The memory of Richard Parker is preserved on a memorial stone in the churchyard on Pear Tree Green, Southampton, England, adorned with cryptic quotes from the Book of Job and the Acts of the Apostles: "Though He slay me yet shall I trust in Him" and "Lord lay not this sin to their charge." The biblical citations relate directly and poignantly to the circumstances of Parker's death at age 17.
His stone is not, strictly, a tombstone but a cenotaph -- a funeral monument without a body. Part of Parker's body was discarded, a century ago, in the south Atlantic Ocean, some 2,000 miles east of South America. The remainder was consumed by his surviving shipmates on the yacht Mignonette, which was destroyed in a storm on July 5, 1884, en route from England to Australia. Parker was killed for food 20 days after the shipwreck.
The memory of Richard Parker is also enshrined in English common law, along with those of his shipmates, Tom Dudley, Edward Stephens and Ned Brooks -- principals in the landmark case of Regina v. Dudley and Stephens. The story of this case is the primary subject of A.W. Brian Simpson's book, beginning with the sinking of the Mignonette and focusing on the trial, which resulted in a murder conviction for two of the shipmates. This conviction was largely a formality, secured not to punish the cannibals but to uphold the legal principle that "necessity" is not an acceptable reason for killing an innocent person.
The defendants (who made no secret of what they had done) were released after only six months' imprisonment, and a large segment of English public opinion at the time considered even that punishment harsh. Parker's family, seafaring people, were distressed at what had happened but bore no grudge against the survivors; they were familiar with "the custom of the sea," which did allow cannibalism in such circumstances. There were some complaints that the victim was not chosen by lot, as was traditional. Parker was selected, according to the survivors, because he seemed to be on the brink of death from thirst and starvation and he was the only one in the boat who had no dependents.
Simpson's interest in the legal question has taken him far afield in search of relevant material. Cannibalism in a blizzard-stricken wilderness has some legal parallels with cannibalism on a dinghy adrift at sea, so he includes a brief discussion of the tragedy of the Donner party, which did not result in a court action. More space is allotted to the crime of Alferd G. Packer. Packer was the only one who emerged (apparently well fed after months out in the snow) from an ill-fated expedition in the mountains of Colorado, and he soon became a part of frontier folklore. One no doubt apocryphal tale has a (Democratic) judge thundering at him from the bench: "There was seven Democrats in Hinsdale County, and you've ate five of them, God damn you. I sentence you to be hanged by the neck until you is dead, dead, as a warning against reducing the Democrat population of the state. Parker, you Republican cannibal, I would sentence you to hell but the Statutes forbid it."
But Simpson's real subjects are shipwrecks and other maritime disasters, cannibalism and law. More than 20 shipwrecks involving alleged cannibalism are discussed, some at considerable length. Cannibalism is only one possible horror (with common-law implications) that can transpire at sea, so the book repeats the stories of the Lady Douglas, on which a mentally deranged crew member was killed for fear that he might run amok, and the harrowing case of the William Brown, in which the allegation was not cannibalism but murder.
The William Brown carried passengers as well as cargo, and when it was destroyed by an iceberg, the survivors' problem was not food but the overloading of a lifeboat. Some passengers were refused admission and went down with the ship, but even with this restriction the boat (leaking and without a rudder) was in danger of sinking. The crew members decided to lighten it by throwing passengers overboard -- a grim night's work and probably unnecessary since help arrived the next morning.
When the incident came to trial in Philadelphia, it introduced some new elements into Anglo-American jurisprudence. It is notable, the author explains, as the only case in this tradition "that explicitly accepts the defense of necessity of homicide and as the only case that explicitly accepts the propriety, in appropriate circumstances, of selecting victims by lot."
Simpson's sources range even more widely, in law, history and folklore. There is, for example, a reference to the Book of Jonah, which at least one jurist has cited as an example of the custom of casting lots when a victim or victims must be sacrificed in a maritime disaster -- whether to be thrown overboard or to be used as food. He also reprints numerous old ballads about disasters at sea, which help to establish the point that cannibalism was a well-known and accepted expedient in the face of starvation at sea. Somehow in his well-digested survey of the subject, he omits the incident of Ugolino, from the 33rd canto of Dante's "Inferno," who was imprisoned with his sons in a foodless dungeon. But only the most voracious devotees of this topic will want to complain that he has left anything unsaid.