Twice ToldPatterson, The Man-Eating Lions of Tsavo, Field Museum leaflet, 1925: the opening
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- English
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- OCR, checked against the page image
- Retrieved
- 24 September 2026
The Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago printed this 40-page leaflet in 1925, when it put the two Tsavo lions on show. The footnote says Patterson prepared it himself, and the text ends with his name, dated at Iver, in Buckinghamshire, in September 1925. Its first sentence is the earliest place we have found the figure of 135 dead.
The Man-Eating Lions of Tsavo*
When the visitor to the Field Museum pauses before the life-like forms of the Tsavo man-eaters, it will be hard for him to realize that these two ferocious brutes killed and devoured, under the most appalling circumstances, one hundred and thirty-five Indian and African artisans and laborers employed in the construction of the Uganda Railway. For over nine months these insatiable monsters carried on an intermittent warfare against the Railway and all those connected with it in the neighborhood of Tsavo. This culminated in a regular “reign of terror” when they finally succeeded in bringing the railway works for a time to a complete standstill.
A late great President of the United States, that man with the wonderful personality - Theodore Roosevelt - has put it on record that “the story of the Man-Eaters of Tsavo is by far the most remarkable account of which we have any record;” while that veteran big game hunter and African pioneer, Selous, who was himself killed in Africa, not far from Tsavo, wrote as follows:
“No lion story that I ever heard or read equals in its long sustained dramatic interest the story of the man-eaters of Tsavo. It is an epic of terrible tragedies spread out over several months and only at last brought to an end by the resource and determination of one man.”
These remarkable lions had the distinction, probably unique among wild animals, of being specifically referred to in the British Parliament by the Prime Minister of the day, the Marquis of Salisbury, who in apologizing for the delay in the construction of the Uganda Railway said:
“The whole of the works were put to a stop because a pair of man-eating lions appeared in the locality and conceived a most unfortunate taste for our workmen. At last the labourers entirely declined to carry on unless they were guarded by iron entrenchments. Of course it is difficult to work a railway under these conditions and until we found an enthusiastic sportsman to get rid of these lions our enterprise was seriously hindered.”
*This leaflet, prepared by Col. J. H. Patterson, recounts the main events of his remarkable experiences with man-eating lions previously told at greater length in his well-known book “The Man-Eaters of Tsavo.” In 1924, Col. Patterson delivered a public lecture in the Field Museum. At that time he remarked to President Stanley Field, of the Museum, that he still possessed the skins of the famous killers of men. As a result, they were purchased by Mr. Field and presented to the Museum. With considerable difficulty, owing to the age of the skins, they were mounted and are now permanently preserved in the spirited group shown in the accompanying illustration.
Notes
- Transcription conventions: spelling and punctuation as printed, except the printed dashes. The dashes around “Theodore Roosevelt” are shown as spaced hyphens, and the colon-and-dash after “as follows” and “said” as a plain colon. Line-end hyphenation is joined.
- Every number in the passage can be set against Patterson’s own book of 1907, which gives “twenty-eight Indian coolies, in addition to scores of unfortunate African natives of whom no official record was kept” (p. 107). The leaflet does not explain where 135 comes from.
- The two quotations are not the ones printed in 1907. There, Roosevelt’s letter to Selous reads “I think that the incident of the Uganda man-eating lions, described in those two articles you sent me, is the most remarkable account of which we have any record” (Foreword, p. xi). Salisbury’s words in 1907 have the works stopped “for three weeks” by “a party of man-eating lions” with “a most unfortunate taste for our porters”, and the labourers wanting “an iron entrenchment” (p. 104). Here the three weeks are gone, the party is a pair, and the porters are workmen.
- The Selous quotation is a close paraphrase of his 1907 foreword (“no lion story I have ever heard or read equals in its long-sustained and dramatic interest the story of the Tsavo man-eaters as told by Col. Patterson”, Foreword, p. x).
- The Field Museum’s annual report for 1924 dates Patterson’s lecture to 29 November 1924 (p. 278). The report for 1925 records the purchase and says the lions “killed and, in most cases, devoured more than 130 human beings” (p. 449).