The Real Pirates of One Piece (Edward Newgate)

Edward Newgate = Newgate Prison

This is one of the more interesting connections in Oda's work – not to a real-life pirate (although there were many with the first name “Edward,” Blackbeard and the vicious Edward Lowe among them), but to a place where pirates were hanged. Newgate Prison was a London jail (or gaol, if you prefer) that remained in use for over 700 years. Most importantly for One Piece, this was where the much-maligned Captain Kidd was imprisoned before being hanged at Wapping in 1701. Newgate was one of the most infamous prisons in the public imagination, inspiring popular novels like John Dickson Carr's 1950 thriller The Bride of Newgate and serving as the birthplace of Daniel DeFoe's Moll Flanders, a woman who would have been right at home in One Piece. Not only was it a place many pirates would have been leery of, much like Impel Down, but its presence in Whitebeard's name also works with his famed stance that no one can live without a moral code. Newgate Prison was concrete evidence that England had a penal code, which calls to mind the social norms and morals that tie into Whitebeard's personality. It's a slightly more tenuous connection than others (though certainly stronger than my “Wapol = Wapping” theory), but given the status, size, and reputation Whitebeard achieves in the world of One Piece, it's also one of the more intriguing possibilities behind Oda's characters.

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