Spence Broughton
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Spence Broughton
Spence Broughton (''c''. 1746 – 14 April 1792) was an English highwayman who was executed for robbing the Sheffield and Rotherham mail. After his execution he gained notoriety because his body was gibbeted at the scene of the crime on Attercliffe Common land, Common between Sheffield and Rotherham, where it hanged for 36 years. Biography Little is known of Broughton's early life. He is thought to have been born near Sleaford in Lincolnshire. The son of a farmer, he took up farming too, married and had three children. He developed a gambling habit and left his wife for the cockfighting scenes of Sheffield, Grantham and Derby. The crime The robbery took place on 29 January or 9 February 1791 (sources differ) at Ickles, on the Rotherham edge of Attercliffe Common. Broughton and his accomplice John Oxley stayed in Sheffield the night before the robbery and then walked out of the town on the Rotherham road where they met the mail coming towards Sheffield. However, they intended to ro ...
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Highwayman
A highwayman was a robber who stole from travellers. This type of thief usually travelled and robbed by horse as compared to a footpad who travelled and robbed on foot; mounted highwaymen were widely considered to be socially superior to footpads. Rid, Samuel. "Martin Markall, Beadle of Bridewell," in ''The Elizabethan Underworld'', A. V. Judges, ed. pp. 415–416. George Routledge, 1930Online quotationSpraggs, pp. 107, 169, 190–191. Such criminals operated until the mid- or late 19th century. Highwaywomen, such as Katherine Ferrers, were said to also exist, often dressing as men, especially in fiction. The first attestation of the word ''highwayman'' is from 1617. Euphemisms such as "knights of the road" and "gentlemen of the road" were sometimes used by people interested in romanticizing (with a Robin Hood–esque slant) what was often an especially violent form of stealing. In the 19th-century American West, highwaymen were sometimes known as road agents. In Australia, ...
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