Originally published in Terrific Register (Sherwood, Jones, and Co.; 1825).
The ancient Anthropophagi were a people of Scythia (now the country of Crim Tartars) whom Pliny records as eating human flesh. The kind of men, called Bohemians, or Gypsies, who have spread all over the kingdom of Hungary, were such an instance of degeneracy in the history of human nature, that government for a long time would never permit them to associate together. Some were dispersed in different villages, and some, (which was the smallest number) in subterraneous places in the country. In general, they seemed to live in a state of tranquillity, till the autumn of 1782, when one of them having been brought before a magistrate for some offence, his answers to the different questions that were put to him, led to the discovery of the most atrocious crimes.
After the various pursuits that were made in consequence, it appeared that for twelve years past, the Bohemians dispersed in the provinces of Hungary, bordering on Austria, had subsisted on human flesh, with such secrecy, that not a single intimation of it had ever transpired. The foreign pedlars and the inhabitants of the distant provinces, that had occasion to travel through villages, not in vicinity of the roads, were the victims of their barbarity. These they trepanned into the woods or into their dens, where they were massacred, while the monster played, during the horrid scene, on the musical instruments that were in use amongst them. They then parted the limbs of these unhappy people, and with them fed themselves, their wives, and children.
The number of those that have thus perished, is unknown; although it is certainly very considerable. The pursuits set on foot, on the first discovery of these cruelties, have been extended to such a degree, that in a little time the prisons were hardly able to contain all that were apprehended. The public voice was for extirpating these monsters, by all manner of punishments; but the emperor having been informed of it, has stopped the other executions that had been ordered by the judges, and has sentenced the remainder of these condemned Bohemians to be driven into
the Turkish territories.
This decision is the natural result of the system of his Imperial Majesty, a part of which is to abolish the punishment of death in his dominions. The verbal processes which have transmitted by the judges to the Chancery of Hungary, in order to be transmitted to the emperor, leave not the least room to doubt the truth of transactions so horrible, as well as so humiliating and degrading to human nature; and which must convince every one how dangerous it would be to abandon men to the mere principles they may be capable of forming for themselves, abstracted from every system of religion and policy.