The news of famine cannibalism in Jamestown in the notorious winter of 1609-10 has caught the popular imagination on both sides of the Atlantic, with the Guardian running a poll to see who would nowadays resort to cannibalism in a case of starvation. Anyone uncertain about how to answer such a question might want to read the following.
Famine cannibalism has a long and grim history. During the siege of Jerusalem in AD70 mothers were said to have eaten their own aborted foetuses, while in an Italian famine of AD450 parents ate their dead children. In 1594, during the siege of Paris by Henri IV, an emergency famine committee agreed that bread should be made from bones from the charnel house of the Holy Innocents. It was available by mid-August, but those eating it died.
During the thirty years' war it was claimed that starving parents ate their dead children in sheer desperation. In 1636, in the village of Steinhaus, a woman apparently lured a girl of 12 and a boy of five into her house, "killed them both, and devoured them with her neighbour". In Picardy during this conflict, the Jesuit GS Menochio saw "several inhabitants" so crazed with hunger that they "ate their own arms and hands and died in despair".
Cases like these cast an ironic light on the Jamestown cannibalism. Early modern Europeans continually denounced the savage tribal man-eaters of the Americas. Yet at the same time Protestants and Catholics were engaged in their own tribal wars of religion, and many cases of famine cannibalism sprang directly from these conflicts. Even much later over in North America itself, the relationship of savage natives and civilised colonisers could be surprising. In 1761, in what was then still the cannibal territory of Canada, three Anglo-Americans were killed by Indians "in revenge for an Indian boy that the famished trio had killed and eaten".
Throughout the 19th century, the most likely catalyst for cannibalism beyond warfare was shipwreck. Most notoriously, there was the 1884 case of the Mignonette. After this yacht was wrecked on its way from England to Australia, Tom Dudley and Edwin Stephens murdered Richard Parker, aged 17. They drank his blood almost immediately, before cutting him open and eating his liver. With their legal counsel ultimately pleading extreme necessity, Dudley and Stephens were first sentenced to hang, and later given pardons, conditional on six-month jail terms.
Controversial as it was, the Mignonette was only one of numerous reported cases. And other ocean survivors could also tell you that, in such straits, vampirism was just as useful as cannibalism. Having exhausted supplies of fresh water and your own urine, blood was your drink (and food) of last resort. Hence the New York Times headline, "Shipwrecked men vampires", of March 1895, telling of how Daniel Clarke and Thomas Moore lived for 14 days on 16 biscuits, salt water, the uppers of their shoes – and blood sucked from each other's bodies.
This kind of benign auto-vampirism was fairly common: after the Shannon struck an iceberg in April 1832, 18 survivors were bled by the ship's surgeon, some drinking their own blood immediately, and others mixing it with flour into a kind of gruesome bread paste. Elsewhere the vampirism was more drastic. In September 1899 three sailors stranded off North America survived by drinking the blood of those expired from dehydration. When this ran out, they cast lots. The loser was killed, his blood drunk straight from his veins, and much of his body eaten.
Was prearranged murder less culpable than spontaneous murder? While those who consumed the dead were doubtless repelled, they escaped such dilemmas. But in one such case, rights to a body were asserted in a particularly startling way. After the Frances Mary was wrecked in the Atlantic in February 1826, survivors languished for several days on bread and ship's biscuit.
On 21 February James Clarke died. He was committed to the deep with prayers, unmolested. But a day can be a long time in the politics of starvation. When John Wilson died on 22 February he was quartered and hung up to dry, and on the next day the deceased J Moore had his heart and liver eaten. Until their rescue on 7 March the survivors lived on corpses – perhaps recalling as they forced down human flesh the spectacle of those who had drunk salt water and died raving mad. During this period the Master's wife, feeding on human brains, described them as the most delicious food she had ever tasted. Most memorably of all, when sailor James Frier died, his fiancee Ann Saunders "shrieked a loud yell", snatched a cup, "cut her late intended husband's throat, and drank his blood, insisting that she had the greatest right to it". She then got the better of a scuffle with the ship's mate, Clerk, and allowed him to drink one cup to her two.
In extremis, how would you deal with such a dilemma? Try not to complain about the airline food on your next flight.
This article originally appeared on guardian.co.uk
SEE ALSO: Jamestown Cannibals: Evidence Suggests Settlers ATE Children During Harsh Winters