Big Cats in London

We've mentioned big cat sightings in South London here before, including the so-called Beast of Bexley and the Nunhead panther. Theories abound about these - are they just misidentified pussies or dogs, escaped exotic pets or paranormal phenomena?

The next South East London Folklore Society event is a talk on Big Cats Around The Capital by
Neil Arnold. Neil is the author of Monster! the A to Z of Zooform Phenomena as well as maintaining Beasts of London, 'a chronicle pertaining to strange creatures and out of place animals in the capital'. The latter was recently selected by Time Out as one of London's top 50 websites.

In other words you must get to The Old King's Head, Kings Head Yard, 45-49, Borough High Street on Thursday April 10 2008 at 8:00pm (see Facebook event).

The Palace Puma?

Time for another South London 'Big Cat' story:

'A puma or panther is on the prowl in Crystal Palace according to a journalist who spotted a big cat there on Saturday. The beast - dubbed the Palace Puma - was sighted in some woodland by journalist Helen Barrett, 41, who was out for a walk with her family.

They were so terrified that they fled from the “wild animal” - described as black and 5ft in length - after it approached them on a pathway between Church Road and Auckland Hill at 3.45pm. Mrs Barrett said: “It was quite alarming. At first we couldn’t believe what we were seeing. It was black, the size of a labrador, but walking like a cat. It had to be feline.”

... Mrs Barrett reported the sighting to police who searched the path and woodland parallel to Fox Hill, but said they could find no trace of a big cat.

(full story at This is London, 10 August 2009; previous posts on South London 'Big Cats')

The Beast of Bexley Returns

Perhaps she or he was hibernating.

The Beast of Bexley may have been spotted again reportedly scaring a paddock full of horses. Over several years there have been scores of sightings around the borough of a panther-like creature. Neil Arnold, founder of the Kent Big Cat Research Group, said a black creature was seen around two weeks ago in Cold Blow Crescent. He thinks the animal could have been a black leopard.

An eyewitness saw all the horses in a field behind his house appearing spooked and bunching together. He then claims a big, black cat with an overly long tail appeared in the field, stopped, then turned around and walked back towards trees and bushes. Mr Arnold, who has been monitoring big cats for 15 years, receives around 280 reports of sightings every year from across the county.

Wild Cat in Borough High Street?

Within a few weeks of big cat researcher Neil Arnold speaking at South East London Folklore Society on Borough High Street, there have been reports of a puma sighting... on Borough High Street (perhaps one followed him up from Kent and couldn't find its way back).

According to Southwark News (2 June 2008), "The 'tanned small cougar', described as almost twice the size of a domestic cat, was apparently spotted wandering near the entrance of Southwark Police station on Borough High Street". Arnold is quoted as saying that there was a similar report from a year ago near the Tower Hotel, and somebody commenting on the S.News story said that on 31st May 'on the sight of the recently demolished London Park Hotel' (by Elephant & Castle) he saw something that 'was too large for a domestic cat and didn't move like a fox or a dog'.

I went to Arnold' s talk at SELFS - his take on the whole phenomenon is that there have been big cats living wild in the British countryside for centuries, maybe as far back as Roman times, refreshed by escapes from zoos, circuses and private collections. Sceptics dismiss the whole thing as a mixture of hoaxes and misidentifications of pets, while others have a range of supernatural explanations.

Neil maintains the interesting Beasts of London blog. More Transpontine big cat posts.

History Corner: The Shooters Hill Cheetah (1963)

I had a pleasant walk in Oxleas Wood a couple of weeks ago, a lovely peaceful spot - but now comes news that during the Olympic militarisation of London there may be missile launchers based next to the cafe there and/or on Blackheath by the Territorial Army building (as discussed at Blackheath Bugle and elsewhere). But it wouldn't be the first time the military had turned out on Shooters Hill on a phantom hunt.

SE London has a whole folklore of supposed big cat sightings - the Beast of Bexley, the Palace Puma, even the Nunhead Panther - with theories to explain them of varying degress of probability. One of the biggest cat panics occurred in 1963 on Shooters Hill, where a supposed Cheetah was reported in the Oxleas Wood area.

"The most famous labour-intensive hunt was for an animal dubbed by the press 'The Shooters Hill Cheetah'. On the 18th July 1963 David Beck, driving through Shooters Hill in south-east London, saw a large animal lying by the side of the road. Assuming it to be an injured dog he approached it, and then realised it was in fact a large cat with a long, upward curling tail. It ran off into Oxleas Wood. The same night police officers were amazed to see a 'large golden animal' jump over the bonnet of their patrol car. A check with zoos and circuses confirmed that no animals had escaped.

