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
William Plunkett (highwayman) 60 at the time of the highway robberies on Hounslow Heath, and almost 85 when commanding the Northumberland Militia. The facts can be reconciled if the estimate of his age at death is exaggerated. William Plunkett (highwayman) William Plunkett was a highwayman and accomplice of the famed "Gentleman Highwayman", James MacLaine. Plunkett lived during the mid-eighteenth century in London, on Jermyn Street, and was said to have been an apothecary who was also presumed to be a gentleman. With stolen pistols and horses, and their faces hidden by Venetian masks, Plunkett and MacLaine had a short but highly successful career