This morning was executed at Tyburn, John Austin, convicted the preceding Saturday of robbing John Spicer, and cutting and wounding him in a cruel manner. From Newgate to Tyburn he behaved with great composure. While the halter was tying, his whole frame appeared to be violently convulsed. The Ordinary having retired, he addressed himself to the populace: “Good people, I request your prayers for the salvation of my departing soul: let my example teach you to shun the bad ways I have followed: keep good company, and mind the word of God.” The cap being drawn over his face, he raised his hands and cried, “Lord have mercy on me: Jesus look down with pity on me: Christ have mercy on my poor soul!” and, while uttering these words, the cart was driven away. The noose of the halter having slipped to the back part of his neck, it was longer than usual before he was dead. The transference of executions to Newgate involved the suppression of the processions which for six hundred years had been a feature of the city’s life. The change did not receive the approval of Dr. Johnson. “The age,” he said, “is running mad after innovation: all the business of the world is to be done in a new way: Tyburn itself is not safe from the fury of innovation!” It having been argued that this was an improvement—“No, Sir (said he eagerly), it is not an improvement: they object that the old method drew together a number of spectators. Sir, executions are intended to draw spectators. If they do not draw spectators, they don’t answer their purpose. The old method was most satisfactory to all parties: the public was gratified by a procession: the criminal was supported by it. Why is all this to be swept away?” From the “moral lesson” point of view Dr. Johnson was quite right. But the procession was abolished simply because the best quarter of the town had extended to Tyburn. On December 9, 1783, the first executions took place in front of Newgate prison, on the new gallows, with a “drop.” The illustration shows THE DAWN OF THE NEW ERA. [Illustration: THE NEW GALLOWS AT NEWGATE, 1783.] The ten persons seem to fill the stage, but it would be doing an injustice to the designer of this national monument to assume that he had not taken into account the possible demands of the State. On February 2, 1785, twenty men swung in a batch in front of the debtors’ door. Of these, five—FIVE—were hanged for assaulting a man and robbing him of two glass drops, set in metal, value 3d.; a one-inch rule, value 2d.; two papers of nails, value 1d.; one knife, value 1d.; two shillings, and a counterfeit half-penny.