From where did highwaymen originate?

Answer 1

The English term 'highwayman' can be traced back to 1617, describing a person who robbed travelers on British and Irish roads - a highway robber.

A highwayman usually traveled on horseback, alone or in company with a small gang of other thieves. Stagecoaches, private coaches and mail coaches were their main targets: the armed highwayman, or men, would pull in front of the coach and order the occupants to hand over their valuables.

The highwayman's call, 'Stand and deliver! (your money)' is recorded from the 1600s onward.

By the end of the 1700s, highwaymen were becoming fewer: an endangered species, literally.

Better policing of roads, towns and cities, more - and bigger - towns and cities, and more sophisticated road security made it difficult for them to avoid capture. As well, coins were rapidly being replaced by paper currency, which could be traced, and improved tracing of other portable valuables was falling into place.

Because of ever-expanding urbanization, anonymity was difficult to maintain. Highwaymen, unlike their lesser-regarded foot-traveling counterparts, footpads (muggers), had to have a support network. They had horses to feed and maintain; they needed food, lodgings, and some kind of social life, and it was essential, as with all thieves, that they keep open avenues for disposal of proceeds of their robberies, in order to fund their needs . Farms and, especially, inns provided all of this, but eventually it became too difficult to safely use them, since word got around more and more quickly and rewards for information leading to their capture were substantial. Rewards for their capture and delivery to authorities, or for the handing in of their identifiable remains, were also good, and a great cause for caution amongst highwaymen. Before the mid-1800s, they were for all practical purposes, extinct.

There is, and was during their heyday, a lot of folklore and glamor surrounding the highwayman. Romantic tales of nobleman venturing forth at night, masked, to right wrongs and add extra wings to their mansions were many, and stories of highwaymen giving the rich their comeuppance (always a popular concept) and handing over the proceeds to the poor (ditto) - Robin Hood, Dick Turpin, and so on - became legends, doubtless not discouraged, perhaps even invented, by the thieves themselves, since outlaws need all the sympathy and assistance they can get.

Romance has it that they were true gentlemanly-types, courteous, considerate and debonair, who'd never dream of killing or injuring their victims, let alone of molesting ladies, but this is highly unlikely to be true of any highwayman.

In America the equivalent character in the 1800s was the less-romantic road agent; in Australia they were bushrangers.

Answer 2

The English word "highwaymen" came into usage in England during the 1650s.

Answer 3

Highwaymen originated from Britain and Ireland