Ex Hounslow Librarian Andrea Cameron entertained us at our January social evening with some colourful tales of highwaymen on Hounslow Heath. Regarding the old myth that Dick Turpin was amongst those who haunted the Heath, she thought it possible but unlikely, but gave us some case histories of a few of the more notorious characters who infested the heath such as Mary Frith, daughter of City shopkeepers, who took to a life of crime becoming known as Moll Cutpurse from her habit of creeping up behind gentlemen and cutting away their purse. She would also ride out to Hounslow Heath, and one day holding up Cromwell’s General, Fairfax, shot him in the arm and demanded his purse, then escaped, but was caught at Turnham Green and put in the Fleet Prison, where she bribed her way to freedom. She later opened a shop and sold the proceeds of robberies. She died in 1659 but left money to pay for her funeral at St Brides Church in Fleet Street, and for a monument to herself in the church, but this was lost in the Great Fire.

Claude Duval was a 17th century Frenchman employed in Paris by English courtiers of the exiled Queen Henrietta Maria. Brought to London after the Restoration, Duval took to highway robbery to maintain his accustomed lifestyle. A painting by William Frith shows him dancing with a lady passenger of a coach he has held up. Still only in his 20s he was later caught and hanged at Tyburn; his body was removed to a tavern where people came to pay their respects. After his funeral at St Paul Covent Garden a small monument was erected in the church. A poem about him goes: “If female thou art, look to thy heart; If male thou art, look to thy purse”.

When the Nag’s Head inn in Hounslow High Street was demolished, no evidence was found of the rumoured secret door in a grandfather clock which highwaymen were supposed to have used.

By the 18th century regular stagecoach routes from London to the West Country were using the old Roman roads to Silchester and Bath. Between these two roads was a line of gibbets where highway robbers were hung in chains. The Earl of Barclay was travelling along the Bath Road to dine with a friend when a highwayman pointed a pistol at him, but he knocked it aside and continued on his way. Four men who had been hunting in Windsor Great Park were driving back to London along the Bath Road when they were held up. Three of them handed over money, but the fourth refused and was shot in the head. He was taken to the Three Magpies inn, which still stands, but a doctor could only dress the wound and the man died after lingering for several days. His brother, an MP, put up a reward of 2000 guineas for information about the robbery, but no-one was arrested.

Yvonne Masson