A Horrific Tale Of An Irish Cannibal In Australia

The Life of Alexander Pearce

Drawings, by Thomas Bock, of the face of Alexander Pearce after his execution.

In 1822, Macquarie Harbour in Sarah Island, Australia, was considered to be the best place to keep the most notorious of convicts in Europe.

The Prison Camp in the Harbor was surrounded by a verse barren jungle that stretches for hundreds of miles, separating the prison camp from the main settlement that was on another side of the island. The waters surrounding the Prison camp were filled with hungry sharks.

With these facts, you might think that any convicts planning to escape would reconsider. But that was not the case for some prisoners.

In September that same year, eight convicts, who were assigned to clear the bushes surrounding the eastern side of the harbor, escaped into the barren jungle.

After being lost in the hellish jungle for 15 days, Starvation sets in. The escapees realized that they wouldn’t survive the journey unless they result in cannibalism. One by one they devoured themselves, and after four months, only one of the convicts made it to the settlement area of the island. His name was Alexander Pearce.

But he was later recaptured by the authorities and was sent back to the prison camp. When asked about the whereabouts of the other convicts, he told the authorities how…