'He kept a gig,' was the reply, which brought the word 'gigmanity' into our language.[70] I have said that John Thurtell and two members of his family became subscribers for Borrow's _Romantic Ballads_,[71] and it is certain that Borrow must often have met Thurtell, that is to say looked at him from a distance, in some of the scenes of prize-fighting which both affected, Borrow merely as a youthful spectator, Thurtell as a reckless backer of one or other combatant.

Thurtell's father was an alderman of Norwich living in a good house on the Ipswich Road when the son's name rang through England as that of a murderer.

The father was born in 1765 and died in 1846.

Four years after his son John was hanged he was elected Mayor of Norwich, in recognition of his violent ultra-Whig or blue and white political opinions.

He had been nominated as mayor both in 1818 and 1820, but it was perhaps the extraordinary 'advertisement' of his son's shameful death that gave the citizens of Norwich the necessary enthusiasm to elect Alderman Thurtell as mayor in 1828.