Captain William Kidd - for piracy.
Captain William Kidd - for piracy.
William Kidd had been born at Dundee in Scotland around 1654. He emigrated to New York in the 1680’s where he met and married Sarah Bradley Cox Oort, a wealthy widow. Later in life he became a privateer and helped to suppress piracy in the Caribbean and the Indian Ocean.
He is known to have commanded a ship called the “Adventure Galley” whose purpose was to capture French naval vessels and pirate ships. This mission was not greatly successful and as many of his crew were former pirates, he turned to piracy himself in order to prevent a mutiny. He also murdered a member of his crew, gunner William Moore, during an argument, by throwing a bucket at him which fractured his skull, causing his death the following day.
His last act of piracy was committed against the ship “Quedagh Merchant” which was transporting gold and valuables for the British East India Company. When Kidd returned to New York on the 7th of July 1699, the New England Governor, Lord Richard Bellomont, ordered his arrest and Kidd was returned to England to stand trial for piracy and murder.
He was tried at The High Court of Admiralty on the 8th and 9th of May 1701 with other members of the crew but was the only one to hang, the rest being reprieved. The execution took place on the 23rd of May 1701 and the first time he was suspended the rope broke, so he had to endure a second execution, after which his body gibbeted on the banks of the Thames.
The High Court of Admiralty was established by Edward III around 1360 having jurisdiction over civilian crimes committed at sea and directly offshore. In its role as a criminal court, it passed death sentences and these were carried out at Execution Dock, rather than at Tyburn. This was located between Wapping Old Stairs (off Wapping High Street) and Wapping Dock Stairs in east London. Hangings took place here for over 400 years. The gallows was erected on the foreshore at low tide and executions had to be timed to fit in with this.
After execution the body(s) were chained to a stake at the low water mark and left there until three high tides had washed over them. Somewhere between 1786 and 1814, this practice ceased.
In particularly serious cases of piracy the court could order gibbeting after execution in which case the body was covered in pitch and gibbeted lower down the Thames on the Isle of Dogs or Bugsby's Hole or Reach near Blackwall, as a deterrent to passing merchant sailors.
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