Execution Dock - Dark Stories True Crime Tours

William Casey is barely out of boyhood when military life delivers him into the world of violence and accusation that defines his story. Enlisted at fifteen into the Guards by his own soldier father, Casey serves in Spain and returns to London carrying the restless habits of a young man raised among regiments; Lives of the Most Remarkable Criminals captures his brief, troubled trajectory in vivid detail.

His is a case where the line between righteousness and brutality blurs beyond recognition. It is the kind of true crime account where competing versions of events leave the reader suspended between sympathy and suspicion, uncertain who is the aggressor and who is the victim.

In the shadows of a London park, a confrontation takes shape that will drag a young soldier before the full machinery of Georgian justice. The full account lives in Lives of the Most Remarkable Criminals; settle in now and let it unfold in your hearing.

William Casey: The Soldier Accused of Robbery in the Park

Click the RSS feed link below to subscribe and get new episodes the moment they drop.

Subscribe via RSS

Dark Lexicon: Old words. Dark meaning.

The past speaks its own dialect; here is what to listen for in this episode.

Fray: today we mostly encounter this word when fabric is coming apart at the edges, but in the eighteenth century a fray was a brawl, a sudden violent scuffle between individuals. It carries a sharper edge than ‘fight’; it implies disorder, chaos, something erupting without warning in the dark.

Prosecutor: in Georgian England this word did not mean a government lawyer standing at a podium. The prosecutor was the victim themselves; the person who brought the complaint and pressed the charge. John Stone is called ‘the prosecutor’ because he is the one who set the legal wheels turning against Casey.

Neck-cloth: a strip of linen or muslin worn tied around the throat, ancestor of the modern necktie. In the early 1700s it was a standard item of a gentleman’s dress, and stealing one counted as a meaningful theft; clothing had genuine resale value in a world before mass manufacture.

Swear sodomy upon him: to accuse someone formally of the crime of sodomy, which in this period was a capital offence. The threat to ‘swear sodomy’ on a man was not merely social ruin; it was a threat to have him hanged. It functioned as a devastating weapon in disputes, and false accusations were not unheard of.

Viz.: short for the Latin ‘videlicet,’ meaning ‘namely’ or ‘that is to say.’ It appears in Casey’s written statement and was common legal and literary shorthand of the era. You can think of it as the eighteenth century version of ‘i.e.’ or ‘specifically.’

Ignominious: meaning deeply shameful, bringing public disgrace. The word still exists today but was far more commonly deployed in this period, particularly in connection with public punishment, where the shame was considered part of the penalty itself.

Discharge his conscience: to relieve the burden on one’s soul by speaking the truth before death. This phrase carried heavy spiritual weight; the belief was that dying with a lie on your lips endangered your immortal soul. When Casey chooses to ‘discharge his conscience,’ he is making what he considers a sacred final act.

About This Series

Lives of the Most Remarkable Criminals is one of the earliest works of true crime writing in the English language, nearly 300 years old, covering murderers, thieves, highwaymen, forgers, coiners and worse.

The book is entirely in the public domain and every word of it can be read today for free. But if you would rather listen, this podcast does exactly that: one criminal at a time, every week, read aloud.

True crime was not invented by podcasts or streaming services. Eighteenth century readers were just as fascinated by outlaws and killers as we are today. They just consumed their dark stories by candlelight.

The voice you hear is David Dark: crime researcher, theatre script writer, producer of live immersive experiences, and audiobook narrator and voice artist. This podcast uses an AI voice model trained on David’s own voice, built using the maximum available training data to faithfully represent how he actually sounds. To hear David’s real voice in human generated form, visit him on Audible, Online Stage, Voices of Today, Spoken Realms, and Internet Archive.

Spread the word on your favourite platform!

Walter Kennedy grows up at Pelican Stairs in Wapping, the son of an anchor-smith, a boy with every reason to follow his father into honest labour. But something restless burns in him; as Lives of the Most Remarkable Criminals tells it, he possesses a ‘too aspiring temper’ that honest trades can never satisfy.

Serving aboard a man-of-war during Queen Anne’s wars against France, Kennedy absorbs every whispered tale of buccaneers and maritime desperadoes, and what begins as fascination hardens into ambition. His is a true crime story shaped not by sudden desperation but by slow, deliberate seduction; the sea offering its own dark curriculum.

The silver oar of Admiralty justice waits somewhere ahead of him, gleaming on a courtroom table he cannot yet imagine.

Lives of the Most Remarkable Criminals preserves Kennedy’s full account in vivid detail; hear it now, narrated from the original text.

Walter Kennedy: The Aspiring Pirate of Wapping

Click the RSS feed link below to subscribe and get new episodes the moment they drop.

Subscribe via RSS

Dark Lexicon: Old words. Dark meaning.

The past speaks its own dialect; here is what to listen for in this episode.

Petty treason: not a lesser kind of treason in the way we might assume. In English common law, petty treason referred specifically to the killing of a superior by a subordinate: a wife killing a husband, a servant killing a master, or a clergyman killing a prelate. When piracy is described as petty treason at common law, it signals that pirates were seen not merely as thieves but as men who had betrayed the sovereign authority itself.

Silver oar: a literal object, not a metaphor. The Court of Admiralty carried a silver oar into the courtroom as its emblem of jurisdiction over maritime offences. It lay on the table during trials and was carried in procession before the condemned on their way to execution. It was the last thing many pirates ever saw gleaming in the daylight.

Upon the account: sailor’s slang for turning pirate. To go ‘upon the account’ was to abandon lawful service and take up robbery at sea. The phrase carried a grim bookkeeping quality; as if plunder were simply another ledger to be managed.

Ambuscade: the older form of the word ambush, borrowed from the French. It sounds grander, more deliberate; and in this episode it describes exactly that: a carefully laid trap with poisoned arrows and lethal patience.

Dissembled: today we might say ‘pretended’ or ‘concealed.’ To dissemble is to hide one’s true intentions behind a mask of courtesy. The Portuguese governor who discovers the pirates but invites them to an entertainment is dissembling; and the consequences are devastating.

Tractable: meaning obedient, easily managed. We still use it occasionally, but in eighteenth century character sketches it appears often; a tractable child is one who gives no trouble. Kennedy is described as tractable in his youth, which makes his later transformation all the more striking.

Buccaneers: not simply a romantic synonym for pirate. The buccaneers were a specific group of seventeenth century raiders, originally hunters on Hispaniola who smoked meat on wooden frames called ‘boucans.’ They evolved into seafaring raiders who operated under loose commissions and sometimes with the tacit approval of colonial governors. By Kennedy’s time, their era was passing into legend; the kind of legend that infected young sailors with ambition.

Man-of-war: a warship in the service of a national navy, armed and crewed for battle. It is not a pirate vessel; quite the opposite. That Kennedy learns his piracy while serving aboard one of the Crown’s own fighting ships is one of the darker ironies of his story.