Random Legendary Scottish Family That Allegedly Killed And Cannibalized 1,000 Innocent People (14 items)

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  (#1) Sawney Bean Left A Life Of Work For A Life Of Crime

  As the story goes, Alexander "Sawney" Bean was born to an honest ditch-digging and hedging family. Tired of manual labor and looking for an easy way out, Sawney left his family business along with a woman named, according to some stories, "Black" Agnes Douglas. Together, they moved into a cave somewhere on the southwestern coast of Scotland between Girvan and Ballantrae, where they lived for the rest of their lives.

  Isolated from society and refusing to work, Sawney and Douglas allegedly survived by ambushing travelers for 25 years. 
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  (#2) Black Agnes Was Believed To Be A Witch

  Bean reportedly left his life as a laborer behind around the time he entered a relationship with Agnes Douglas. While much of her life before their relationship was a mystery, one of the key points of the legend is that after they got together, Douglas was accused of being a witch in East Lothian, Scotland. When Bean and Douglas left their home, it was as much because they no longer wanted to work for a living as it was because both had been rejected by society, as Bean's father was allegedly abusive and Douglas was accused of human sacrifice and conjuring demons.
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  (#3) Sawney Bean And His Clan Robbed Travelers On The Nearby Road

  Though Bean retreated from a life of honest work, living wasn't free. To make ends meet, he and his girlfriend (for lack of a better word) ambushed passersby on a nearby road. To maintain the secret of their whereabouts, Bean and Douglas had to get rid of the bodies, which they could do by tossing them from nearby cliffs or, as Bean discovered, turning them into a food source. Cannibalism became an intrinsic part of the Bean clan lifestyle, a gruesome but effective means of both sustenance and hiding themselves from authorities. 
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  (#4) Sawney Bean's Cave Provided Plenty Of Room For A Growing Family

  The cave where Sawney Bean's clan allegedly lived wasn't just a hole in a cliff face. It was a network of tunnels that supposedly extended for miles, giving him and Douglas plenty of room to live and expand their family. Even better for their purposes was the fact that the cave flooded during high tide, making it an unlikely place for people to live, and thus a place those searching for the reported thousand or so victims wouldn't bother to check. Because of its size and hidden nature, the Bean clan was able to grow to almost 50 people strong—all of them, aside from Bean and Douglas, related to one another.
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  (#5) The Bean Clan Was Almost 50 Inbred Family Members Strong

  Inside their cave, Bean and Douglas had time and space to start having children. And have children they did: according to legend, they had eight sons and six daughters. Uninhibited by social mores—they were murderers, thieves, and cannibals, after all—those sons and daughters had 18 grandsons and 14 granddaughters with one another as well as with their own parents.

  Consanguineous fornication and procreation is a central thread in the tapestry of horror woven by the story of Sawney Bean's clan. It not only consisted of criminals of the worst kind, but interbred children likely born to very young parents who lived only among their own in a cave for 25 years.
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  (#6) The Bean Clan Pickled Human Meat To Preserve It

  If the legends are factual, the Sawney Bean clan would have killed an average of 40 people per year. That's a lot of meat, even for 45 people. It's said they preserved what they couldn't eat by pickling and salting leftovers. Not everything stayed in their food stores, however. Preserved body parts were said to wash up on nearby shores, giving local towns some idea of the fates of their missing loved ones.
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  (#7) Innkeepers Often Took The Blame For Missing Bean Clan Victims

  Sawney Bean's murders didn't go unnoticed, even if nobody knew the culprit. In fact, innkeepers were often accused of murdering the missing people, since they were the last known to have seen them alive. As the rumors went, innkeepers robbed and murdered guests, likely while they were sound asleep. Because these rumors threatened business, many innkeepers were forced to quit their professions and move away, which was a significant undertaking at the time.
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  (#8) Sawney Bean Was Caught After Botching The Murder of A Married Couple

  Though their macabre crimes went on for 25 long years, the Sawney Bean clan's reign of terror eventually came to an end. According to legend, the clan attacked a married couple returning from a fair and killed the woman, but the man fought back. In some versions of the story, he had a sword and/or pistol on him; in others, he had a horse that he used to plow through the attackers. Whatever the weapons, the man escaped, notifying others of the clan's location near the cave. After 25 years, the Sawney Bean clan was exposed, and investigations began.
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  (#9) A King Led The Manhunt Against Bean

  With an estimated 1,000 people killed by the Sawney Bean clan, bringing those responsible to justice was a major deal. That's why King James (King James I in some sources, VI in others) allegedly got involved. As the story goes, the king himself himself led 400 soldiers to the site of the botched murder, using bloodhounds to find the cave where the clan was hiding. Even the 48-person Bean family wasn't enough to take out 400 soldiers, and the clan were subsequently arrested.
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  (#10) The Clan Was Brutally Executed

  Considering the sadistic nature of the Sawney Bean clan's crimes, it's no surprise their execution was exceptionally violent. Given the amount of bodies found in their cave, there was no trial, and the entire clan was put to death the day after they arrived in Edinburgh. The men were dismembered and left to bleed to death while the women watched, and the women were burned as witches.
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  (#11) The Bean Clan Showed No Sign Of Remorse

  The Bean clan didn't show much remorse for their crimes. After all, the children and grandchildren of the family were all raised in an environment where incest, murder, and cannibalism were part of everyday life. At their execution, while watching their family members be tortured and killed, the Bean clan cursed and spat obscenities at the executioners. It's said Sawney Bean continuously repeated, "It isn't over, it will never be over," until he died.
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  (#12) One Of Bean's Daughters Escaped And Was Hanged By A Town

  A legend within this legend is the story of Elspeth, a Sawney Bean clan member who supposedly left the group and tried to live a normal life. She moved to a nearby town called Girvan and planted a tree near her new home, which came to be called The Hairy Tree. When the Bean clan was arrested, her past came to light. Elspeth Bean was hung from The Hairy Tree despite her desire to escape her terrible past.
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  (#13) The Story Of Sawney Bean May Come From An Earlier Piece Of Folklore

  Though the story of Sawney Bean may skew more toward fiction than fact, there are other, better documented stories of cannibals in Scottish history and folklore that may have inspired or contributed to the Bean legend. Christie Cleek was said to be a 14th century butcher from Perth who joined up with a band of raiders. He put his skills to use when a member of the party died, cutting him up and making him suitable for a meal. The group supposedly ambushed and murdered people on the roads, and historical records indicate that a husband and wife were indeed executed in Perth for cannibalism, lending credence to this version of the story.

  Like the story of Sawney Bean, that of Christie Cleek is assumed to be embellished or a combination of historical and folkloric figures rolled into one man. 
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  (#14) The Story May All Be Anti-Jacobite Propaganda

  Though it's a riveting story, many historians believe that Sawney Bean may be nothing more than propaganda. His name comes from a stereotypical name used by English press (the equivalent of calling an Irish man 'Paddy') a strong indicator the story was meant to demonize the Scots, especially in light of the Jacobite risings. Portraying the Scots as brutal, incestuous cannibals strengthened contemporary anti-Scottish sentiment, and the first written stories of Sawney Bean are from 1775—just 30 years after the rising, but hundreds of years after the cannibal was allegedly active. A story based on the evilness of the Scots likely sold well to an English audience predisposed to believing they were barbaric. 

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