I can’t find any mention of this on this site, and I have not been able to find anything substantive online anywhere else.
I’m hoping someone here can tell me if this dreadful assertion is true.
Where did you read this? A book? A website? A magazine?
Of course it’s not true.
I don’t have a factual answer, as it’s hard to refute an allegation. How do you prove it didn’t happen that way?
However, be wary of such a claim, because sailing ships were filled with barrels of all sorts of substances, and any tales of these being barrels filled of human fat should raise an eyebrow. Many people passed many a barrel, and considering the conditions and the unfamiliarity with the sailing trade, it would not be a stretch to imagine all sorts of stories about the contents of the barrels being circulated.
I read it in a discussion about racism on another forum. It was so shocking that I thought I’d better learn more about it before I disputed it. The person who posted it is someone I generally trust to be truthful and I think she posted it believing it to be true.
It doesn’t seem terribly efficient. Humans don’t have a lot of fat, as critters go. Particularly humans from hunter/gatherer or subsistence agriculture cultures.
And besides that “cosmetics” punchline just doesn’t make sense. How big do you think the cosmetics industry was back in the 17th century? And how much fat was needed for that tiny cosmetics industry? And what was wrong with whale oil, or lard?
This allegation is simply ludicrous. It is made up out of whole cloth, and is totally, utterly, most reliably, undeniably false.
And there was no shortage of fat from domestic animals. Fat is fat, after all - why did it have to be human? And why did the people agitating for abolition of the slave trade never even mention this? It’s obvious BS.
It’s a variation of a common urban legend. I can’t find a link on Snopes, but I remember that it was referenced in the movie Fight Club. But no, it’s not true. Ways you can tell:
- An extreme claim
- spoken of authoritatively, but in very general terms
- along the same lines, authoritative specifics that don’t make sense when examined. “He tells me that the number of live slaves we shipped can’t hold a candle to the number of dead Africans, if you do a thumbnail calculation of how many people it would take to fill a barrel.” What? I would think you’d have trouble stuffing even two people into a wine-cask, a pretty standard barrel size. Furthermore, it doesn’t say whether the number of dead is when the cargo is loaded or unloaded, and given the horrors of the Middle Passage there’s probably a pretty drastic difference. Note that while the writer implies that there are specific numbers, we don’t get any of them.
- variation (the same story is told of other populations: Jews under Hitler’s regime, upper-class women in the US)
- the language: if it were really one of the MOST significant trade items, you’d have heard of it long before now. The international cosmetics trade was probably tiny compared to, oh, actual slaves, not to mention tobacco, rum, cloth, etc.
That was my reaction, too. However, I wanted to look into it.
Ask the guy for a cite. If he can’t give you one, assume he made it up, misread it, or read some half-baked source that doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.
Thanks, guys. I thought it was BS, but I knew if it wasn’t, someone here would know.
“doesn’t hold a candle”- maybe they were used to make candles? 
We’ve got all kinds of evidence that the slave trade happened. We have posters and paperwork pertaining to the sale of slaves. Where’s the equivalent evidence for this? Where are the posters and newspaper advertisements for cosmetics made from Africans? If this really was bigger than the slave trade, you’d expect there to be such evidence.
but for some reason all those perfectly good hides went to waste?
Among the stories of human commodification I have heard as fact was of the bones collected after the Russo-Turkish battle of Plevna shipped to England for fertilizer, the mummies burned in Egypitan locomotives, human hair for wigs from China, and human teeth from cadavers or sold by the poor to make dentures.
The only thing I can imagine is that when there are a lot of dead human bodies lying around for the taking, like after a battle, it is likely that someone (someone either desperate or desentized) will scour the battlefield and look for whatever he/she can make a profit from. Clothes, weapons, jewelry. As for body parts, I have heard this happened incidentally in the 18 th century when healthy teeth (which were hard to come by otherwise) would be extracted by people making and selling dentures. No cite, sorry.
I can also imagine some morbid soul, like Ed Gein or some Nazi, making the occasional trophy out of a victim; hence the rumors about lampshades from human skin, etcetera.
However, the idea that a whole industry would be based on killing people for their fat is ludicrous, for the reasons mentioned above.
However, the idea that such a rumor would be started to get people angry, is rooted firmly in history. People have always spread rumors about the enemy along the lines of the enemy “raping and eating babies and nuns”. Killing people for vanity products fits right up that alley.
Allegedly China uses executed prisoners in beauty products.
This is from a respected newspaper that checks its sources, and corrects errors as soon as they are known.
I have discussed the matter before, and have been unable to either confirm or deny the allegation.
previous thread : Executed prisoners used in beauty products? - Factual Questions - Straight Dope Message Board
Just for the record, this comes from a Mark Twain travelogue, where he was exaggerating for humorous effect. Amazingly, it still gets repeated as fact occasionally.
(Cite? You wanna cite? Take it up with the Man: http://www.straightdope.com/columns/020222.html)
Mummy, both old and new, was used as a medicine in Europe in former times. Mackay cites this recipe due to Paracelsus: “If a person suffer from disease, either local or general, let the following remedy be tried. Take a magnet, impregnated with mummy, and mixed with rich earth. In this earth sow some seeds that have a congruity or homogeneity with the disease; then let this earth, well sifted and mixed with mummy, be laid in an earthen vessel; and let the seeds committed to it be watered daily with a lotion in which the diseased limb or body has been washed. Thus will the disease be transplanted from the human body to the seeds which are in the earth. Having done this, transplant the seeds from the earthen vessel to the ground, and wait till they begin to sprout into herbs; as they increase, the disease will diminish; and when they have arrived at their full growth, it will disappear altogether.” Mackay further cites this weapon-salve from Paracelsus: “Take of moss growing on the head of a thief who has been hanged and left in the air; of real mummy; of human blood, still warm—of each, one ounce; of human suet, two ounces; of linseed oil, turpentine, and Armenian bole—of each, two drachms. Mix all well in a mortar, and keep the salve in an oblong, narrow urn.” With this salve the weapon was to be anointed after having been dipped in blood from the wound and then laid by in a cool place. Afterwards, the wound was to be kept clean with clean water, covered with a clean, soft linen rag, and opened daily to remove purulent matter.
Like most of these urban legends, looking at them from an economic viewpoint makes their absurdity clear.
For this one, just compare humans to pigs:
- pigs produce much more fat than humans.
- pigs also produce meat for sale.
- pigs are cheaper to keep than humans.
Also, fat can be produced quite easily locally; there is no need to go to the expense of shipping barrels of it across the ocean.
I thought of another one: U-boat sailors wore Jew-hair felt boots so they could avoid sonar.
[snark] Then of course there’s stem cells. Start using stem cells and before you know it your sailors are dancing on Jew-hair [/snark]