tins of turnips, and for three days they had nothing else to subsist upon. That in this boat they had no supply of water and no supply of food, except two 1 lb. INDICTMENT for the murder of Richard Parker on the high seas within the jurisdiction of the Admiralty:Īt the trial before Huddleston, B., at the Devon and Cornwall Winter Assizes, November 7, 1884, the jury, at the suggestion of the learned judge, found the facts of the case in a special verdict which stated “that on July 5, 1884, the prisoners, Thomas Dudley and Edward Stephens, with one Brooks, all able-bodied English seamen, and the deceased also an English boy, between seventeen and eighteen years of age, the crew of an English yacht, a registered English vessel, were cast away in a storm on the high seas 1600 miles from the Cape of Good Hope, and were compelled to put into an open boat belonging to the said yacht. Held, that upon these facts, there was no proof of any such necessity as could justify the prisoners in killing the boy, and that they were guilty of murder. fed on his flesh for four days that at the time of the act there was no sail in sight nor any reasonable prospect of relief that under these circumstances there appeared to the prisoners every probability that unless they then or very soon fed upon the boy, or one of themselves, they would die of starvation: that lots should be cast who should be put to death to save the rest, and that they afterwards thought it would be better to kill the boy that their lives should be saved that on the twentieth day D., with the assent of S., killed the boy, and both D. and S., seamen, and the deceased, a boy between seventeen and eighteen, were cast away in a storm on the high seas, and compelled to put into an open boat that the boat was drifting on the ocean, and was probably more than 1000 miles from land that on the eighteenth day, when they had been seven days without food and five without water, D. ![]() How should we judge the action of Dudley and Stephens? Was it morally justified or morally wrong?Ĭriminal Law–Murder–Killing and eating Flesh of Human Body under Pressure of Hunger–”Necessity”–Special Verdict–Certiorari–Offence on High Seas–Jurisdiction of High Court.Ī 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 ground for believing that it affords the only chance of preserving his life.Īt the trial of an indictment for murder it appeared, upon a special verdict, that the prisoners D. Dudley and Stephens (1884), a famous English law case involving four men stranded in a lifeboat without food or water. ![]() What’s the right thing to do? This question arose in The Queen v. ![]() Suppose you find yourself in a situation in which killing an innocent person is the only way to prevent many innocent people from dying.
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