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
The Highwayman (poem) sacrifices her life to warn him. Learning of her death, he dies in a futile attempt at revenge, shot down on the highway. In the final stanza, the ghosts of the lovers meet again on winter nights. The poem was written on the edge of a desolate stretch of land known as Bagshot Heath, where Noyes, then aged 24, had taken rooms in a cottage. In his autobiography, he recalled: "Bagshot Heath in those days was a wild bit of country, all [Calluna|heather] and [pine]woods. "The Highwayman" suggested itself to me one blustery night when the sound of the wind