Twice ToldThe Spectator, 3 March 1900: The Lions that Stopped the Railway (first paragraph)
- Language
- English
- Read from
- p. 307, left column
- Reading
- OCR, checked against the page image
- Retrieved
- 24 September 2026
An unsigned article in the London weekly The Spectator, two weeks after Patterson’s own account ran in The Field. It is the earliest text we have read that gives a number of dead, and it gets that number from Patterson. Patterson reprinted two later paragraphs of this article in his 1907 book (pp. 105-106), but not this one.
THE LIONS THAT STOPPED THE RAILWAY.
SPEAKING in the House of Lords of the progress of the Uganda Railway, Lord Salisbury mentioned that among the unexpected difficulties encountered were a pair of man-eating lions, which stopped the works for three weeks, before they were shot. As some five thousand men were at work on the line, their intimidation by two lions seems almost incredible. Yet it is a fact that so dreadful was the pressure exercised by the constant attacks of this pair of man-destroying wild beasts, and so cumulative the fear caused among the Indian labourers by the sight and sound of their comrades being dragged off and devoured, that hundreds of these industrious workmen, trained on similar duties under the service of the Government of India, abandoned their employment and pay, and crying out that they agreed to work for wages, not to be food for lions or devils, rushed to the line as the trains for the coast were approaching, and flinging themselves across the metals, gave the engine-drivers the choice, either of passing over their bodies, or of stopping to take them up and carry them back to Mombasa. Many of these men were not timid Hindoos, but sturdy Sikhs. Yet the circumstances were so unique, and the scenes witnessed from week to week so bloody and appalling, that their panic and desperation are no matter for surprise. Lord Salisbury understated the facts. Though the works were stopped for three weeks, the lions’ campaign lasted, with intervals of quiet when one or other had been wounded, from March till the end of December. In this time they killed and ate twenty-eight Indians, and it is believed at least twice this number of natives, Swahilis and the like; besides wounding and attacking others. They attacked white engineers, doctors, soldiers, and military officers, armed Abyssinian askaris, sepoys, bunniahs, coolies, and porters. Some they clawed, some they devoured, some they carried off and left sticking in thorn fences, because they could not drag them through.
Notes
- Transcription conventions: spelling as printed (“Hindoos”, “bunniahs”), line-end hyphenation joined, “works” in italics as printed. The paragraph continues past the last sentence given here.
- The article names its source at the end of the same paragraph: Patterson’s account “in the Field of February 17th and February 24th”. We have not read those two issues of The Field, so this summary is the closest we can get to Patterson’s first published count.
- “At least twice this number” of Africans on top of 28 Indians would make at least 84 dead (our sum). Seven years later, in his book, Patterson kept the 28 but gave the Africans only as “scores” with no record kept (p. 107). In 1925 he gave 135.
- The article’s opening claims Salisbury spoke of the lions in the House of Lords before 3 March 1900. We have not found that speech in Hansard. In the Lords debate of 21 June 1900 on the Uganda Railway Bill, Salisbury said the lions did not feed only on coolies and had recently taken a medical man (HL Deb 21 June 1900 vol 84 cc587-588).