It was a magnificent affair. It covered 850 acres and involved 126 policemen with 21 dogs, thirty soldiers, ambulance men and RSPCA officials. No sign of a big cat was found - except for some spoor. These were huge - some seven inches across, the size usually associated with a lion or tiger; yet they showed claw marks, the characteristic not of a lions, but of a cheetah's paw print. The 'cheetah', however, was never caught and the hunters dispersed'.

Source: Mystery Big Cats by Merrily Harpur (Heart of Albion Press, 2005)

South East London Folklore Society

South East London Folklore Society has an interesting programme coming up this year of the weird and the wonderful, starting this Thursday with a talk by Fortean Times contributor Noel Rooney.

"10th January: Noel Rooney - Plant Alchemy: Lavender stones, crystals of sage. Angel water, and terra damnata. Mercury, sulphur and salt. Divide and unite. Can you start the great work from a window box?

14th February: The Bleeding Heart THIS IS A WALK, NOT A TALK. An anti-seasonal, 2+ mile trek across London from a site of demonic heartbreak to SELFS home via poltergeists, witches, black dogs, the sacred shrine to the outside dead in Southwark and more. Comfort food shall be provided at the Old King's Head at journey's end. Meet at Bleeding Heart Yard, EC1 at 6.30pm on Thursday 14th February. Nearest tubes are Farringdon and Chancery Lane.

13th March: John Callow - Familiar Things: Witchcraft, Royals & The Witch Dog. Familiar spirits were a particularly British aspect of Witchcraft. Perhaps none was so famous as 'Boye': the enormous white dog who accompanied Prince Rupert on his campaigns from 1642-44. Seen as a talisman, mascot, & victory bringer by the Royalists; and as an agent of the Devil, a shape-changing, Lappish witch by their Parliamentary foes: 'Boye' was equally celebrated and derided in print, painting, & pamphlet over the course of his short life.

10th April: Neil Arnold - Big Cats Around The Capital. Neil, the author of Monster! - The A-Z of Zooform Phenomena, will be giving the first ever talk on exotic felids and mystery cats roaming London and the outskirts, proving that such sightings are no mystery at all, but in fact evidence that such animals have been with us for centuries

8th May: Janet Dowling - Naming the Green Man of the Medieval Church. Janet Dowling uses story-telling and folklore research to reveal the identity of the Green Man in medieval stone carvings".

SELFS events take place at The Old King's Head, Kings Head Yard, 45-49, Borough High St, London, SE1 1NA. Nearest stations are London Bridge and Borough. Talks start at 8.00pm, £2.50 / £1.50 concessions. Contact: scott@selfs.org.uk

Thamesmead Big Cat?

Yet another SE London big cat story, from the Newshopper (11 August 2008)

A Beast of Bexley-type creature is believed to have been spotted in Thamesmead. The sighting happened at around 3am on Saturday morning (August 9) in Goldfinch Road when a man was woken up by something screeching. He looked out of his window and saw a small animal racing along the pathway followed by a larger one.

The man, who did not want to be named, said: "I saw a black animal rolling on the grass between two trees. I thought to myself, 'Bloody hell! That's the biggest moggy I've ever seen', and then thought, 'It must be a dog'. However, its head was cat-like and its tail was very long. It walked to the left to some bushes and I moved the other curtain but couldn't see it."

The sighting was reported to Neil Arnold, the founder of the Kent Big Cat Research group, which studies eyewitness reports of large exotic cats. He believes the creature, which has become known as the Beast of Bexley, is a black leopard. The Beast' has also been seen at Welling, Erith, Bexleyheath, Belvedere, Bromley, Abbey Wood and towards Dartford.

More Transpontine big cat stories

New Cross Panther Latest

Yesterday's Sun reported:

A WOMAN fled and dialled 999 yesterday after she spotted what looked like a wild panther in a cul-de-sac. Cops searched the street — close to a primary school — but could find no trace of a beast. A source told The Sun: “She was terrified. She described it as a huge, black wild cat with large fangs and a long tail. The woman was very respectable, not drunk or imagining things, so the call was taken seriously.”

The 8.30am terror in New Cross, South London, came eight years after a man was mauled by a 6ft-long panther-like cat in nearby Sydenham. More sightings came in 2007 and 2009. The Met Police said: “Officers did a search but could not find the animal.” Research group Big Cats in Britain said: “There have been sightings in this area before.”

