Nine male prisoners in the Congo standing against a wall joined by chains around their necks. Process print after W.E. Geil.

  • Geil, William Edgar.
Date:
1905
Reference:
37731i
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Description

"I visited the prison. Everything had just been made clean for my benefit by the use of lime and native brooms. The sleeping-rooms contained beds pre¬ cisely of the kind used by the better class of natives of the Lower Aruwimi. Some dozen rascals were in chains. I was told that they were cannibals, and that most of them were taken in the act. Some were certainly of a vicious aspect, but one would not suspect the others of having an appetite for human flesh. In other lands I have seen native criminals in chains, and the iron had made sores and horrible gashes in their flesh, but on the bodies of these men there were no sores and no blood. I wonder if others and more real prisoners were elsewhere that day."—Geil op. cit. p. 339

Publication/Creation

[London] : [Hodder and Stoughton], 1905.

Physical description

1 print : process print ; image 9.5 x 15.3 cm

Lettering

Inside Congo Free State Prison, Basoko. The chained prisoners said to be cannibals captured in the act of eating human flesh.

Creator/production credits

After a photograph by Geil on his "Pocket Kodak" camera that is often referred to in his memoir

Reference

Wellcome Collection 37731i

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