"She was built more for strength than beauty, and yet she was beautiful. Look at that elegant little head; those thin tapering ears, closely placed together; that broad snorting nostril, which seems to snuff the gale with disdain; that eye, glowing and large as the diamond of Giamschid! Is she not beautiful? Behold her paces! How gracefully she moves! She is off! no eagle on the wing could skim the air more swiftly."
Description of Black Bess from the book Rookwood written by Harrison Ainsworth in 1834.
But was Black Bess real or just a fictional character in the Ainsworth books written about Dick Turpin some 100 years after his death?
Well we know that Dick Turpin the highwayman stole a black horse at gunpoint from a man called Major so it's possible that he named this horse Black Bess. But it is doubtful that Dick Turpin and Black Bess made that 200 mile overnight journey from London to York that they are famed for. In fact some say that the journey was made by another highwayman William Nevison but in reality it was probably impossible to travel such distance so quickly in the 18th century and it certainly couldn't have been done on only one horse.
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