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". 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". shortly after his death jamaican comedians bim and bam created a drama called "rhygin’s ghost". a song about him entitled "rhygin" is the b-side of prince buster's 1965 single "ten commandments". he is also the subject of louise bennett-coverley's 1966 poem "dead man", written in jamaican patois. the poem "balances acceptance of the moral propriety of his necessary demise against the vicarious thrill of identification with his apparently indomitable badness".