The Kentish Baboon February 20, 2017
Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern , trackback
Here is an unusual story from Great Chart, Kent, UK. It is 1858.
On Saturday evening week a person in the employ of Mr. E. Greenhill, at Bucksford-farm, Great Chart, was startled by the sudden apparition of what appeared to him to be an extraordinary kind of animal, resembling a large baboon, in one of his employer’s wheat fields, but whose name and nature were utterly incomprehensible to him. Not knowing, indeed, whether it might not be certain unmentionable personage in bodily shape [i.e. Satan], its appearance had the effect utterly scattering his senses, in when he collected enough of them to make up his mind to a speedy retreat, fear had so unnerved his limbs that he was at first unable to get over a stile which led out of the field. He, however, at last did so, and we may suppose reached his home with his hair standing on end, and related the tale of the awful ‘summat’ he had seen; but the shock was so great it has made him ill.
Worth noting that a monkey would have been well known from travelling circuses and the images in books in 1858: a baboon much less so. If the animal really was a baboon the confusion with Satan makes some kind of sense. Look at the photograph above and imagine the noise that this creature could have indulged in.
On the affair becoming known, it is reported, several of the stout men of Great Chart, well armed, made a search in the fields, but did not succeed in catching the animal, whatever it might be; while one party, probably inclining to the supposition of ‘the thing’ being his satanic majesty harboured thereabouts, took a horse and cart and went to Ashford in order to bring back aid from the police in taking him into custody.
Good luck with taking the Devil into custody, but anyway…
Since then it is reported that the animal (which is set down as a baboon escaped from some show) has been seen in several adjacent parishes; but we have not heard of its capture, or of any damage done by it, except indirectly, through persons trampling down the wheat in Mr Greenhill’s field while in search of it. Kentish Gazette (13 Jul 1858), 6
The creature then emerged about a month later.
This mysterious creature is laid to have turned up here again, a little girl having seen it on Tuesday near Newgate wood, and although greatly frightened, retained sufficient self-possession to be enabled afterwards to describe it. Since then more than one burly individual in the parish has acknowledged to having been startled from his propriety by a glimpse of it, one who was going to count some sheep having left his job made the best of his way homewards. The children of the National School had a holiday, and with a number of the inhabitants joined in general hunt of the woods but when wanted the creature is not to be seen, and no traces of it could be discovered, although it was considered that the thick undergrowth prevented such careful search as was desirable. Kentish Gazette, 3 Aug 1858, 4
Then nothing: though Beach loves the idea of kids being drafted from school to hunt a baboon in Kent – that wouldn’t happen today. There are many of these escaped primate stories from the UK under Victoria. Were they the ABCs of the 1800s: certainly relatively few seem to have been caught… Any thoughts or other early primate escape cases: drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com
23 Feb 2017: Chris from Haunted Ohio Books with a more impressive primate story (with devil) from Cornwall.
