Alexander Pearce

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Portrait of the dead of Alexander Pearce after the execution (pencil drawing)

Alexander Pearce (* 1790 in County Fermanagh , Ireland , † July 19, 1824 in Hobart , Van Diemens Land , now Tasmania , New Holland ) was an Irish serial killer who killed four people alone and in community. He fled the infamous Macquarie Harbor penal colony twice and became a cannibal while on the run . The death sentence was carried out by hanging in the Tasmanian capital, Hobart. Its story was repeatedly filmed in the 21st century.

prehistory

Alexander Pearce was a Roman Catholic farm worker in Ireland. He was sentenced to seven years in prison in Van Diemens Land in Armagh , Ireland in 1819 for stealing six pairs of shoes . Based on the number of shoes stolen, it was assumed that this theft was not his first.

In Hobart he committed several thefts, fled twice, was undisciplined and also came to work as a convict drunk. He was flogged several times for his misconduct. On May 18, 1822, the Hobart Town Gazette reported him as fugitive; £ 10 had been exposed to his capture  . After three months at liberty, he was captured and taken to the newly established convict colony , the second established in Tasmania on Sarah Island in Macquarie Harbor . This convict camp was intended for convicts who had re-offended, and it was notorious for a rough and harsh, inhuman camp life. The camp was far from the settlements of the early colonists and surrounded by unexplored and impenetrable wilderness. Even today, the area around Macquarie Harbor , the Tasmanian Wilderness , a UNESCO World Heritage Site , is one of the most isolated inhospitable natural areas on earth.

cannibalism

First escape

Already on September 20, 1822, after six weeks in the camp, Pearce fled with seven other convicts when they had to fell trees outside the camp for shipbuilding. They were Alexander Dalton, Thomas Bodenham, William Kennerly, Matthew Travers, Edward Brown, Robert Greenhill and John Mather. After eight days, the refugees realized that they had no chance of survival without food. They then killed Dalton and ate him up. Of Dalton, Pearce said that he was one of those who flogged the camp and that he was hated. Kennerly and Brown gave up a day later in the face of their desperate situation and died of exhaustion on their return to the prison colony. Pearce and the others continued their escape without her. When Travers was bitten by a poisonous tiger otter, he was killed with an ax and eaten.

Pearce and Greenhill were the last two refugees alive; each watched the other suspiciously for eight days. Greenhill finally nodded off and Pearce slew him and ate him up. Pearce reached settlements after 42 days and a distance of about 215 km and found accommodation with a shepherd who was a convict. It was probably caught at Hobart a few months later. In Hobart, the story of cannibalism presented to him was not believed, since cannibalism was unknown among Europeans, and it was assumed that the others lived as bush robbers. He was transported back to Sarah Island .

Second escape

Within a year, Pearce escaped again, this time with Thomas Cox, a young convict. He killed this too and ate it up. He stated that he killed him in a fit of anger when he discovered that Cox could not swim. Pearce was caught on the eleventh day after his escape, brought before the Supreme Court of Van Diemens Land in Hobart, and charged with murder and cannibalism. The Observers newspaper wrote that he didn't look like a cannibal. He was only 1.60 m tall, which was slightly below average for the time, but he had a muscular, wiry body. He doesn't look like someone who wrote, "laden with the weight of human blood, and believed to have banqueted on human flesh" (German: "laden with the burden of human blood and who is believed to have feasted on human flesh") the Hobart Town Gazette, June 25, 1824. The men who captured him found parts of Cox's body in his pockets, despite the fact that he was carrying sufficient food. So this time there was no doubt about his guilt. He was the first cannibal to be convicted in the history of the Tasmanian judiciary.

execution

Pearce's death sentence

Alexander Pearce was hanged in Hobart City Jail at 9:00 a.m. on July 19, 1824, 30 days after the sentencing was pronounced, after receiving the sacraments of the death from a priest . It is reported that Pearce is said to have said before his execution , “Man's flesh is delicious. It tastes far better than fish or pork "(German:" Human meat is delicious. It tastes far better than fish or pork. ").

Songs and films

Alexander Pearce is sung about by the Australian bands Weddings Parties Anything in A Tale They Won't Believe and by The Drones in Words from the Executioner to Alexander Pearce .

