The Final Confessions Of A 19th-Century Cannibal On Death Row | Alexander Pearce | Absolute History

Eight men escape from the most isolated prison on earth. Only one man survives and the story he recounts shocks the British establishment to the core. This is the story of how one man endured the unimaginable by doing the unthinkable. The film follows the final days of Irish convict and bushranger Alexander Pearce as he awaits execution. In 1824, the British penal colony of Van Diemen’s Land is little more than a living hell. Chained to a wall in the darkness of a cell under Hobart Gaol, Pearce is visited by Father Philip Conolly, the parish priest of the fledgling colony and a fellow Irishman. Pearce wishes to tell the priest his recollection of the horrors he endured in the three months spent traversing the brutal wilderness of Van Diemen’s Land. Conolly struggles to reconcile his desire to grant absolution to the convict with the story Pearce tells him. 📺 It’s like Netflix for history... Sign up to History Hit, the world’s best history documentary service and get 50% off usi