[Bedhead]

XLIX – Captain Kid

So, after a shameful gap of two years, welcome to the thread that celebrates the comeback kids of London - those who were condemned by its authorities only to be celebrated by later generations.

We are now in Wapping, a thin strip of land on the north bank of the Thames, east of the City, which until recently was one of the poorest parts of London. Dickens described it as a place ‘where the accumulated scum of humanity seemed to be washed from higher ground.'

Then, in the 1980s, Rupert Murdoch's News International moved here. Whether that made Dickens's observation more or less germane is a matter of opinion.

In Murdoch's wake came the bankers, turning one of the poorest neighbourhoods in the country into one of the richest. Today, Wapping is full of fabulous old canals, warehouses, churches and pubs, but an eerie quiet hangs over it, in contrast to the bustling neighbourhoods just on the other side of the Thames.

It may always have had an eerie feel, though, because in busier days its Execution Dock was the place where pirates were executed. One of the most famous victims was Captain Kidd, in 1701.

Kidd began his career as a pirate hunter rather than a pirate - he was a privateer who fought against the enemies of the British crown. In return, he was allowed to keep any treasure that he seized. However, enemy ships did not always appear as frequently as Kidd needed them to, and as his time spent sailing around the Indian and Atlantic Oceans without spoils wore on, it became more and more difficult for him to convince his men to spare neutral ships. Some of the skirmishes that Kidd fought crossed the line into piracy, and one argument about the way things were going led to Kidd killing a member of his crew, William Moore, by hitting him over the head with a bucket. Eventually, Kidd was arrested, taken to London and tried for murder.

You would have thought that there are only so many ways you can say 'someone hit someone else over the head with a bucket and killed him', but the clerk at Kidd's trial certainly had a go:

'William Kidd, late of London, mariner, not having the fear of God before his eyes, but being moved and seduced by the instigation of the devil, the thirtieth day of October... in a certain ship, called the Adventure Galley... with a certain wooden bucket, bound with iron-hoops, of the value of eight pence... did violently, feloniously, voluntarily, and of his malice aforethought, beat and strike... William Moore in and upon the right part of the head... a little above the right ear... giving the said William Moore... one mortal bruise; of which mortal bruise the aforesaid William Moore... upon the high-sea aforesaid, near the aforesaid coast of Malabar, in the East Indies aforesaid, in the ship aforesaid, called the Adventure Galley, and within the jurisdiction of the admiralty of England aforesaid, did die;'

Kid was convicted of murder, and shortly afterwards of piracy. He hoped that powerful friends in Parliament would secure him a pardon, but, fearful of being associated with a man accused of such serious crimes his allies turned against him, and he was hanged at Execution Dock. His body was left in a gibbet downstream at Tilbury Point for three years, as a warning to would-be pirates.

In Wapping however, he is remembered in a more dignified way, with a fine riverside pub being named after him. From Captain Kid to comeback kid, Wapping salutes its unfortunate privateer.