and S., seamen, and the deceased, a boy between seventeen and eighteen, were cast away in a storm on the high seas, and compelled to put into an open boat that the boat was drifting on the ocean, and was probably more than 1000 miles from land that on the eighteenth day, when they had been seven days without food and five without water, D.
LIFEBOAT IP TRIAL
LORD COLERIDGE, C.J., GROVE AND DENMAN, JJ.Ĭriminal Law?Murder?Killing and eating Flesh of Human Body under Pressure of Hunger?Necessity?Special Verdict?Certiorari?Offence on High Seas?Jurisdiction of High CourtĪt the trial of an indictment for murder it appeared, upon a special verdict, that the prisoners D. Dudley and Stephens 14 Queens Bench Division 273 (1884)ġ884 Dec. To some locals, they were heroes.īut it was homicide by any definition, as set fourth by the verdict The Queen v. They were rescued on the 29th and by the beginning of September, had been landed at Falmouth, England where, when questioned, they made no secret of what they had done. "Mad wolves", they described themselves: "We could not have our right reason."
It was a terrible scene when later described by the survivors. Stephens at that time was in the stern of the boat and Brooks in the bow?" "I then put my knife The blood spurted out, and we caught it in the bailer and we drank the blood while it was warm we then stripped the body, cut it open, and took out his liver and heart, and we ate the liver while it was still warm. "I took out my knife-first offering a prayer to God to forgive us for what we were about to do and for the rash act, that our souls might be saved-and I said to the boy, 'Richard, your time has come.' The boy said, 'What me, Sir?' I said, 'Yes, my boy.' " No vessel appearing on the morning, I made signs to Stephens and Brooks that we had better do it, but they seemed to have no heart to do it, so I went to the boy, who was lying at the bottom of the boat with his arm over his face. When July 24 dawned, with Parker breathing heavily, apparently comatose and sunken into the bottom of the open boat, Dudley had the wherewithal to kill slowly by bleeding him before natural death occurred to as to salvage the blood. Still, Dudley and Stephens watched the boy. But Brooks hesitated and in the result, the evidence as to whether lots were ever drawn was inconclusive. The others spoke of the unspeakable, especially Dudley, and drawing lots was raised. He began to speak deliriously and gave some appearance of imminent death. Radeau de la MeduseOn July 20, Parker gave way to temptation and began to gulp down seawater. On July 13, the men began to drink their own urine. With two tins of turnips and no water, it was a desperate situation. Suddenly, the four men were crowded in a small dinghy, lost in the middle of the South Atlantic, at latitude 27 degrees 10 south and longitude 9 degrees 50 West: 1,600 miles for Cape of Good Hope, 2,000 from South America. But the boat, called the Mignonette, sunk with little warning on the high seas on July 5, 1884. It happened when a small yacht being sailed to Australia by an experienced English seafarer, Tom Dudley, and his mates Edwin Stephens, Edmund Brooks and the 17-year old cabin boy, Richard Thomas Parker. Three days later, the three survivors were rescued, with blood and human flesh under their fingernails and the bottom of their dinghy strewn with the remains of Richard Packer. The three oldest, led by the captain, killed the youngest and the weakest, the cabin boy, so as to give themselves a chance to survive until rescue. Short case history of Mignonette shipwreck (see ):įour shipwrecked men, lost at sea on a small rowboat with no food or water became the perfect legal storm and, ultimately, a watershed moment on how far man can go with justifying murder of one for the sake of many in the name of necessity. A man who, in order to escape death from hunger, kills another for the purpose of eating his flesh, is guilty of murder although at the time of the act he is in such circumstances that he believes and has reasonable ground for believing that it affords the only chance of preserving his life.
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