Eat Thy Neighbour (6 page)

In his log, Cook observed that the Maori did not practise cannibalism out of dietary necessity. ‘In every part of New Zealand where I have been, fish was in such plenty, that the natives generally caught [enough to] serve both themselves and us. They also have plenty of dogs; nor is there a want of wild-fowl, which they know very well how to kill. So that neither this, nor the want of food of any kind, can in my opinion be
the reason. But whatever it may be, I think it was but too evident that they have a great liking for this kind of food.’ A century later, during the late Victorian era, an old Maori was equally sanguine about his people’s eating habits. ‘When you die, wouldn’t you rather be eaten by your own kinsmen than by maggots?’

In nearby Australia, the Aboriginal natives had diverse and complex rules governing cannibalism that varied significantly from tribe to tribe. The most common and widespread practice was the consumption of enemy warriors, or those believed to be dangerous intruders, in a ceremony in which, as usual, it was believed that their prowess could be absorbed with their flesh. In 1933 an old chieftain from Yam Island remembered eating chopped human flesh mixed with crocodile meat which would, in his words, ‘make heart come strong inside’. More savage were the Ngarigo who ate the hands and feet of slain enemies out of pure revenge.

To the tribes who inhabited the area surrounding what is now Queensland eating the flesh of one of your own tribesmen was an honour reserved for those of high status and may, again, have been seen to impart the power of the dead to his, or her, people. Similarly, among the Dieri people, the family portioned out small quantities of the deceased’s body fat to close relatives. One Dieri tribesman explained, ‘We eat him, because we knew him and were fond of him.’ Sometimes, these funeral customs also had a more subtle purpose. In 1924, Australian Mounted Police Officers G. Horne and G. Aiston reported the case of an elderly, and rather stout, member of the Wonkonguru tribe who dropped dead of a heart attack during an emu-hunting expedition. Unexplained deaths among primitive people always carry the possibility of bewitchment, so the funeral dinner had a two-fold purpose. Those who knew and loved the man were celebrating his life by sharing his body, but should the person who put a curse on him partake of his flesh, they would die.
Officer Horne spoke to one of the deceased’s elderly friends who insisted he had not really wanted to eat his friend’s flesh, but felt he could not say no. In his words, ‘Spose ’em me no eat ’em. ’Nother fella say, Him kill ’em. Me eat ’em, then all right.’

Among some Aboriginal tribes, the sacrificial killing and eating of newborn infants was a relatively common practice. Among the Kaura people it was purely a means of disposing of extra mouths during times of crop failure, drought or famine. Among the Wotjobaluk, however, it was only the second-born who was ritually killed, their flesh being reserved to feed the older child in the belief that this would make them stronger.

There is also evidence of less socially acceptable cannibalism in Australia: that which took place among the white population. During the days when Australia served as a vast prison for Great Britain, there was at least one case – which took place in 1822 – where a group of convicts escaped and remained alive in the Australian wastes by eating each other. The only one who survived to be recaptured was a man named Alexander Pearce who freely admitted his crime. No one believed him, so the next time he escaped, several years later, he took along another prisoner named Thomas Cox specifically to serve as provisions. On his final arrest, Pearce displayed a chunk of Cox to prove he had not been lying the first time. Pearce was hanged for his crime, as were the majority of people who have committed cannibalism in a society where it is not an acceptable part of the social milieu.

Four

Cannibalism in extremis: Famine, Disaster and Warfare

T
hus far we have examined cases where cannibalism was a cultural standard. That is to say, the members of a given society ate human flesh because it was an acceptable part of their culture. Let us now turn our attention to the other side of the coin. We will refer to this practice as cannibalism
in extremis
; eating flesh in extreme, or disastrous, circumstances for the purposes of survival, even if the culture of the individuals involved rejects cannibalism.

