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Occultwiki (talk | contribs) (Created page with "400px|thumb|Alexander Pearce depicted as the [[Nine of Cups in the Magicians, Martyrs, and Madmen Tarot]] '''Alexander Pearce''' (1819 - 19 J...") |
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==Trial and execution== | ==Trial and execution== | ||
Alexander Pearce requested to give his confession to a Catholic priest, and Reverend Conolly came to his prison cell and took both a spiritual and a legal confession. The last words of Pearce were a detailed story about his long, difficult journey with seven other men through the Tasmanian wilderness in 1822. He absolved himself of murdering any of those men, aside from Robert Greenhill, which he claimed was in preemptive self defense. | Alexander Pearce requested to give his confession to a [[Christianity|Catholic]] priest, and Reverend Conolly came to his prison cell and took both a spiritual and a legal confession. The last words of Pearce were a detailed story about his long, difficult journey with seven other men through the Tasmanian wilderness in 1822. He absolved himself of murdering any of those men, aside from Robert Greenhill, which he claimed was in preemptive self defense. | ||
On July 19th, 1824, Alexander Pearce was executed by hanging. His death decree included the stipulation that his body be dissected by the scientists in Hobart, who believed they might gain some special insight by examining the internal physiology of a confirmed cannibal. During the dissection, Pearce's head was sketched by an artist and his skull was preserved as a medical curiosity. Pearce's skull is believed to have been sold by the surgeon who dissected him to American naturalist and skull collector Samuel George Morton and is housed along with the rest of his collection at Penn Museum in Philadelphia. | |||
==Legacy== | |||
Pearce has been the subject of numerous songs, books, and films. Two Australian bands have recorded songs referencing his life: Weddings Parties Anything's song "A Tale They Won't Believe" and The Drones recorded "Words from the Executioner to Alexander Pearce." | |||
===Films=== | |||
A biographical film, ''The Last Confession of Alexander Pearce'', was shot on location in 2008 in Tasmania and Sydney and starred Adrian Dunbar, Ciaran McMenamin, Dan Wyllie, Don Hany and Chris Haywood. It was shown on RTÉ in Ireland on 29 December 2008 and ABC1 in Australia on 25 January 2009. | |||
Also in 2008, ''Dying Breed'', a horror film about Pearce was released. It featured fictional "descendants" of Pearce. The movie was shot in Tasmania and Melbourne (including at the Pieman River on the West Coast of Tasmania), ''Dying Breed'' stars writer/actor Leigh Whannell and Nathan Phillips. | |||
The story of Pearce's cannibalism was made into another feature-length movie called ''Van Diemen's Land'', released in Australian cinemas in September 2009. | |||
===Books=== | |||
In addition to numerous nonfiction works detailing the life of Pearce, his adventures were fictionalised in Marcus Clarke's 1874 novel ''For the Term of His Natural Life''. | |||
In 2022, [[occultist]] [[Travis McHenry]] included a lengthy biography of Pearce in his book ''[[Magicians, Martyrs, and Madmen]]''. Pearce was featured as the [[Nine of Cups]] in the accompanying [[tarot]] deck, [[Magicians, Martyrs, and Madmen Tarot]]. While doing research for the book, McHenry was granted access to original journals and the physician's sketch of Pearce in the State Library of New South Wales. | |||
[[Category:People]] | [[Category:People]] | ||
[[Category:Cannibals]] | [[Category:Cannibals]] | ||