Vincent "Ivanhoe" Martin (1924–9 September 1948), known as "Rhyging", was a Jamaican criminal who became a legendary outlaw and folk hero, often regarded as the "original rude boy".

In subsequent decades his life became mythologised in Jamaican popular culture, culminating in the 1972 cult film The Harder They Come, in which he is portrayed by Jimmy Cliff.

[4] Born Vincent Martin in Linstead, St. Catherine, Jamaica, he turned to a life of violent crime in his teenage years after moving to Kingston.

After this, he became part of a criminal gang and adopted a variety of pseudonyms, including "Ivanhoe", "Alan Ladd" and "Captain Midnight".

[5] In 1946 he was arrested for robbery, beginning his career of self-dramatisation by defending himself in court, irritating the judge with his "long-winded" and grandiose speeches.

[5] The following day he killed a woman named Lucille Tibby Young, the girlfriend of Eric Goldson, the man he believed had informed on him.

[3] He was suspected of robbing the White Horses Inn at Mary Brown's Corner (during which a security guard was tied up) and a store near Rousseau Road.

[5]Police circulated a description of Rhyging at the time, which stated that he was "5-foot 3 inches" tall, but tended to wear shoes with high heels to improve his stature.

He tended to wear polarised sunglasses and had "a habit of looking backwards after every few steps, and spitting after every few words he speaks".

Large numbers of people came to see the body of the notorious criminal, including Eric Goldson, who reportedly commented "The race is not for the swift.

"[9] In order to avoid large crowds gathering to see his burial, police stated that they were taking the body to Spanish Town.

Who was this five feet-three of ruthless killer who at the turn of last September blasted a blood-spattered path to newspaper headlines, with seven falling before his guns and three of the seven dead?

[6][1]Martin became a folk-hero for the poverty-stricken residents of the Jamaican ghettos of the 1940s, acquiring an anti-hero persona, "much like John Dillinger or Bonnie and Clyde".

[1] According to Kevin Aylmer, he became a "cultural icon of the Jamaican working class" because of his self-identification as a hero of "Hollywood 'oat operas', and his masculine swagger allied with an uncanny ability to seemingly appear and disappear at will".

[1] Shortly after his death Jamaican comedians Bim and Bam created a drama called Rhygin's Ghost.

The poem "balances acceptance of the moral propriety of his necessary demise against the vicarious thrill of identification with his apparently indomitable badness".

Michael Thelwell's 1980 novel The Harder They Come, derived from the film, is also a sympathetic account of his life, and portrays him as an innocent victim of con-men when he first arrives in Kingston.