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Sawney Bean was the leader of a clan of cannibals who lived in a cave in Scotland in the 16th century. The story was recorded in The Newgate Calendar, but its veracity is doubted due to lack of evidence. The family was discovered and executed after 25 years of killing and cannibalizing travelers. Despite the lack of evidence, the story continues to be exploited in horror entertainment and tourism.
Warning: The following article is very creepy and not for the faint of heart!
Sawney Bean (or Beane) was the head of a legendary clan of blood-kin cannibals who lived in a cave in Galloway, Scotland in the 16th century. Sawney Bean’s story was famously recorded in a mid-18th century publication on criminal cases called The Newgate Calendar. The extravagance of many parts of the story and the lack of corroborating accounts or evidence lead historians to doubt his veracity, or at least to suspect that Newgate’s version of the calendar was significantly exaggerated. Nonetheless, the tale captured the morbid imagination of the public and remained a favorite horror story for centuries. Sawney Bean and his family have inspired modern horror film classics like The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (16) and The Hills Have Eyes (18).
The Newgate calendar relates that Alexander “Sawney” Bean was the son of factory workers. As a young man, he tired of the family job and ran off with a woman. The two settled in a cave and began a life of lawlessness. They had children and grandchildren, through incest, until the family numbered 48, and they made a living by robbing, killing, and cannibalizing travelers who passed by.
The Bean family would remain at large for 25 years, during which time local communities tried and executed many innocent people in their search for the culprit behind all the disappearances. Anyone who met Sawney Bean and his family never lived to tell the tale. Their settlement attracted no attention, as it was located inside a cave that was partially obscured at high tide.
Ultimately, one man survived an encounter with the Sawney Bean clan, while his wife did not. He met a large group of men from the fair that he had just left and told them about his experience. As a result, King James VI of Scotland sent a hunting party, and the Sawney Bean family was finally discovered and brought to justice, after the killings estimated to run into the thousands. Their lair, when discovered, contained ample evidence of their theft and cannibalism. Each family member was executed without trial.
The story of Sawney Bean has many problematic aspects for historians. First of all, there are no primary records of the event. Various versions, appearing mostly in 18th-century low-cost printed pamphlets, vary widely in detail. Nutritionists argued that 18 cannibals could not have survived 48 years without killing significantly more people than the alleged deaths of the Sawney Bean family. Since “Sawney” was a generic name for Scots at the time this story first appeared in print, some have speculated that the Sawney Bean story was fabricated in its entirety as anti-Scottish propaganda.
Despite the lack of evidence that any part of the Sawney Bean legend is true, purveyors of horror entertainment and the tourism industry in Scotland and England continue to exploit it. An exhibit of Sawney Bean can be seen in the London Dungeon Wax Museum, as well as the Edinburgh Dungeon in Scotland. Bennane Cave in Ayrshire, formerly Galloway, is said to be the cave where Sawney Bean and his family made their home.
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