The Archives

The ArchivesEventsThe Execution of William Kidd (1701)

The Execution of William Kidd (1701)

On Friday 23 May 1701, condemned at the Admiralty Sessions at the Old Bailey on 8 and 9 May on six indictments for murder and piracy, Captain William Kidd was carried from Newgate behind the Admiralty silver oar and hanged at Execution Dock, Wapping, below the low water mark, the first rope breaking so that he had to be tied up a second time; his body was afterwards tarred and hung in chains on the Thames, and his forfeited effects were given by Queen Anne to Greenwich Hospital in 1705.

Also writtenThe hanging of Captain Kidd, 23 May 1701; Kidd at Execution Dock, Wapping; The broken rope at Execution Dock

Two accounts of the death of William Kidd were written up on the day, and both were for sale. One was the Ordinary of Newgate's Account, signed by the Reverend Paul Lorrain, who held the right to publish the last words of the condemned and earned up to three times his salary from it. Against him stands a rival sheet from the same printer, "The only True Account of the Dying Speeches of the Condemned Pirates", which contradicts him on the most repeated detail of the day. Outside that trade sits Narcissus Luttrell, writing the next morning, who confirms the broken rope and disagrees about how many men died.

The sentence and the sessions

The trial pamphlet printed for J. Nutt dates the Admiralty Sessions at the Old Bailey to "Thursday the 8th. and Friday the 9th. of May, 1701" and gives the charge as "for murther and piracy, upon six several indictments". The modern division of those six into one murder, for the killing of his gunner William Moore, and five piracies is a later reading, not the pamphlet's. Luttrell read it differently: under 10 May he has Kidd found guilty "upon 6 indictments of pyracy, and 8 other pyrates are condemned", the murder sitting on top of the six. The printed sessions record is the court's own.1

Newgate to Wapping

"All the prisoners were conveyed from Newgate to the execution dock in Wapping by the officers of the Admiralty and others, carrying the Silver Oar before them according to the usual custom." That is the rival sheet's wording. The same sheet declines to say whether Kidd's behaviour after condemnation came from "an heroick temper" or "from a conceited hope of obtaining a reprieve"; Lorrain has no such doubt, and gives a man "vainly flattering himself with hopes of a reprieve". Both readings stand.2

The gallows stood at Execution Dock on the Wapping foreshore, below the low water mark, and Kidd was hanged there on Friday 23 May 1701. Lorrain set him down as "about 56 years of age"; a modern scholarly retelling makes him 47.3

The rope

The rope broke at the first attempt. Two witnesses who did not share a printer agree: Lorrain, who went back to Kidd on the ladder, and Luttrell, writing on 24 May, "The halter of the 1st broke, but he was tied up again." A crowd is said to have called for his release, the breaking being a sign from God; that story comes from later writers and appears in none of the three 1701 witnesses, Lorrain among them and on the spot.4

Whether Kidd was drunk rests on one man. Lorrain found him "inflamed with drink, which had so discompos'd his mind that it was now in a very ill frame". The rival sheet, covering the same hour, mentions no drink at all. The only witness to the drunkenness is the man whose printed reputation depended on Kidd dying penitent under his ministry, and whose narrative runs from an unmelted heart, through drink, to a second and successful repentance in which Lorrain himself stands halfway up the ladder, a structurally convenient shape for a chaplain selling his own efficacy.5

Darby Mullins and the count

Darby Mullins hanged beside him, and Lorrain took his confession first: an Irishman kidnapped as a youth and carried to the West Indies, who went with Kidd and then with Robert Culliford, "not knowing but that it was very lawful (as he said he was told) to plunder the enemies of Christianity". Culliford had surrendered under the King's proclamation and had counsel appear for him, and a note in the State Trials says he was respited. How many hanged with him is open. Lorrain has only these two, and the Newgate Calendar agrees; Luttrell wrote that "Capt. Kidd and 3 others condemned for pyracy, were executed at execution dock at Wapping", out of the eight co-defendants his trial entry puts under sentence.6

The silence

Kidd refused to the last to own the justice of his condemnation, to name his backers, or to call the killing of Moore murder, "esteeming it rather an accidental misfortune than a murder". He grieved at leaving his wife and children in New York, and warned "all mariners of ships and others to have a care of themselves". He had been examined twice at the bar of the Commons that March and had "discovered little or nothing". Two of the backers of the venture of 1695 were under impeachment while he waited, Somers and Orford, alongside Halifax and Portland, who had no part in the voyage; Somers admitted that the grantee Samuel Newton had been named "by and in trust for him", and was acquitted on 17 June.