Not surprisingly, the majority of cannibalistic occurrences in modern times have come about as a result of desperate hunger. When there is no other food available and the difference between living and dying is determined by a person’s ability to overcome the moral imprecations against consuming human flesh, morality usually flies out of the window. It may be that the thought of losing our thin veneer of civilisation frightens us as much as, if not more than, the act of cannibalism itself.

One of the earliest first-hand accounts of famine-induced cannibalism comes from medieval Egypt. In the years 1200–1, Egypt was stricken by a famine so massive that an observer named Abd Al-Latif – a physician living in Cairo – wrote that more than 500 people a day were dying in his city alone. Towns and villages everywhere were littered with the emaciated corpses of the dead. Eventually, driven mad by hunger, people were first reduced to eating the dead and later, to killing and eating each
other, including their own children. Al-Latif wrote that he witnessed the bodies of children, gutted and dressed, hanging in public marketplaces, and claimed to have seen the roasted body of an infant being carried in a shopping basket. The authorities did their best to stem this wave of cannibalism; in the case of the roasted child, the parents were condemned to be burned. But when an individual is torn between the possibility of being caught and the certainty of starvation, the law holds little sway over their actions. Inevitably, when a society degenerates to this point, there are those who simply take advantage of the opportunity to indulge their perverse tastes regardless of need. Al-Latif claimed that even those who were rich enough to afford food often ate human flesh simply for the joy, or novelty, of it. In his account, Al-Latif recounts multiple instances where human heads and limbs were discovered simmering merrily away in some street-corner cauldron. Eventually, the practice of eating human flesh became so commonplace that some people continued even when the famine was over. As appalling as this seems, thirteenth-century Egypt was hardly an isolated case. At one point or another in the annals of recorded history, famine-induced cannibalism has been reliably documented in places as diverse as England, Ireland and Russia.

Worthy of note are famines that took place in the Ukraine in 1922 and in Russia between 1929 and 1931. Both were devastating on a scale impossible to imagine. Tens of thousands of peasants and townspeople went without food for months on end. Wallpaper was stripped from the walls and boiled for what nutritive value might be contained in the flour-based paste that held it to the walls. Even carpenters’ glue was made into soup; anything to kill the pain of a stomach slowly digesting its own lining. The most tragic and psychologically damaging aspect of these famines is that they were both artificially created. The Ukraine had always been one of the most fertile farming
regions in the Russian states, but when the Ukrainian people backed the White Russian government against the forces of communism, the Bolsheviks punished them by taking everything they could produce – including the seed grain for the following year’s planting – to feed the Red Army. Similarly, the 1929–31 Russian famine was dictator Josef Stalin’s way of punishing those peasants who resisted collectivised farming. The legacy of this political terror has resulted in a continuing blasé attitude towards cannibalism that haunts the remnants of the Soviet Union to this day. We will look at this tragic phenomenon in greater depth in the final chapter of this book.

It could be argued that cannibalism takes place during times of famine because of the nature of famine itself. Generally speaking, the food supply dwindles slowly, disease weakens the population, theft and violence become rife and the general fabric of society slowly unravels. But what happens when a few individuals are suddenly trapped in an extreme situation, deprived of food and, possibly, of water? Will the group’s shared social structure and the threat of peer condemnation hold the brute instinct in check despite the threat of starvation, or will they, too, resort to cannibalism? The best-known examples of this type of survival cannibalism have been recorded in connection with disasters at sea and, in at least some well-documented cases, the strong will, indeed, resort to eating the weak in order to survive.

Among the best-known cases of cannibalism on the high seas is that of the French frigate
Medusa
, which foundered and sank in 1816 while on its way to Senegal. More than 150 survivors clung desperately to an intact section of the vessel’s hull for days, slowly dying from their wounds, starvation and thirst. Inevitably, order broke down and the survivors began fighting among themselves. Some were murdered, their blood and raw flesh then being devoured by their attackers. When the raft was finally picked up only fifteen remained alive.

