page_title: R v Dudley and Stephens
section_title: Memorial
hierarchical_section_title: R v Dudley and Stephens / Memorial
caption_attribution_description: English: Richard Parkers Tombstone at Jesus Chapel, Peartree Green, Southampton Text of the inscription The inscription on the tombstone reads as follows; SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF RICHARD PARKER AGED 17 WHO DIED AT SEA JULY 25th 1884 AFTER NINETEEN DAYS DREADFUL SUFFERING IN AN OPEN BOAT IN THE TROPICS HAVING BEEN WRECKED IN THE YACHT MIGNONETTE Though he slay me yet will I trust in him. JOB XIII.15 Lord lay not this sin to their charge. ACTS VII.60
context_page_description: R v Dudley and Stephens 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 and it became a legal cause célèbre in the last ​16 ¹⁄₂ 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.
context_section_description: A memorial stone commemorating Parker is in the churchyard of Jesus Chapel on Peartree Green in Southampton, near to the site of Itchen Ferry village whence he came.
caption: Memorial stone to Richard Parker. Biblical epilogs:
  Though he slay me yet will I trust in him. (Job 13:15)
  Lord lay not this sin to their charge. (Acts 7:60)
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