Found guilty of murder and piracy, Kidd was swifty sentenced to death.
#Captain kidd burial site trial
He was sent to Newgate Prison and stayed there for over a year before facing his trial at the Old Bailey in May of 1701. In April of 1700, Kidd was ordered to be tried for piracy in London. Kidd held as a prisoner at the Boston Gaol until he was deported to England for his trial. Hoping that the (false) French passes that he had found aboard the Quedah Merchant would allow him to claim the prize as valid under his privateering comission, Kidd had reached out to an old acquaintance by the name of Lord Bellomont, who then turned on him and demanded that Kidd be arrested upon his arrival in July of 1699. On this trip, Kidd made a stop off the coast of Long Island and buried some of his treasures on Gardiner’s Island.
In trouble with the law, he made his way to Boston on a ship named the San Antonio. He had hoped that he wouldn’t be recognized, but word of his reputation had spread throughout the Indian Ocean. In April of 1699, Kidd reached the West Indies. In its most notable capture, the Adventure Galley took possession of the 400-ton Quedah Merchant and its valuable cargo of silk, sugar and opium. Unhappy with their ill-success at privateering, his crew decided to raid merchant ships alongside the pirates of the Indian Ocean. When a rowdy gunner named William Moore urged a piratical attack on Dutch ship, Kidd bludgeoned the man, giving him a head wound from which he later died. Still the story goes that tropical fevers killed off many of his crew, and Kidd started loosing his authority over what crew he had left. It was during this period when Kidd likely realized that he had little to gain as a captain of a privateer vessel and more to gain as a pirate. His assignment was to patrol the Indian Ocean to mitigate piratical attacks on merchant ships.
He was recognized for his achievements and was appointed the captain of a privateer vessel named the Adventure Galley. By the time he had reached the age of 30, Kidd was known as one of the most skilled and valued ship’s officers of his age. At the time when the notorious pirate Captain Kidd was an inmate, there were no such luxuries.īorn in Scotland in the mid-seventeenth century, William Kidd never anticipated one day becoming one of the most infamous pirates in history. The conditions were horrid behind the stone walls as Daniel Fowle, author of the 1755 pamphlet called “A Total Eclipse of Liberty” put it, of “hell upon earth, is the nearest resemblance of any I can conceive of.” It took over 150 years for the jail to heat the cells in the brutal winter months and to provide a blanket for every inmate. Those who found themselves imprisoned here included pirates, Quakers, murderers, rebels and the Salem witches. The Boston Gaol was built in 1635 and for nearly 200 years remained the town and county jail.
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