Regina v. Dudley & Stephens
| R v Dudley and Stephens | |
|---|---|
Sketch of the Mignonette by Tom Dudley
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| Court | High Court of Justice (Queen's Bench Division) |
| Full case name | Her Majesty The Queen v. Tom Dudley and Edwin Stephens |
| Decided | 1884 |
| Citation(s) | (1884) 14 QBD 273 DC |
| Case history | |
| Subsequent action(s) | none |
| Case opinions | |
| The Lord Coleridge, Lord Chief Justice | |
| Court membership | |
| Judge(s) sitting |
The Lord Coleridge, Lord Chief Justice |
The Lord Coleridge, Lord Chief Justice
Mr Justice Grove
Mr Justice Denman
Baron Pollock
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 public opinion sympathetic to castaways, to outlaw the custom and it became something of a cause célèbre in Victorian Britain.
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. After a highly publicized trial they were convicted of murder and sentenced to death with a recommendation for clemency; the sentence was commuted to six months in prison.
The English yacht Mignonette was a 19.43 net tonnage, 52-foot (16 m) cruiser built in 1867. It was an inshore boat, not made for long voyages. In 1883, she was purchased as a leisure vessel by Australian lawyer John Henry Want. The yacht could only reasonably be transported to Australia by sailing, but she was a small vessel and the prospect of a 15,000-mile (24,000-km) voyage hampered Want's initial attempts to find a suitable crew. She finally set sail for Sydney from Southampton on 19 May 1884 with a crew of four: Tom Dudley, the captain; Edwin Stephens; Edmund Brooks; and Richard Parker, the cabin boy. Parker was 17 years old, orphaned, and an inexperienced seaman.
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