The body

The body is generally said to have been tarred and hung in chains on the Thames. The one contemporary naming of the place is a Boston newspaper of 22 August 1720, reporting pirates who had plundered a Boston ship and who said they would not go "to Hope point in the River of Thames to be hung up in Gibbets a Sundrying as Kidd and Bradish's Company did": that puts the gibbets at Hope Point, and not at Tilbury, the usual modern identification. The body is said to have hung there three years, a figure repeated everywhere.7

Queen Anne's gift

Kidd's goods were forfeit on conviction, and given away four years later. Lysons, listing Greenwich Hospital's revenues, records "The sum of 6472l. 1s. being the effects of Kid, a pirate, given by Queen Anne, in 1705". Royal Museums Greenwich gives 6,472 pounds; the Old Royal Naval College describes an auction raising 6,473 pounds and 1 shilling. Dalton's 6,471 pounds is no third figure: his own footnote cites the Lysons page that reads 6472l. 1s. No part of it is recorded as reaching Cogi Baba, the Persian merchant who told the Commons in March 1701 that Kidd had robbed him to 60,000 pounds value, or the owners of the Quedagh Merchant.8

The ballad and the treasure

A ballad on Kidd was probably in print in Britain by 1701, and had crossed to the colonies soon after, keeping the wrong forename: the American Antiquarian Society holds a broadside headed "The dying words of Captain Robert Kidd, a noted pirate, who was hanged at Execution-Dock, in England". The memorandum of the goods left on Gardiners Island, sworn on 4 September 1699, survives at Kew in CO 5/860; that deposit was recovered and inventoried. Of the rest, Royal Museums Greenwich is flat: "None has been found."

What the sources cannot yet give is the execution at first hand. Both 1701 sheets are read here through Dalton's 1911 transcription, an advocate's selection, and not from the originals; nothing consulted names the Marshal, the hangman or the divines; the reprieves that would settle how many men died lie in the Admiralty Sessions papers; and no contemporary order has been found for the tarring, for the gibbeting, or for the three years. What stands in their place for the fate of the body is a Boston newspaper of 1720 and local tradition, not a paper of 1701.

What the evidence does not settle

The True Account pamphlet's identity

  • True Account pamphlet's bibliographic identity is unestablished

Gibbeting of Kidd's body

  • Gibbeting location unsettled: Tilbury Point or Hope PointLikely
  • How long Kidd's body remained on display after his executionUnverified

Greenwich Hospital sum

  • Greenwich Hospital sum unsettled: 6472l 1s or 6473 pounds 1sConfirmed

Each line is one question with its own grade, taken from the register where a claim carries it. Nothing here is graded as a whole.

Sources for this record

Every statement above that rests on a checked claim carries a small number; the numbers lead here. Each entry gives what is claimed, how far the record supports it, and where it comes from.

