Last Year's Lesson: Anne Bonny and Mary Read Convicted - November 28, 1720

Anne Bonny and Mary Read were convicted of piracy on this day in 1720.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, history fans, if you want a double dose of history,
here's a rerun for today, brought to you by Tracy v. Wilson.
We hope it makes previous episodes for this date easier
to find in the feed. Welcome to this Day in
History Class from how Stuff Works dot Com and from
the desk of Stuff you missed in History Class. It's
the show where we explore the past one day at

(00:20):
a time with a quick look at what happened today
in history. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy
Vie Wilson, and it's November. On this day in seventeen
twenty and Bonnie and Mary Reid were convicted of piracy.
As is often the case with pirates, their early life

(00:40):
is something of a fog. They each though, wound up
aboard the ship of Calico Jack Rackham. The story generally
goes that Anne's husband, John Bonnie, had been working in
the Bahamas for Governor Woods Rogers, and he had been
a pirate informant. But then Anne fell in love with
one of the targets of her husband's informant activity, which

(01:02):
was Jack Rackham, joined his pirate crew. Mary, on the
other hand, was disguising herself as a man to join
the crew, and earlier on in her life she had
similarly disguised herself to be a footboy and a soldier,
basically occupations that weren't open to women. On August seventy,
Jack Rackham and Bonnie and the rest of a party

(01:23):
stole a ship called the William, which belonged to a
man named John Hamm. They took on a crew of
twelve and started sailing the William around the Bahamas, plundering
as they went. They mostly went after small boats, especially
fishing boats. They would basically take all the fish in
the tackle and then be on their way. Sources disagree
about whether Bonnie and Red say disguised as men this

(01:47):
whole time. In some versions, when they had a raid
like this, they would be dressed as men, but they
were in women's clothes the rest of the time, and
others they were just dressed as women. Whatever. It's really
all over the map and October of seventeen twenty though,
one of the boats they encountered was a canoe that
was being helmed by a woman named Dorothy Thomas, and

(02:08):
Rackham let her go over. Bonnie and reads objections that
she might notify the authorities of where they were. The
authorities already knew though Governor Woods Rogers had already heard
about Rackham's piratical activities off the coast of Jamaica. He
had already dispatched the privateer captain Jonathan Barnett to take
care of it. Bonnie and Read were the ones on

(02:30):
deck when Barnett's ship found an approached them on October
two of seventeen twenty. Most of the rest of the crew, though,
were below decks. They were intoxicated, so Bonnie and Read
stayed above decks. They were fighting back to back with
both pistols and cutlasses and shouting below to the men
to come up and help. At one point, Read reportedly

(02:52):
fired her pistol below deck to try to get their
attention and wind up hitting one of them. Ultimately, though
they were all captured, trials for Rackham and his crew
started on November sixteen, seventy. They were all found guilty
and hanged. Rackham's last request was supposedly to see and
Bonnie again, and she had no patience for that, saying quote,

(03:16):
if you had fought like a man, you need not
have been hanged like a dog, and Bonnie and Mary
Reid were tried on November and according to the general
History of the Pirates quote to other pirates were tried
that belonged to Rackham's crew, that was Ann and Mary
being convicted. They were brought up and asked if either
of them had anything to say, why the sentence of

(03:39):
death should not pass upon them in like manner as
had been done to all the rest. And both of
them pleaded their bellies, being quick with child and prayed
that execution might be stayed, whereupon the court passed sentence
as in cases of piracy, but ordered them back till
a proper jury could be appointed to inquire into the matter.
So they basically both argued that they should be spared

(04:01):
hanging because they were pregnant. They were sent to prison
and and Bonnie apparently survived her time in prison, but
it's unclear what happened to her after that. Mary Read
died of a fever or possibly due to complications of
childbirth before she was released. She's probably the same Mary
Read who's listened in a death record for a seventeen one.

(04:24):
You can learn more about all this in the August
fifteen episode of Steph You Missed in History class, including
why that general history of the Pirates that I just
read from is a source you should really take with
a grade of salt. That's why there's also so much
supposedly and reportedly in this episode. Thanks to Casey Pigraham
and Chandler May's for their work on this show, and

(04:46):
you can subscribe to This Day in History Class on
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You can tune in tomorrow for a Massacre at Sea