The Archives

Gallery · Primary Source · SRC-003

The Tryals of Captain John Rackam (1721)

The only contemporary printed record of these trials, shown here from the National Library of Jamaica facsimile. Every passage quoted on this page is transcribed from the page it sits on. An original is held at the National Library of Jamaica, and a further copy at The National Archives, Kew, CO 137/14/1.

Title leaf of the 1721 pamphlet. Large letterpress type reads: The Tryals of Captain John Rackam, and other Pirates, followed by ten named crewmen, then: As also, the Tryals of Mary Read and Anne Bonny, alias Bonn, on Monday the 28th Day of the said Month of November, at St Jago de la Vega. The imprint at the foot reads: Jamaica, Printed by Robert Baldwin, in the Year 1721.
Title leaf, The Tryals of Captain John Rackam, and other Pirates Letterpress pamphlet, printed by Robert Baldwin at St Jago de la Vega (Spanish Town), Jamaica, 1721. The only contemporary printed record of these trials. National Library of Jamaica (digitised copy, Public Domain Mark; NLJ digitisation credit appears on the scan). A further copy at The National Archives, Kew, CO 137/14/1.

Curator's note

Nearly everything reliably known about Anne Bonny and Mary Read passes through this one printed object. It gives the women's trial four pages. It never states their ages, their births, or what became of them. The legend was built later, on the silence around these pages; the pages themselves are what survive, and they are exhibited here.

Look at the title leaf itself before reading on. The ten condemned men are set in plain columns. The two women are announced separately, by name, in the largest italics on the page. The printer knew who would sell this pamphlet. The legend begins here, on the title page of the official record.

What this document is

The trials followed the taking of Rackham's sloop off Negril Point by Jonathan Barnet in late October 1720. Within a month the survivors stood before the Vice-Admiralty court at St Jago de la Vega, presided over by the governor, Sir Nicholas Lawes. The pamphlet reports the trial of John Rackham and his crew on 16 and 17 November 1720, then, in a separate section, the trial of Mary Read and Anne Bonny on 28 November, followed by later sittings and a reprint of the piracy Act of 11 and 12 William III. It is the sole edition of the proceedings located to date. The National Archives dates the printing to between the last execution (29 March 1721) and 12 June 1721.

Examine the pages

Two openings carry most of the weight of the women's trial.

Page 18 of the pamphlet. Dense letterpress text records the depositions: Dorothy Thomas on the two women in men's jackets and long trousers, then Thomas Spenlow, then the two French witnesses John Besneck and Peter Cornelian sworn through the interpreter Simon Clarke, then Thomas Dillon.
Page 18: the witnesses The evidence against the two women, given in a single sitting. Every deposition that describes Bonny and Read at first hand sits on this page. Facsimile page, National Library of Jamaica copy, Public Domain Mark.

"Dorothy Thomas deposed ... That the Two Women, Prisoners at the Bar, were then on Board the said Sloop, and wore Mens Jackets, and long Trouzers, and Handkerchiefs tied about their Heads; and that each of them had a Machet and Pistol in their Hands, and cursed and swore at the Men, to murther the Deponent ... the Reason of her knowing and believing them to be Women then was, by the largeness of their Breasts."

Deposition of Dorothy Thomas, robbed in her canoe. Her account is of an incitement to murder that did not happen.

"That Ann Bonny ... handed Gun-powder to the Men ... they did not seem to be kept, or detain'd by Force, but of their own Free-Will and Consent."

The two French prisoners, John Besneck and Peter Cornelian, through the interpreter Simon Clarke.

Together these depositions did two things. Dorothy Thomas convicted the women of violence in their own persons, threats made in their own voices. The Frenchmen's "Free-Will and Consent" closed off the one defence that might have saved them, that they were merely the men's companions carried along. And the famous image of Bonny and Read in men's clothing starts on this page, so it is worth reading exactly: the witnesses say the women wore men's clothes when they chased or fought, and women's clothes at other times. The disguise of legend was, in the testimony, working dress.

Page 19 of the pamphlet. The text records the guilty verdict on the third and fourth articles, the sentence of death set in italic type beginning YOU Mary Read, and Ann Bonny, alias Bonn, and beneath it the paragraph recording that both prisoners informed the court they were quick with child and that execution was respited pending an inspection.
Page 19: sentence and the pregnancy plea The verdict, the sentence of death, and the plea that stayed it, all within one page. The print then leaves the two women and never returns to them. Facsimile page, National Library of Jamaica copy, Public Domain Mark.

"YOU Mary Read, and Ann Bonny, alias Bonn, are to go from hence to the Place from whence you came, and from thence to the Place of Execution; where you, shall be severally hang'd by the Neck, 'till you are severally Dead. And GOD of His infinite Mercy be merciful to both of your Souls."

The sentence, pronounced by "His Excellency the President" (Sir Nicholas Lawes). Transcribed from the page image above; the comma after "you" is the print's own.

"After Judgment was pronounced ... both the Prisoners inform'd the Court, that they were both quick with Child, and prayed that Execution of the Sentence might be stayed. Whereupon the Court ordered, that Execution of the said Sentence should be respited, and that an Inspection should be made."

The pregnancy plea. The print records the order and nothing of the outcome.

The plea had a name in law: pleading the belly. The law would not hang a woman while she carried a child, so a successful plea stayed execution until an inspection could settle the matter. The print records the order for that inspection and then leaves the two women forever. What became of them has to be read from other records, and they are thin. The St Catherine parish register records the burial of a Mary Read on 28 April 1721, five months after the trial; she had died in gaol. For Anne Bonny the documentary trail simply ends at the reprieve. A burial of an "Ann Bonny" in the same parish in December 1733 may be the pirate, living quietly in Jamaica, or may be a namesake; no record settles it. Everything else ever written about her ending is invention.

One naming detail sits on the title leaf above: the printed title spells "Anne Bonny", while the body of the proceedings has "Ann Bonny, alias Bonn" throughout, and "Read" every time it is legible.

What the print establishes

The custody question

For once the custody is short and clean. The Kew copy sits inside Governor Lawes' correspondence file, which is why the pamphlet and the state-paper letters that summarise the same events travelled together. Whether further originals survive at the British Library or the John Carter Brown Library is not yet established.

Internal defects noted

Every source in the Archive has its faults named. This one has four worth recording. The pagination is irregular and repeats, so citations give the print's own marked page. The Vane section, appended later in the same pamphlet, is internally inconsistent on its March dates and carries a misprinted sitting year of "1716" that the surrounding sittings contradict; this is a defect of the print and is left uncorrected rather than silently smoothed. James Dobbin appears twice in different capacities, once as an assaulted mariner in the second article and again as a convicted crew member executed on 19 November, which is the print's own sequence, not an error. And the reprint of the piracy Act at the back is boilerplate, badly inked in the surviving copy.

Two precision points correct earlier readings. The name "Neptune" is in the pamphlet, but it belongs to Spenlow's schooner in the Brown and Fenwick indictment for a June 1720 taking, not to Rackham's or the women's articles, which name only "a certain Scooner, of an unknown Name". The name "Mary and Sarah" is also in the pamphlet, but only in Thomas Dillon's own deposition; the charged vessel is "the Mary". Anyone quoting the women's indictment should carry neither proper name.

Limitations of this gallery

The print is complete and read, but it is not the whole record. It is silent on the outcome of the ordered inspection, on the women's ages, births and origins, and on any capture date for Rackham. Those silences are not gaps in this transcription. They are gaps in the document, and the Archive exhibits them as such rather than filling them.

Figures in this gallery