While not wanting to belabour the point of sea-related tragedies, there is one other shipwreck which, because of its legal ramifications, bears examination. In 1884 the 32-foot, English-registered sailing yacht
Mignonette
was being delivered to new owners in Australia by a skeleton crew of four. As the craft passed around the Cape of Good Hope, it foundered in a terrible storm and the crewmen were forced to abandon ship and take refuge in the lifeboat. Without food or water, and tossed wildly on stormy water, it was all Captain Tom Dudley could do to keep his three crewmen from panicking.

By the fifth day the teenage cabin boy, Richard Parker, was near death. A novice sailor, he had drunk sea water before anyone could stop him and was suffering severe dehydration, stomach cramps and diarrhoea as a result. Ten days later, the boy still clung to life but the rest of the crew were in nearly as bad a shape as he was. The other men discussed the possibility of killing the boy and devouring his blood and flesh to keep themselves alive. Taking the responsibility on himself, Captain Dudley stabbed the boy in the neck, collected the blood and passed it around. His heart and liver were cut out and eaten immediately and the rest of the meat was eaten over the course of four days, after which his carcass was thrown overboard. After twenty-four days adrift, the three survivors were picked up by a German schooner and returned to England.

During the voyage home, Captain Dudley wrote an accurate and detailed account of the experiences in the lifeboat, accepting any and all responsibility for his crew’s actions. The arrest of the three men on charges of murder was not a surprise; legal form must be followed no matter what the circumstances. Certainly there was complete understanding among the general populace of Falmouth, where they landed and were being held, that what they had done to Richard Parker was not a matter of choice, but of simple survival. A legal defence fund was even established to help defray their court costs and they had the good wishes
of the local press. But the law took its course, the men were prosecuted, and the national press turned the whole thing into a circus, ladling out great dollops of macabre sensationalism for which the British press has become infamous.

The defence took the position that the laws governing civilised society, in this case the injunction against murder, were not always applicable in extreme situations. They also argued that after going so long without food and water the men were obviously not thinking clearly and could not be held responsible for their actions. And even if they were responsible, it was an accepted truism that the needs of the many outweighed the needs of the individual. It was a well-planned, well-presented argument with much legal precedence to back it up. The jury, however, thought otherwise.

In a part of their guilty verdict, the jury stated, ‘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 grounds for believing, that it affords him the only chance of saving his life.’ We can only assume that no one on the jury had ever been in similar circumstances. The judge was so distressed by the verdict that he appealed to the Crown to commute the sentence and Queen Victoria, in her wisdom, complied. After serving six months in prison the three men were released.

The sea is a vast and unpredictable place as, until relatively recently, was much of the earth’s land area. Before the advent of railways and reliable roads, a person could become hopelessly lost only miles from home; and if you were hundreds – or thousands – of miles from home the situation could become desperate in a very short time. In 1846 a group of settlers, led by George Donner, set out from Utah towards the fertile hills of California. Included in the group were twenty-six men, fourteen women and forty-four children. Everything went well until
mid-October when a severe blizzard trapped the group in a pass high in the Sierra Nevada mountains. Some of the group decided to make do where they were, converting their wagons into makeshift cabins, while another contingent determined to press on, eventually reaching an abandoned cabin 5 miles further along the trail. It was more than two months later when two members of the Donner party slogged their way to civilisation, obtained help, and returned for their stranded companions. Of the original eighty-four pioneers there were only seven survivors in addition to the two who went for the rescue party. Amazingly, although the Donner party had been divided by 5 miles of heavy snow, and suffered almost identical deprivation, both groups had ultimately resorted to eating their dead companions in an attempt to stay alive.

With the passing of the age of sail there are now few tragedies at sea and, with the exception of vast national parklands, modernised countries retain few areas sufficiently remote to be considered a wilderness. Does this mean that cannibalism
in extremis
has become a thing of the distant past? It would seem not.