Diary of a Meat-Girl – Sidney Roebuck in Her Own Words
By
Edward Hyde


EDITOR’S FOREWORD


Sidney Dorothy Roebuck, born August 15th 2010, died August 15th 2022, on her twelfth birthday, was my Great Aunt, the youngest sibling and only sister of my father, Alexei Roebuck. As the first person to be legally killed for the express purpose of being eaten in recorded history, she is one of the most iconic figures to have come out of the twenty-first century and arguably more has been written about her than other other historical figure since Jack the Ripper. Like the infamous Ripper, however, a great deal of what is written about her is speculation, the discussion of her feelings and motives based on carefully managed television and magazine interviews and, while it has become widely known and understood that the Sidney we all recognise today as the mascot of the international restaurant chain was simply a character she portrayed, the creation of an expert marketing team, this is still the only Sidney most people know.

In 2084, the world was rocked by the claim that Sidney had changed her mind at the last minute and allowed another, unwilling girl to be killed in her place. Although this claim was proven to be a lie and the woman claiming to be Sidney was, in fact, the girl she claimed had been used as a substitute, the scandal reawakened public interest in Sidney as a person and her relationship with Jessica Thornton after whom the fast-food chain Jessie T’s, a subsidiary of Sidney’s Inc. (Formerly Roebuck Inc. Worldwide) is named. With very few living witnesses who had known either girl, this too became a topic of speculation, the only first-hand source being a letter written by Sidney to Jessica in which she laments their estranged friendship and expresses hopes that Jessica will accept the invitation to attend her slaughter and that they might be reconciled. Since the true identity of the woman who claimed to be Sidney was only discovered after her death from natural causes, the real Jessica was unable to shed any more light on their friendship, the full cause of its ending or the effect it had on Sidney.

While some of Sidney’s personal property was put on display in Roebuck International Hotels or in branches of Sidney’s Family Restaurant when they began to open, or donated to museums such as the Smithsonian and the Bullock Texas State History Museum, these tended to be pieces that related to her campaign and were deemed to have historical significance. The rest of her property was packed away by the family’s staff and put into storage where it remained until three two years ago when a leak was discovered in the roof of the building where the boxes were stored and they were moved to a safe location while the repairs were carried out. The family, including myself, took this opportunity to sort through the decades old artefacts to see what should be kept, what needed to be disposed of and what might be considered of interest to scholars and historians such as myself.

In amongst the clothes, toys, books and games, both electronic and traditional, we found a number of scrap-books in which Sidney had collected press-cuttings about her campaign as well as copies of flyers and magazine ads. These, of course, were of great interest and have been used as a resource in providing some context for this book but they paled in comparison to our most shocking and significant find – a small, pink laptop, decorated with stickers and long-obsolete by the time of Sidney’s death. Wondering why she might have kept this when she always had the latest technology available to her for the asking and could upgrade her personal computer every time a new model was launched if she wanted to, we had a forensic team recover the contents of the hard drive and there we were shocked to find a personal, confessional journal that Sidney had keep right up until her final night of life, presumably continuing to use the old laptop she had been given as a child to keep it private, while using newer ones for gaming, playing with photographs and of course her school and campaign work.

It is this diary that is presented to you here, released to celebrate one hundred years since Sidney’s victory. Since some entries were inevitably longer than others and some covered incidents involving school friends and others not connected to the central narrative of interest, this edition, designed to help the reader understand the girl behind the mascot, will not include a full transcript although this will be made available for academic research upon request. Every effort has been made to contact those named in the published entries or, since many of them are also deceased, their closest living relatives. Where we have not been able to do so, rather than redact the text, we have simply changed the name, having no impact on the narrative itself.

To assist in your understanding of the entries, I have at times provided some additional context but these editorial additions are all clearly identified as not belonging to the original text. I hope that, through reading this deeply private journal, you will come to know and love the real Sidney Roebuck just as I did when I read these remarkable words for the first time of the girl who truly changed the world.


Dr. Dorothy Anne Boswell-Roebuck

Professor of Modern History
Texas A&M, Fort Worth

August 2122


(To be continued...)