Sin-eaters were people in the community who consumed the sins of the recently dead.

The tale of the lost traveller

One evening, in the early years of the nineteenth century, a traveller found himself lost among the bogs and marshes of Cors Fochno, a large peat mire not far from the village of Borth, in the county of Cardiganshire, Wales.

After some time in the ‘will-o-wisp of the black bog’, the traveller came upon a pleasant cottage and made his way towards it. On coming closer to the house, he heard the sounds of wailing from within. Soon, a woman came out into the ‘dead night’ and cried a name ‘to the top pitch of her wild voice.’

Peering into the cottage, the traveller saw ‘a corpse of man’ and on his chest a plate of salt, and upon that a piece of bread. The woman was calling to another man, the traveller realised, bidding him to ‘eat the bread’ that lay upon the corpse’s chest.

This account is taken from Joseph Downes’ The Mountain Decameron (1836), a collection of folklore, fiction and verse, and is among the earliest references to the custom known as sin-eating. The man who ate the bread was known as a sin-eater.

After eating the bread, the ‘pains or penances’ (the sins) from the dead man, would be absorbed into the living one. With the bread and sins consumed, the deceased’s soul could pass peacefully into heaven.

A sin eating ceremony, date unknown, Oriel Washington Gallery.

Bread, beer and bodies

Sin-eaters were not uncommon in parts of England, Scotland and Wales during the 18th and 19th centuries, though it was most prevalent in north Wales and the Marches, the land around the England-Wales border.

People hired sin-eaters in the belief that the placing of bread (and sometimes beer) upon the body of the deceased could soak up the sins, and once eaten, be absorbed by the diner. Consuming somebody else’s sins wasn’t the most attractive proposition, so sin-eaters were generally poor men in the community who were willing to risk their own salvation in return for a meagre payment or free meal.

As Bertram S. Puckle wrote in Funeral Customs: Their Origin and Development (1926): ‘it was the province of the human scapegoat to take upon himself the moral trespasses of his client - and whatever the consequences might be in the after life - in return for a miserable fee and a scanty meal.’

Unknown origins

While the origins of sin-eating are not known, according to a 1913 letter in The Irish Times, the custom is supposedly an interpretation of the use of the scapegoat mentioned in Leviticus.

The practice never appears to have been sanctioned by the Church. Instead, it’s likely it was an alternative custom which developed as a way to help cleanse the sins of the recently departed. And with the Church discouraging sin-eating, the practice began to die out towards the end of the nineteenth century.

Nevertheless, sin-eating lasted in some parts of Britain into the early years of the twentieth century. According to the BBC, the last known sin-eater, called Richard Munslow, was buried in 1906 in Ratlinghope, a village in Shropshire, England. In 2010, locals raised £1,000 to restore his grave to ‘highlight the custom and Mr Munslow’s place in religious history.’

So the next time you worry about how you act in this life affecting your next one, remember that you can just get some guy to eat bread off your corpse and all will be well.