The Newsshopper has gone one better today and located the sighting as being in Southerngate Way by Fordham Park in New Cross and reported the witness saying: "I was walking to work in New Cross and looked to my left and saw a long black tail hanging down from the roof that covers the bins outside our block of flats. I then looked up and saw the biggest black cat I have ever seen - this was no domestic cat. It was very built with strong large leg muscles that you could see very clearly from the rear view. It was just perched with its tail dangling down'

See previous posts on various supposed beasts in Bexley, Crystal Palace, Borough High Street, Nunhead, Shooters Hill, Thamesmead etc.

Cat Video Film Festival

A Cat Video Film Fesitval on the Big Red Pizzeria, Deptford, on 25 April 2005. Book free tickets here. That is all. 

Yes I know, what has happened to Transpontine? More cats and old photos than radical critique and breaking news! Other activities and projects currently exhausting energy but stay tuned... for more cats and old photos.

Louise Michel: a Paris Communard in South London

The International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam is probably the most significant archive of radical movements in Europe. Recently it has made accessible large parts of its archives in digital form, including the papers of Louise Michel.  This has enabled me to solve something that has been bugging me for a long time - where did she live in South London? As I wrote here before:

'Louise Michel (1830-1905) was a celebrated figure in 19th century French politics, an anarchist who fought at the barricades in the Paris Commune of 1871 and was subsequently exiled to New Caledonia. Returning to France in 1880 she was frequently in conflict with the authorities, and decided to flee France for London in July 1890, shortly after being arrested following May Day riots'.

 According to Edith Thomas's biography, Louise Michel lived at one point at '79 Arspley Terrace' in East Dulwich, an address I have never been able to find, but I now think may have been an error.

Louise Michel

I believe that Louise Michel's first visit to London was in 1880. After being released from New Caledonia, a French colony in the Pacific, she and other amnestied Communards were taken to Sydney, Australia, from where they travelled on the mail ship 'John Helder' to London. As the ship waited in the fog in the Thames Estuary to be guided to port, French exiles in London made their way to greet it in small boats, singing Communard songs to their comrades (Butterworth, 2011, p.62). On this occasion, Michel only stayed for a couple of days before returning to Paris, but she mentions that with her friends she smuggled five cats from Nouméa (capital of New Caledonia) 'down the gangplank in London' and that 'Once in London, in front of a fire, with an enormous bowl of milk my friends brought them, they began to stretch out, yawning' (Michel was a big animal lover).

In 1883 she returned to London on a speaking tour, where among other things she visited a workhouse in Lambeth. Her account in her memoirs shows that she had become quite a Londonphile: 'London! I love London, where my exiled friends have always been welcomed, London, where old England, standing in the shadow of the gallows, is still more liberal than the French bourgeois republicans are'. All this despite the weather - 'the black London winter on which a cloud of fog floated. Raindrops condensed in an unceasing mist and now and again came in broad sheets... a frozen evening in the large, cold meeting hall in front of a cold and correct audience drawn from the grand neighbourhood of immense palaces under which the wretches have holes like animals. But despite that, I felt an impression of human honesty persisting regardless of the accursed chains that people interminably fasten on each other' (Michel, p.148)

She did flee to London in 1890 and apparently stayed here until she returned to Paris in 1895, but she continued to spend time living in London on and off until her death in 1905. She definitely lived for some of the earlier period at 59 Charlotte Street, Fitzroy Square - an area where many radical refugees hung out. The earliest reference I have to a definite address n East Dulwich is from August 1894, when Louise Michel sent a letter to the artist Lucien Pissarro (son of Camille) from '15 Ardley Terrace, East Dulwich' (this letter is in Ashmolean Museum collection).

The IISH archive includes a letter written in 1897 or 1898 in Michel's own hand with this address: 15 Ardley Terrace, Placquet Road, East Dulwich:

There is also the envelope of a letter written to her here in July 1898. People do make mistakes when writing addresses which causes problems for later historians! This one does read more like Ardsley, and I wonder the 'Arpsley Terrace' false trail might have arisen from copying such a mistake. 

Placquett Road no longer exists, but the 1893-96 Ordnance Survey Map shows that Placquett Road was the East Dulwich end of what is now Copleston Road, which at that point hadn't been extended to join up with Copleston and hence renamed. Note that what is now Oglander Road was then Wildash Road. It seems that the houses on Plaquett Road were demolished and replaced with new housing in 1900s, so the building that Michel lived in is no longer there.

