Tyburn Tyburn gallows were last used on 3 November 1783, when John Austin, a highwayman, was hanged; for the next eighty-five years hangings were staged outside Newgate prison. Then, in 1868, due to public disorder during these public executions, it was decided to execute the convicts inside the prison. The site of the gallows is now marked by three young oak trees that were planted in 2014 on an island in the middle of Edgware Road at its junction with Bayswater Road. Between the trees is a roundel with the inscription "The site of Tyburn Tree". It is also commemorated by
Highwayman Falstaff, the most famous highwayman in English drama is Captain Macheath, hero of John Gay's 18th-century ballad opera "The Beggar's Opera". The legend of Dick Turpin owes an enormous amount to "Rookwood" (1834), in which a heavily fictionalised Turpin is one of the main characters. Alfred Noyes's narrative poem "The Highwayman" has been immensely popular ever since its publication in 1906. From the early 18th century, collections of short stories of highwaymen and other notorious criminals became very popular. The earliest of these is Captain Alexander Smith's "Complete History of the Lives and Robberies of the Most Notorious Highwaymen" (1714).