Episode Details

While researching our recent episode on Alferd Packer, the Colorado Cannibal, Shea stumbled across something unexpected while digging through nineteenth-century newspapers: romantic poetry… about cannibals.

Yes, really.

In this Five—okay, probably Fifteen—Minute Friday, Shea reads a bizarre little poem from the San Antonio Daily Light (April 1, 1889) titled “Love and Theology.” It’s a Victorian-era love story involving a missionary, a cannibal maid, and a romantic misunderstanding that ends… poorly.

Along the way we talk about why nineteenth-century readers were so fascinated with cannibal stories, how these tales showed up everywhere from travel writing to adventure novels, and why the “cannibal” became such a popular stereotype in Western culture.

It’s weird.

It’s funny.

And it’s a fascinating little snapshot of the cultural imagination of the 1800s.

Next week we’ll share another cannibal poem from the archives—this one even stranger, and with a few more uncomfortable historical layers.

Victorian journalism was a wild place.