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- Confessions and Executions of the Pirates Gibbs and Wansley. An Interesting and Correct Account of Their Lives.
Confessions and Executions of the Pirates Gibbs and Wansley. An Interesting and Correct Account of Their Lives.
Gibbs, Charles.
19 cm. 24 pp.
Price: $200
Here’s an interesting old relic pertaining one of the most famous American piracies. Charles Gibbs was, I suppose, an early American serial killer. He was hanged in New York on the 22nd of April, 1830, along with a black man, Thomas Wansley, for the murder of the captain and mate of the brig “Vineyard.” In the course of his trial and interrogation, Gibbs confessed that he participated in the murder of nearly 400 people. Whether true or not, the confession and the hanging captured the publics imagination. McDade’s “Annals of Murder” lists 13 books and pamphlets about Gibbs, his crimes and his execution, but this 24-page rendition is not among them. Nor is it listed anywhere in Worldcat. Sadly, it lacks the title page, so identification is uncertain. But I can say for certain that no reference source available to me cites a pamphlet that corresponds with this one, in pagination or size. Lacks title page. Top of first page torn off with loss of several letters. Signed at bottom of final page by Jerijah Thayer, a Connecticut native sometimes referred to as “Capt. Thayer, a contemporary of Gibbs. Condition fair only.
