Staging an execution was a tricky business. Combining real and symbolic meanings, the spectacle of punishment and penitence depended on the key actors playing their parts according to the demands of the state and the expectations of the audience. Such scenes were memorialized for a wider public in the illustrations which appeared in criminal biographies of pirates and highwaymen with growing frequency during the early eighteenth century. One striking example shows the execution of the pirate captain, Stede Bonnet, in November 1718. It is from A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pyrates by captain Charles Johnson, which was published in London during 1724. Bonnet was an unusual recruit to piracy. Described by Johnson as a ‘Gentleman of good Reputation’ of Barbados, his acquaintances believed that he was tempted into the business because of a ‘Disorder in his Mind’ brought on by ‘some Discomforts he found in a married State’. As a pirate, he met with little success. For a brief period he consorted with Edward Teach, commonly known as Blackbeard, who was killed during a violent encounter off the coast of Carolina. Bonnet and his men were subsequently captured further along the coast during September 1718. The pirates were tried and found guilty at a court held in Charleston. On 8 November twenty-two of the company were executed at White Point. Bonnet was hanged several days later. According to Johnson, he struggled to live up to the role expected of him.