Thomas mentions that Michel was visited in East Dulwich by a number of French journalists and by fellow Communard Charles Malato, who found the then 62 year old Michel surrounded by cats, dogs and a parrot that cried 'Long live anarchy!'. Michel was 62 in 1892, so that would suggest she was living in East Dulwich by then, and perhaps at the Ardley Terrace address. She may also have been at that address when in December 1893 a United Press representative interviewed 'the notorious woman Anarchist, who occupies a little house at East Dulwich, a suburb of London' (New York Times, 19 December 1893):

'A union of the strong against the weak has existed since Governments existed. The masses can unite equally against a common enemy. They may rise like the springtide of the ocean, and overflow the world' (Louise Michel, interviewed in East Dulwich, 1893)

Houses at East Dulwich end of Copleston Road, originally Placquett Road

Thomas gives another East Dulwich address in her book, stating that when Michel returned to London in December 1899 'She was still living in East Dulwich at this point, though no longer at 25 Chesterfield Grove' - so she must have lived at the latter, still standing and in fact recently sold:

25 Chesterfield Grove, East Dulwich.

Thomas also states that Michel moved again in March 1900 to 'to join Charlotte's father at 8 Albion Villas Road, Sydenham'. Charlotte Vauvelle was Michel's long term nurse and companion, and her father was Auguste Vauvelle. The 1901 Census for 8 Albion Villas lists Auguste, Charlotte and her brother Achille, with Louise Michel as 'boarder' described as 'authoress. Achille Vauvelle is listed as a 'Chromo artist' (i.e. chromo-lithographic printer) - he later worked with Waddingtons.

The house in Albion Villas is still standing:

8 Albion Villas today

Finally the archive has some letters sent to Louise Michel at another address in December 1903, 53 Dahomey Street, Mitcham Lane.

This is now Dahomey Road, Streatham SW16. Must admit I haven't been there, but from Google streetview, I think this is the house:

53 Dahomey Road SW16

Louise Michel died in Marseille in 1905, this picture shows her in bed in Toulon in the previous year, with Charlotte Vauvelle at her side:

Here's a flyer form October 1896 for a meeting of 'London Anarchist Communists' to 'bid farewell to Louise Michel and Pietro Gori on their departure to America on a lecturing tour' (Gori was an Italian anarchist poet). The meeting at the Club & Institute Union Hall in Holborn also featured the prominent anarchists Errico Malatesta and Sebastian Faure, as well as Tom Mann (later of Brockley), one of the leaders of the 1889 dock strike in London.

Speaking to some friends at the Radical Bookfair at the Bishopsgate Institute last weekend, we came up with the idea of doing something over the summer to mark Louise Michel's time in the area, possibly linked to some kind of Sydenham/Forest Hill radical history walk finishing with a picnic and some Communard songs. Let us know in comments or by email if you're interested.

Update September 2015:

In August 1897, Louise Michel spoke at a public meeting in Southwark Park in support of anarchist prisoners in Spain (Reynolds's Newspaper, Sunday 08 August 1897):

Notes:

Butterworth, A. (2011), The World That Never Was: A True Story of Dreamers, Schemers, Anarchists and Secret Agents, London: Random House,p.62.

Michel, L. (1981), The Red Virgin: memoirs of Louise Michel, Alabama: University of Alabama Press.

Thomas, E. (1980), Louise Michel, Montreal: Black Rose Books, 1980.

[updated July 2020 - earlier version wondered whether current houses in Copleston Road included Louise Michel's former Placquett Road house, but comment pointed out that street seems to have been rebuilt since she lived there]

Opposing privatisation and cuts at Rivoli & Goldsmtihs

A couple more moments in the unfolding movement against cuts and privatisation:

Lewisham SOS NHS

Lewisham SOS NHS, which is campaigning against privatisation of the health service, is holding a benefit gig tonight (Sunday 27 November) at the Rivoli Ballroom in Brockley Road.  They say: 'We have a really great bill of locally sourced comedy and music - local bands The Grey Cats, Delta Detour and the T Men will be compered by Dulwich's very own Stephen Frost, ably abetted by the comedy of Charmian Hughes, Luke Sorba and Niall Ashdown with added musical humour from Pippa Evans ( check out her forthcoming Radio 4 series )'.

Pippa Evans' characters include country singer 'Loretta Maine', check out some of her songs here.

Tickets are £15 and have to be bought in advance here.

Goldsmiths Occupation

I popped down to the Goldsmiths occupation yesterday, and gave a talk on New Cross radical history.

This is the third occupation there in the last year. In March there was a short occupation of the old Deptford Town Hall buiding in the lead up to the big anti-cuts demonstration, and the library was occupied last December. This time around they have occupied the Whitehead building.

