When an Irish prisoner in Tasmania in the 1820s was reduced by the prison colony experience to serial cannibalism, it was a story that rocked the English-speaking world in its day.
This fully dramatised documentary, part of RTÉ’s acclaimed and multi-award winning Hidden History series, explores a shocking episode in the controversial history of Van Diemen’s Land.
The Last Confession of Alexander Pearce features Adrian Dunbar and Ciaran McMenanin. It was commissioned for RTÉ Television by Kevin Dawson, Commissioning Editor for Factual Programmes.
***
FOR FULL COLOUR DETAILS PRODUCTION NOTES EMAIL joseph.hoban@rte.ie
***
In 1819, two young Irish men travel to the other
side of the world. Alexander Pearce, a farm labourer, is sentenced to seven years in the new penal colony of Van Diemen’s Land.
His crime is the theft of six pairs of shoes. Philip Conolly, a Catholic priest, is sent to administer religious guidance to the damned of Hobart Town, the most isolated settlement on earth.
Within six months, Alexander Pearce has been flogged over 200 times for a variety of misdemeanours and finds himself en route to Sarah Island – a place of secondary punishment, with a regime chillingly calculated to strike fear into the hearts of the most hardened of convicts. He is thought beyond salvation and will soon be brutalised, tortured and degraded beyond comprehension. Consumed by thoughts of escape, Pearce quickly
falls in with like-minded convicts and the English exmariner,
Robert Greenhill. Between them, they hatch an escape plan. Soon eight men crash into the rainforest with little other than an axe, and a plan to go where no white man has gone before – across the extreme wilderness of Tasmania. Lieutenant John Cuthbertson, in charge of Sarah Island, doesn’t waste time or valuable men pursuing them. They will surely all die within days.
Hunger sets in and quickly the awful decision to eat one of the group is reached. Alexander Dalton, the convict flogger, is the logical choice. Greenhill slits his throat and the butcher Matthew Travers decapitates him.
Within weeks only Greenhill and Pearce are left alive. It is nearly 50 days since they escaped. Both men are close to death – and potential freedom. When Pearce is eventually captured by British
authorities he readily confesses his crimes. The magistrate refuses to believe him. Irishman or not, no European could resort to such depravity and Pearce is sent back to Sarah Island to complete the remainder of his sentence. Within weeks Pearce escapes again with the help of another convict, Thomas Cox. When the authorities catch up with Pearce, he is lying beside the decimated remains of Cox.
During his six months incarcerated in Hobart Gaol, Alexander Pearce meets Father Phillip Conolly. Both men are from the same part of Ireland and know of each other. Alexander Pearce confesses everything to the priest. Conolly’s faith in his God is tested by what he hears. Alexander Pearce is executed on July 19, 1824. Under orders from the Judge, his body is dissected for
science. His skull remains to this day in the Museum of Pennsylvania.
Written in Gaelic, the last confession of Alexander Pearce remained hidden for nearly 30 years. This is the remarkable story of how one man endured the unimaginable by doing the unthinkable. Told as a factual drama, The Last Confession of
Alexander Pearce features the stunning and foreboding landscape of south west Tasmania and immaculate acting performances that draw a visceral and compelling picture of a hell on earth.