The notorious Captain William Kidd started his nautical career as a New York businessman. He was sent to the Indian Ocean to hunt down the English pirate, Henry Avery. Out in the open sea, however, Kidd turned to piracy himself. When he returned in 1699 he was held in a Boston jail throughout the winter, secured by manacles weighing more than 16 lbs.

Captian Kidd was then shipped to England where he was held in London's notorious, reeking Newgate Prison. He was tried a year later and sentenced to punishment by Admiralty law and measured for his gibbet cage.

The large crowd assembled at London's Execution Dock to watch him "dance the hempen jig" most certainly wasn't disappointed. In the first attempt to hang him, the rope snapped. In the second attempt his dance of death ended at 'the end of the line."

Kidd's body was then stuffed into his gibbet and hung on a post until it was washed three times by the tide. After being covered in tar, his body was then hung out at Tidbury Point. There it could be seen by all seamen sailing in or out of the River Thames; a grisly warning indeed. The tar assured the message to be long sighted.

The practice of putting a body into a tightly fitting gibbet cage made certain that the bones would stay in place after the flesh had rotted away. It also prevented the corpse's relatives from removing the body for burial. It is said that prisoners feared their gibbet fitting even more than hanging.