The next time you enjoy a sip of Irish whiskey, spare a thought for a young girl who was reportedly devoured by cannibals along the Congo River.
Born into privilege in high society in 1856, James Sligo Jameson was heir to the mighty whiskey fortune of Jameson Irish Whiskey. Money was no object to the curious young man, and he regularly travelled the world, from Singapore to Borneo and South Africa, hunting big game and making notes of all the creatures he came across.
Then in 1887, Jameson joined a high-profile rescue mission, led by the famed explorer Henry Morton Stanley. Their aim was to reach the beleaguered governor Emin Pasha, in the modern-day Democratic Republic of the Congo.
According to later testimony from members of the expedition, Jameson expressed a chilling curiosity about reports of cannibalism. The following year, the Europeans had formed a relationship with Tippu Tip, a notorious African slave trader, who sent men to help carry their supplies.
But this alliance proved disastrous. Local villagers refused to trade with the expedition, having been personally victimised by Tip’s slave raids. Faced with starvation, Jameson and his comrades resorted to kidnapping African women and children, holding them for ransom until their communities provided food.
By May 1888, the expedition reached the central forests of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Jameson was with Tip near the village of Yambuya when he witnessed local PEOPLE dancing - the latter told him that such celebrations typically ended in cannibalism, according to All That's Interesting.
Jameson wrote in his diary: “I told [Tippu Tip] that people at home generally believed that these were only ‘travellers’ tales,’ as they are called in our country, or, in other words, lies. He then said something to an Arab called Ali, seated next to him, who turned round to me and said, ‘Give me a bit of cloth, and see.'”
Believing it to be a joke, Jameson sent his assistant to fetch six handkerchiefs, when a man appeared leading, "a young girl of about 10 years old by the hand".
She had recently been captured during a slave raid, with Jameson describing the horrifying events that followed: “I then witnessed the most horribly sickening sight I am ever likely to see in my life. He plunged a knife quickly into her breast, twice, and she fell on her face, turning over on her side.
"Three men then ran forward, and began to cut up the body of the girl; finally her head was cut off, and not a particle remained, each man taking his piece away down to the river to wash it. The most extraordinary thing was that the girl never uttered a sound, nor struggled, until she fell.
"Until the last moment, I could not believe that they were in earnest. I could not bring myself to believe that it was anything save a ruse to get money out of me, until the last moment.”
He made several sketches of the scene after returning to his tent, but some witnesses claimed he began the drawings while the horrific act was still happening. Two years later, interpreter Assad Farran gave an affidavit describing the incident: “The man who had brought the girl said to the cannibals: ‘This is a present from a white man who desires to see her eaten.'
“Jameson in the meantime made rough sketches of the horrible scenes. Then we all returned to the chief’s house. Jameson afterward went to his tent, where he finished his sketches in water colours.”
He reportedly enjoyed showing off his sketches to companions, which only fuelled the belief that he knew exactly what was happening to the young girl.
However, he never had the chance to fully defend himself when, three months later, he died of a high fever at the age of just 32. The controversial whiskey heir was buried in an island in the Congo River.
