R v Dudley and Stephens
Read this description of the famous Queen v. Dudley and Stephens case. As you read, consider whether you agree with the ruling in this case, and if you would rule differently, as well as why you would do so. This text discusses the famous lifeboat case, which established the legality of choosing to murder out of necessity. Although the details of the case are quite graphic, this fact itself may serve as a prompt for many of us to revise our initial intuitions about the moral status of killing one to save many others.
R v Dudley and Stephens
R v Dudley and Stephens (1884) 14 QBD 273 DC is a leading English criminal case which established a precedent throughout the common law world that necessity is not a defence to a charge of murder. It concerned survival cannibalism following a shipwreck and its purported justification on the basis of a custom of the sea. It marked the culmination of a long history of attempts by the law, in the face of a bank of public opinion sympathetic to famished castaways, to outlaw the custom (cases of which were little-publicised until after the death of perpetrators) and it became a legal cause célèbre in the last 161⁄2 years of Victorian Britain, particularly among mariners.
Dudley and Stephens were shipwrecked along with two other men. When one of them, the cabin boy Richard Parker, fell into a coma, Dudley and Stephens decided to kill him for food.
Sketch of the Mignonette by Tom Dudley
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R_v_Dudley_and_Stephens
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License.