  1. The trial pamphlet printed for J. Nutt dates the Admiralty Sessions at the Old Bailey to "Thursday the 8th. and Friday the 9th. of May, 1701" and states the charge as "for murther and piracy, upon six several indictments", six in all across both offences; the division of those six into one murder, for the killing of the gunner William Moore, and five piracies is a later reading rather than the pamphlet's own, and Luttrell instead dates the verdict to 10 May and reads the six as six piracies with the murder conviction additional, so the conflict over both the dates and the division is carried, the pamphlet being preferred for the dates as the court's own printed record. Confirmed Directly supported by the record. Trial pamphlet and contemporary newsletter: The arraignment, tryal, and condemnation of Captain William Kidd (London, printed for J. Nutt, 1701), title page; Luttrell, A Brief Historical Relation of State Affairs, vol. V, 10 May 1701 (pages 47 and 48), consulted through Dalton, The Real Captain Kidd (1911)
  2. The prisoners went from Newgate to the scaffold in Admiralty procession, the rival 1701 sheet recording that "All the prisoners were conveyed from Newgate to the execution dock in Wapping by the officers of the Admiralty and others, carrying the Silver Oar before them according to the usual custom"; the same sheet declines to say whether Kidd's behaviour after condemnation came from "an heroick temper" or "from a conceited hope of obtaining a reprieve", where Lorrain has him "vainly flattering himself with hopes of a reprieve", and both readings are carried; and no source consulted names the Marshal of the Admiralty or his deputy who carried the oar on 23 May 1701, the hangman, or the "other worthy divines" Lorrain says were present. Likely More likely than not on the evidence we have. Execution broadsheets, rival, with modern corroboration of the custom: "The only True Account of the Dying Speeches of the Condemned Pirates" (London, 1701) and Lorrain, The Ordinary of Newgate his account... 23 May 1701, both quoted in Dalton, The Real Captain Kidd (1911); the procession passage quoted independently at Global Maritime History, "The Silver Oar: Symbol of Punishment and Ambition"
  3. Captain William Kidd was hanged at Execution Dock, on the Wapping foreshore below the low water mark, on Friday 23 May 1701; Lorrain set him down at the scaffold as "about 56 years of age", while a modern scholarly retelling makes him 47, and both readings are carried. Likely More likely than not on the evidence we have. Trial pamphlet, execution broadsheet and contemporary newsletter: The arraignment, tryal, and condemnation of Captain William Kidd (London, printed for J. Nutt, 1701), title page; Paul Lorrain, The Ordinary of Newgate his account... of Captain William Kidd, and other pirates, that were executed at the Execution-Dock in Wapping, on Friday May 23. 1701; Narcissus Luttrell, A Brief Historical Relation of State Affairs, vol. V, 24 May 1701; the 1701 sheets and Luttrell consulted through C. N. Dalton, The Real Captain Kidd: A Vindication (1911); with David Harpham, "The case of Captain William Kidd, a 300 year old miscarriage of justice?", New Histories (Sheffield, 2011-12) for the age of 47
  4. The rope broke at the first attempt and Kidd was tied up a second time and hanged, a detail resting on two witnesses independent of one another, Lorrain, who was present and returned to Kidd on the ladder, and Luttrell, who wrote on 24 May 1701 that "The halter of the 1st broke, but he was tied up again"; the later story that the crowd then called for his release as a sign from God appears in none of the three 1701 witnesses and is carried only as legend. Likely More likely than not on the evidence we have. Execution broadsheet and contemporary newsletter: Lorrain, The Ordinary of Newgate his account... 23 May 1701; Luttrell, A Brief Historical Relation of State Affairs, vol. V, 24 May 1701 (page 53); both consulted through Dalton, The Real Captain Kidd (1911); the crowd's alleged cry absent from Lorrain, the True Account and Luttrell
  5. That Kidd was drunk at the gallows rests on Lorrain alone, who wrote that he found him "inflamed with drink, which had so discompos'd his mind that it was now in a very ill frame", while the rival sheet from the same printer, covering the same hour, makes no reference to drink at all, so the drunkenness stands as Lorrain's report and not as established fact, the only witness to it being the man whose printed reputation depended on Kidd dying penitent under his ministry. Likely More likely than not on the evidence we have. Execution broadsheets, rival: Lorrain, The Ordinary of Newgate his account... 23 May 1701, against "The only True Account of the Dying Speeches of the Condemned Pirates" (London, 1701); both quoted in Dalton, The Real Captain Kidd (1911); with the Old Bailey Proceedings Online project, "Ordinary of Newgate's Accounts", for Lorrain's commercial position
  6. Darby Mullins, an Irishman kidnapped as a youth and carried to the West Indies who had sailed with Kidd and afterwards with Robert Culliford, was hanged with Kidd, but whether he was the only man to die that afternoon is unresolved: Lorrain as transcribed by Dalton, and the Newgate Calendar, give Kidd and Mullins alone with the rest reprieved at the last moment, while Luttrell reports that "Capt. Kidd and 3 others condemned for pyracy, were executed at execution dock at Wapping", out of the eight co-defendants his trial entry records as under sentence of death. Likely More likely than not on the evidence we have. Execution broadsheet, contemporary newsletter and compilation of execution narratives: Lorrain, The Ordinary of Newgate his account... 23 May 1701, with Mullins's confession, as transcribed in Dalton, The Real Captain Kidd (1911); The Newgate Calendar, "Captain John Kidd"; Luttrell, A Brief Historical Relation of State Affairs, vol. V, 10 May and 24 May 1701, via Dalton; the co-defendants named on the title page of The arraignment, tryal, and condemnation of Captain William Kidd (1701)
  7. Kidd's body is said to have been hung in chains on the Thames, and a contemporary newspaper puts the gibbets at Hope Point in the river rather than at Tilbury: pirates who plundered a Boston ship in 1720 said they would not go to Hope Point to be hung up in gibbets a sun drying as Kidd and Bradish's company did. No contemporary order for the gibbeting was found in the papers searched, and the three years the body is said to have hung there is carried by no document read. Likely More likely than not on the evidence we have. Contemporary newspaper and a period narrative, with a documented absence: Extract from the Boston News-Letter, 22 August 1720, from the file of the Massachusetts Historical Society, printed in J. F. Jameson, Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period: Illustrative Documents (Washington, 1923), doc. 117: "often saying they would not go to Hope point in the River of Thames to be hung up in Gibbets a Sundrying as Kidd and Bradish's Company did". The same speech in A General History of the Pyrates (London, 1724): "neither would they go to Hope-Point, to be hang'd up a Sun drying, as Kidd's, and Braddish's Company were". No order for the gibbeting was found in the Journal of the House of Lords, vol. 16, pp. 711-713, in Lysons, The Environs of London, vol. 4 (1796), or among the Kidd papers printed by Jameson.
  8. Kidd's effects, forfeit to the Crown on his conviction, were given by Queen Anne to Greenwich Hospital in 1705, Lysons recording "The sum of 6472l. 1s. being the effects of Kid, a pirate, given by Queen Anne, in 1705" among the hospital's revenues, Royal Museums Greenwich giving 6,472 pounds and the Old Royal Naval College an auction raising 6,473 pounds and 1 shilling, while Dalton's 6,471 pounds is a misreading of the very Lysons page his own footnote cites and is not a separate witness. Confirmed Directly supported by the record. Printed topographical record and institutional statements: Daniel Lysons, The Environs of London, vol. 4, the parish of Greenwich, page 448, via British History Online; Royal Museums Greenwich, teaching resource on William Kidd's treasure; Old Royal Naval College, "Pirates' Plunder and the Painted Hall"; Dalton, The Real Captain Kidd (1911) with its footnote to Lysons