John Austin (highwayman) John Austin (highwayman) John Austin (died 7 November 1783) was an English footpad who became the last person to be hanged at the Tyburn gallows outside London. He was sentenced to death for the murder of a labourer called John Spicer from Kent. The Recorder of London, James Adair, described it as a "robbery with violence" that involved "cutting and wounding [...] in a cruel manner." This hanging would mark the end of Tyburn, a village then in the county of Middlesex, being a place of executions for almost 600 years. Austin was brought from Newgate prison in the City
John Austin (legal philosopher) John Austin (legal philosopher) John Austin (3 March 1790 – 1 December 1859) was a noted English legal theorist who strongly influenced British and American law with his analytical approach to jurisprudence and his theory of legal positivism. In opposing traditional "natural law" approaches, Austin argued against any necessary connections between law and morality. Human legal systems, he claimed, can and should be studied in an empirical, value-free way. Austin was born on 3 March 1790 at Creeting St Mary, the eldest son of a well-to-do Suffolk miller. After spending five years in the army during the Napoleonic Wars, Austin