A biographical television film The Last Confession of Alexander Pearce was shot in 2008 on the scenes of his life in Tasmania and Sydney . This film was aired by RTÉ in Ireland on December 29, 2008 and ABC1 in Australia on January 25, 2009. The Last Confession of Alexander Pearce was also released under the title Confessions of a Cannibal Convict in the UK on the More4 TV channel on July 10, 2010 played. Also in 2008, Dying Breed , a horror film about Pearce, was realized. The film was shot in Tasmania, also on the Pieman River on Tasmania's west coast and in Melbourne . The main characters were actor, writer and writer Leigh Whannell and Nathan Phillips .

The story of Pearce was filmed in a short film and also in the film Van Diemen's Land by Jonathan auf der Heide , whose ancestors emigrated from Hanover to Tasmania in 1850, the latter film being shown in Australian cinemas in September 2009.

Review

The director Jonathan auf der Heide explains that there is a “ mystical status ” in Australia that is treated like a “dirty little secret”, or that many think that Pearce “lured his fellow prisoners into the wild” to “eat them up” there. That is not the case and he has designed his two films about Pearce like documentaries .

In the meantime, the fate of Pearce has come to the fore in the press and he is highlighted as a victim of the circumstances at the time. Accordingly, Pearce is said to have been neither a hero nor a monster, but an ordinary person who had to live under bad circumstances. It is also understood as a product of the “brutality of imperialism” (German: “Brutalität des Imperialismus ”) and the then prevailing concept of a “secondary punishment” (German: “secondary punishment”). The idea behind it was that a person must first be broken through punishment in order to subsequently restore him as a person.

Paul Collins, who published Hell's Gates: The terrible journey of Alexander Pearce, Van Dieman's Land Cannibal about Pearce in 2002, explains the large number of people eaten during his first escape by saying that hunger cannot be satisfied by human flesh , because it is rich in proteins , but the energy supplying carbohydrates are missing. However, this statement is incorrect, because protein and carbohydrates have almost the same physiological calorific value , and the body can also produce the carbohydrates it needs for energy supply from proteins itself.

Collins also smugly remarks at the end of Pearce: his body was not dissected , as is the case today, but rather cannibalized for science and his bones examined according to the customs of the time . His skull exists to this day in the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia .

literature

  • Robert Hughes: The Fatal Shore: The Epic of Australia's Founding. Vintage, 1988, ISBN 978-0-394-75366-9 .
  • San Sprod: Alexander Pearce of Macquarie Harbor. Cat & Fiddle, Hobart 1977, ISBN 0-85853-031-7 .
  • Paul B. Kidd: Australia's Serial Killers. 2nd Edition. Pan Macmillan Australia 2011, ISBN 978-1-74262-798-4 .
  • Paul Collins: Hell's Gates: The Terrible Journey of Alexander Pearce. Van Dieman's Land Cannibal, South Yarra 2002, ISBN 1-74064-083-7 .
  • Nick Bleszynski: Bloodlust. The Unsavory Tale of Alexander Pearce, the Convict Cannibal. William Heinemann, North Sydney, NSW 2008, ISBN 978-1-74166-700-4 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h theage.com.au : Paul Collins: A journey through hell's gate , October 29, 2008, in English, accessed November 5, 2011
  2. ^ Anne-Marie Marquess: The Last Confession of Alexander Pearce. (No longer available online.) CultureNorthernIreland, November 25, 2008, archived from the original on October 27, 2008 ; accessed on December 2, 2011 .
  3. ↑ australianhistory.au ( memento of December 9, 2010 in the Internet Archive ): Alexander Pierce. Other Bushrangers , in English, accessed November 5, 2011
  4. ↑ www.lyricsmania.com : Lyrics of Words from the Executioners to Alexander , in English, accessed on November 6, 2011
  5. ↑ moviepilot.de : The Last Confession of Alexander Pearce , in English, accessed on November 6, 2011
  6. ↑ a b imdb.com : Dying Breed , in English, accessed on November 5, 2011
  7. ↑ a b wicked-vision.com : Van Diemen's Land, Interview with Johanthan auf der Heide , accessed on November 6, 2011
  8. ↑ vandiemensland-themovie.com : Van Diemen's Land , in English, accessed on November 5, 2011
  9. ↑ theage.com.au : Grisly confession of a cannibal convict , accessed November 6, 2011
  10. ^ Catalogue.statelibrary.tas.gov.au : The skull of Pearce, Alexander , in English, accessed on November 6, 2011
personal data
SURNAME Pearce, Alexander
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British convict and cannibal
DATE OF BIRTH 1790
PLACE OF BIRTH County Fermanagh , Ireland
DATE OF DEATH July 19, 1824
Place of death Hobart , Van Diemens Land, Australia