Mrs. Captain Kidd, shore-side piratess

*Cherchez la femme. A tumultuous life, but she seems to land on her feet every time.

How come nobody knew all this about pirate women? 'Cause nobody ever looked


Kidding around
One of the most highly publicised cases of a pirate’s crimes affecting his family was that of Captain William Kidd, executed in 1701. Originally a privateer for the East India Company, Kidd achieved a legendary reputation as the focus of one of the first large-scale manhunts in history. His status as a ‘pirate’ is questionable, because he claimed that he always sailed under a letter of marque, but when he was on trial for the illegal capture of a ship, no such letter was produced.

Kidd was found guilty of two crimes. First, he unlawfully robbed and stole a Mughal ship in the Indian Ocean. The Mughals, who had been robbed just three years earlier by the English pirate, Henry Avery, demanded that the British do all in their power to capture him or else they would halt all trade and consider it an act of war. The British, therefore, wanted to make an example of Kidd to show that they were serious about curbing piracy. During this time, Kidd continued to go rogue and commanded one of his crew members, William Moore, to orchestrate an attack on a Dutch ship. When Moore refused, Kidd hit him over the head with a bucket, fracturing his skull; he died of his injuries the next day. Kidd was now wanted for both murder and piracy.

Wife of crime

The pursuit of Kidd created one of the first media firestorms of the early modern period, fuelled by rumours that he had buried a large cache of treasure, worth more than £30,000, which he had stolen from Mughal ships. During the investigation, another person came under suspicion in connection to his crimes: his wife, Sarah Bradley Cox Oort Kidd.

Sarah Kidd was born Sarah Bradley in England around 1645. She was married four times and thrice widowed. She married her first husband, William Cox, in 1685 only for him to drown four years later. The date of her second marriage is unknown, but it must have been relatively soon after Cox’s death because her second husband, John Oort, died just two days before Sarah applied for a marriage licence to wed Kidd on 16 May 1691. At the time of their marriage, Kidd was a wealthy and successful privateer for the East India Company, living in New York. After eight years of marriage, however, Sarah became both wife of a wanted man and a wanted woman herself.

The Kidds were long-term acquaintances of the governor of New York (and later, Massachusetts), Lord Bellomont, who financed his expeditions. When accusations of Kidd’s piracy came to light, Bellomont proved to be the chief orchestrator of his arrest; his reputation was at stake and to prove that he was not a supporter of piracy, he not only lured Kidd to Boston under the pretence of safety, he arrested Sarah on the suspicion that she knew the whereabouts of the hidden plunder. While she languished in jail, her possessions were confiscated and her servants questioned. The length of Sarah’s imprisonment is unknown, but at some point Bellomont had to admit that he had no evidence to justify her arrest and she was released and her possessions restored.

New life in New York

In the meantime, Kidd was held in a Boston prison for two years before he was transported to London for his trial and execution. Throughout, he maintained his innocence, to no avail. On 23 May 1701 he was hanged at Execution Dock for his crimes of piracy and murder. Sarah remained in New York.

Records show that she managed to escape her husband’s reputation. In 1703 she married a man named Christopher Rouseby and, together with her children from her marriage to Kidd, they lived quietly in New York. According to will and probate records, Sarah used her wealth from her previous marriages to open a tavern after Rouseby died, which she ran until her own death in 1744, leaving her earnings to her surviving children....