THE JAMAICA CANNIBALS.

Thames Guardian and Mining Record, Volume I, Issue 9, 17 October 1871, Page 3

THE JAMAICA CANNIBALS.

The African “cannibals” of Kingston, Jamaica, who recently killed a boy, roasted and ate his lips, and drank his blood, and lias just been condemned to death for it, is probably no cannibal at all, strictly speaking, but a believer in obcah. In the old slave times this was so current a persuasion among the negroes that some severe laws were enacted by 7 the Colonial Assembly for its repression, and though the code and perhaps much of the belief lias passed away, tlie present case evinces that tlie superstition still lias its believers. From.the facts it appears that the “ cannibal”was an infirm or crippled negro, aud probably from some vague idea of the transmission of blood, resolved to drain the veins of a child, in order to transfer their youthful life into bis own. Others seem to have coincided with him in this opinion, for the evidence is that at his application a younger and more active negro caught tlie child and banded him over to the devotee of obcah, who at ouce gashed bis body and began to suck the blood from the wounds. Ordinarily, obeah , which lias its analogous witchcraft in the United States in the vandalism of Louisiana and Mississippi, seldom required human sacrifice to complete the charm, but in the incantations kettles of boiled toads anil snakes play a prominent part, aud as sacicd souvenirs messes of hair, feathcis, fingernails, glass, scribbled parchment, with, may be, a small human bone, aic voin as amulets.