They say: 'We are an open heterogeneous group including Goldsmiths staff, students and many others who believe the university is a public resource that should be open to all. We stand with all those affected by the privatisation agenda and against those who profit from its misery. Goldsmiths is now occupied in solidarity with the UK-wide strike on November 30th and the global occupy movement. We are here because we reject the privatisation of the university, symptomatic of the neo-liberal agenda that permeates all aspects of life. For this reason we have strategically occupied the building housing Goldsmiths’ finance offices, responsible for executing the cuts and the privatisation agenda.. All groups on and off-campus are encouraged to use this space to host meetings, events, and planning sessions for actions on November 30th. Where the current government agenda not only encourages, but enforces the transfer of public resources to private hands we join people worldwide in taking them back!'



Brockley Max Opening Night

There was sun-kissed dancing on the streets of Brockley on Friday night at the opening of the Brockley Max Festival. We didn't manage to take in all the bands playing by the Bob Marley/Maya Angelou mural opposite the Brockley Barge, but as well as the Brockley Ukulele Group set - pictured at Brockley Central - did take in J'Adore L'Amour (pleased to see they also wielded a ukulele in their version of Five Years Time)...

...and The Grey Cats, who played a good set of covers including Pressure Drop, Rudy Can't Fail and Police on My Back. They are playing at the Montague Arms on Friday 19 June and Tuesday 30 June.


Lots more music coming up in the rest of Brockley Max this week, including big event on Hilly Fields next Saturday. Here's some film from Friday Night of J'Adore L'Amour:

Life is one big road with a lot of sign

A traffic sign in New Cross Road, near to the bus garage, has been hosting a running commentary on the state of the world for over a year.

The latest iteration photographed today  includes the very timely 'ceasefire now', along with 'Just Stop Oil',  'A wealth tax could easily fund the NHS' and 'support workers  when they strike - tax the rich'

From April of this year 'Boris Johnson should pay his own f*cking legal fees':

November 2022 and there's a call for 'general election now', in smaller print underneath 'Rishi Sunak has too much money' (later somebody not so keen on the electoral road sprayed a black @sign over this, you can see a trace of it on image above)

September 2022 - 'say no to tory tax cuts, F**k the fat cats' complete with cat

(See some other examples of these people's work here)

 

Transmetropolitan

On returning and not having a camera on me.

I've been travelling a lot recently, hence the silence at SELFS and the lack of my own riffs on Transpontine, leaving plenty of room for Neil’s eloquent entries.

Got back from the Isle of Wight last night and I’ve still got the Baltic lands of Estonia and Finland rolling away in my head but a walk home from Brockley station to home last night helped remind me why I’m here in the first place.

(I’m still failing to spot the Beast of Sydenham whilst travelling between Brockley and East Croydon though.)

The floral murals by the cab rank are a cool bit of folk-art, it’s a triptych, painted in differing shades for each section, blue, orange and green and hides fairies, cats and goodness knows what else within the tangled images.

Some of us know this area is magical by looking it up in books, others go out there and create the magic and others walk about and know.

The selection of vegetarian junk-food in the Costcutter, opposite the Brockley Barge is pretty magical too, better than the behemoth Sainsbury that squats by the New Cross Gate train tracks. Brockley, as is often reported at the Wickham Arms, has the densest population of artists in Europe, is there a density of veggies there too (or could you only refer to a ‘density’ of McDonald’s regulars or a ‘density’ of people who prefer thick-crust pizza?)

At the top of Shardeloes Road was a big bloke is a frock. It was a silvery frock that contrasted against his black skin in the twilight and it had am alien luminescence about it.

A similar bloke the same style of frock came out of the corner-shop at Brockley Cross and I spotted a third in the phone box across the road, having a bit of a natter. The outfits were good, though they showed a bit too much of what was underneath when the wind blew against them. I wondered if they’d been locked out of their church, it looked like church-wear and it was Sunday evening, hence the phone call. Or were they Christians from another planet, hopefully nicer than the ones we usually get round here.

As a rule, I’m not really in to church-goers but men in random silver frocks is something a grubby urban streets needs, now and then.

What I do like is food foraging, there’s a untapped larder of wild food in London, especially down in our part, so the kids picking the blackberries that were hanging down over the huge poem that runs along the top of Shardeloes Road was a fine thing to see.
If only I had the camera, and they were nearer the word ‘Eat’, that stands out tall and proud on that wall that would be one of the best photographs ever.

This area is urban but it’s still wild, just ask the foxes, frogs, birds and plants. I get hops coming in a month, bluebells in the spring and plenty of local birds and insects feeding off the pear and apple trees in my back garden. This place is alive, there’s life crammed into every single crevice. We’re part of that, not always the best part, but we’re part of it and that’s good.

When I got home I also saw that, unsurprisingly, the Brazilian Jazz Hippies that live above us haven’t got round to building their sweat-lodge at the bottom of the garden yet.

It’s good to be home, for now.