Banstead Village

UPDATE June 2022: Rescuer identified! For full story see the link at the bottom of this comment . . .

Sent in to the webmaster:

I know about the act of bravery by a local lad. This was in about 1969.

The young man was sitting on a stile and noticed a lioness had escaped from her cage. The animal started stalking a young child playing on the grass, some way from a crowd of onlookers.

The young man engaged the stare of the lioness and distracted her long enough to enable him to grab the child which he handed to bystanders. Circus staff quickly netted the loose animal.

The young man described how all the background noise abated as he focused on the task in hand. He wanted no publicity, so as far as we know, the event was never recorded. It was however witnessed by a girl who told the young lad's sister and that is how his mother got to know about it.

Some fifty years on, that young lad is a great grandfather and he would like his grand children and great grand daughter to know about it.

This story was reported by a friend of the brave lad, and for the time being the rescuer of the young child must remain anonymous.
If you have heard of this incident or know more about it, do please tell us.

For the story in glorious detail, as written by the young man involved please visit our main website
here.


This may remind some of you of the newspaper articles from 1880 when it was reported that a lion had escaped from an overturned circus van and had killed a woman somewhere in the vicinity of Banstead. This was a fake story as the Sanger circus was not due in Surrey for another week and in any case, it had no lions!

Please add your comments about this picture using the form below.

Comments


Your Name


Your email address - this will be shown on the page and will allow the system to notify you of further comments added to this picture.