John Austin (highwayman) of London by cart to the gallows. The 2½ mile journey along Tyburn Road would have taken up to three hours. Standing shackled in the cart, he would have been accompanied by two guards and a chaplain. They would traditionally stop on the way at St Sepulchre-without-Newgate and two public houses where drinks would be served. On arrival at Tyburn, Austin's cart would have been positioned under a beam and a noose attached around his head. He would then be permitted to address the crowd, his last words were: However, for Austin the noose slipped up the back of his
The Highwayman (1951 film) The fairly straightforward love/betrayal/sacrifice theme of the Noyes poem is expanded to fill out the demands of an 82-minute-long film. The Highwayman himself is an aristocrat who leads a party of associates to hold up the well-to-do and distribute their takings to the needy. This campaign is broadened when they discover that innocents are being kidnapped and sold into slavery in the colonies. The finale however follows the poem more closely as the Highwayman is betrayed to the authorities, soldiers march to set an ambush, his lover Bess sacrifices herself to give warning and the hero is shot down on