted in an engraving now in the National Portrait Gallery.
See also
In Spanish: Salteador de caminos para niños
- List of highwaymen
- Brigandage
- Bushranger
- Dacoity
- Hajduk
- Mail robbery
- Marauder (disambiguation)
- Piracy
- Renegade Nell
- Road agent (disambiguation)
- Social bandits
- Thuggees
