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 Happy Highwayman Patricia Holm, does not appear. Also absent is Hoppy Uniatz, Templar's sidekick. However, the story "The Charitable Countess" does include the return of Inspector Fernack, last seen in 1935's "The Saint in New York". In his introduction to the 1963 Fiction Publishing Corporation edition of 1930s "Enter the Saint", Charteris writes that he had no intention of updating his early stories as they were republished, preferring them to remain as period pieces. When Hodder & Stoughton republished "The Happy Highwayman" in 1963, however, some updates were done to parts of the texts. This is most noticeable in the story "The