However, we do know that, based on Jameson's own journals, he did witness the brutal murder and cannibalization of a young girl in what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo, in 1888, and played some part in its coming about. The passing of more than a century, and the deaths of everyone involved, has done nothing to offer any greater clarity. In reality, the truth of exactly what happened, and why, was obscured from the very outset by a flurry of competing narratives, claims and counter-claims, ad hominen attacks, and purported retractions. Most accounts highlight and emphasize the affidavit written by Farran, the interpreter, which was published in the London Times, and subsequently excerpted in The New York Times, in November 1890. Jameson, it was alleged, desired to not only witness the heinous acts but to sketch them. Syrian translator Assad Farran testified that the peripatetic explorer paid African natives a number of handkerchiefs to kill and cannibalize a small girl. Jameson, heir to the famed whiskey-distilling family's wealth, was accused of a crime that was singular and sinister even by the standards of colonialism. For example, in 2015, the website published an account that read as follows: The horrifying vignette has been told many times and republished in several online posts and in memes over the years, but it saw a resurgence in 2021 for reasons that are unclear. In 2021, social media users shared a disturbing old story about James Sligo Jameson, the grandson of John Jameson, the original creator of the world-famous Jameson Irish whiskey. Jameson insisted he did not set out with the intention of causing or witnessing any murder or act of cannibalism, and described what he ultimately witnessed as 'the most horribly sickening sight I am ever likely to see in my life.'

Jameson whiskey heir