Alexander Pearce. Alexander Pearce (1790 – 19 July 1824) was an Irish convict who was transported to Van Diemen's Land for seven years for theft.
He escaped from prison several times, but was eventually captured and was hanged and dissected in Hobart for murder.[1] Pearce was born in County Monaghan, Ireland.[2] A Roman Catholic farm labourer, he was sentenced at Armagh in 1819 to penal transportation to Van Diemen's Land for "the theft of six pairs of shoes".[3] He committed various offences in Van Diemen's Land, and on 18 May 1822 was advertised in the Hobart Town Gazette as an absconder, with a £10 reward for his capture. When caught, he was charged with absconding and forging an order, a serious crime. For this he received a second sentence of transportation, this time to the new secondary penal establishment at Sarah Island in Macquarie Harbour.
Treasures : Item : Alexander Pearce: convict and cannibal. Just four years after he was transported to Van Diemen’s Land for stealing six pairs of shoes, Irishman Alexander Pearce (d.1824) was hanged for murder.
The story of Pearce is contained in a narrative by Reverend Robert Knopwood (1763–1838), who interrogated the convict in 1824. In 1822, Pearce and seven other convicts escaped from the penal colony of Macquarie Harbour and headed east across the mountains toward Hobart. Three men dropped out. After 15 days without food, the remaining members of the party began to kill, and eat, each other.