Captain Kidd’s Last Stop

The Boston Gaol was built in 1635 and for nearly 200 years remained the town and county jail. Those who found themselves imprisoned here included pirates, Quakers, murderers, rebels and the Salem witches. 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, [it] is the nearest resemblance of any I can conceive of.”[1] 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. At the time when the notorious pirate Captain Kidd was an inmate, there were no such luxuries.

Born in Scotland in the mid-seventeenth century, William Kidd never anticipated one day becoming one of the most infamous pirates in history. 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. He was recognized for his achievements and was appointed the captain of a privateer vessel named the Adventure Galley. His assignment was to patrol the Indian Ocean to mitigate piratical attacks on merchant ships. 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. 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. 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. Unhappy with their ill-success at privateering, his crew decided to raid merchant ships alongside the pirates of the Indian Ocean.[2]

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. In April of 1699, Kidd reached the West Indies. He had hoped that he wouldn’t be recognized, but word of his reputation had spread throughout the Indian Ocean. In trouble with the law, he made his way to Boston on a ship named the San Antonio. On this trip, Kidd made a stop off the coast of Long Island and buried some of his treasures on Gardiner’s Island. 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. Kidd held as a prisoner at the Boston Gaol until he was deported to England for his trial.[3]

In April of 1700, Kidd was ordered to be tried for piracy in London. 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. Found guilty of murder and piracy, Kidd was swifty sentenced to death. Kidd was hanged in London’s East End, and shockingly, it took two tries to kill him. For the three years that followed, Captains Kidd’s body hung at Tilbury Point on the Thames River as a warning to all other pirates.[4]

At the time of his hanging, a number of broadsides, serving as public “matters record and biography,”[5]. made an appearance. Popular for over 150 years, these ballads (particularly one named “The Dying Words of Captain Kidd”) were sold and sung by people on both sides of the Atlantic. The legend of Kidd’s buried treasure resonated with people as well as served as the topic for many stories, including Edgar Allan Poe’s tale, “The Gold Bug” in which the main character Legrand deciphers a cryptogram to discover the buried treasure Kidd left behind.[6] Poe’s story, published nearly 150 years after Kidd’s death, was not the end of the interest in Kidd’s treasure: today people still search for the buried gold.

Standing on what is believed to be “the oldest plot of land continuously owned by the City of Boston," the tall concrete building that occupies the former site of the Boston Gaol hides the story of Captain Kidd’s incarceration and Boston’s close link with the Golden Age of Piracy.[7]

—Meridith Dantzscher

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[1] Leverett Street Jail. The West End Museum, http://thewestendmuseum.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/01_Panel-Leverett-St-Jail-2-9-15.pdf.
[2]Norris, David A. “CAPTAIN KIDD. (Cover Story).” History Magazine 16, no. 1 (October 2014): 14–18. https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=31h&AN=98742765&site=eds-live&scope=site
[3]Norris, David A. “CAPTAIN KIDD. (Cover Story).” History Magazine 16, no. 1 (October 2014): 14–18. https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=31h&AN=98742765&site=eds-live&scope=site
[4]Norris, David A. “CAPTAIN KIDD. (Cover Story).” History Magazine 16, no. 1 (October 2014): 14–18. https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=31h&AN=98742765&site=eds-live&scope=site
[5]Bonner, Willard Hallam. "The Ballad of Captain Kidd." American Literature 15, no. 4 (1944): 362-80. doi:10.2307/2920762.
[6] Poe, Edgar Allan, and Jacob Landau. The Gold Bug: and Other Tales and Poems. New York: Macmillan, 1953.
[7]Handy, Delores. “From Boston's 1st Jail To Fugitive Slave Trials, 26 Court St. Has History.” From Boston's 1st Jail To Fugitive Slave Trials, 26 Court St. Has History | WBUR News, WBUR, 8 Apr. 2015, https://www.wbur.org/news/2015/04/08/boston-old-courthouse-jail-court-street.

Pictured: Captain Kidd (whose name changed to Robert in the American tradition) burying a Bible in The Pirates Own Book (Charles Ellms: Boston, 1837). The gibbetted Captain Kidd from The Pirates Own Book (Charles Ellms: Boston, 1837). "The Dying Words of Captain Robert Kidd" (Nathaniel Coverly: Boston, early nineteenth century).

**To learn more about the Boston Gaol (Site 10), walk approximately 10 feet west on Court St.**