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I don't guarantee my information, but I'll give you what I have. Ann was born the illegitimate daughter of an Irish lawyer and his wife's maid. She acquired the name by marrying a sailor named Bonny (no e), and sailing off with him. In the Caribbean, she left Bonny for a pirate named Calico Jack, disguised herself as a man, and joined the crew...only to discover another woman in the crew doing the same thing! The topless story, alas, applies to the other woman, Mary Read, not to Ann. The whole gang was captured, tried and sentenced to hang, when both women "pleaded their bellies"...invoked the rule prohibiting execution of pregnant women. Apparently the jailhouse frisk was less thorough than it is today, because that was the first clue the authorities had that two of their fierce pirates were ladies. The plea worked, though, giving each woman long enough to escape the hangman. Mary died of a fever before she could be hanged, and Ann disappeared. One story says she broke out, another says her father bought her freedom.
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