Dark Somerset column: Leopard on the loose in Taunton

Crowds came to bear witness to the strange and impossible—captivated by elaborate costumes, men who could swallow fire, women who could twist into shapes that defied reason, and the strange and exotic beasts displayed in their cages or strolling casually through the streets.

While many people could not attend the performances themselves, hundreds of spectators lined the streets of Taunton in June 1890 when Fossetts Circus rolled into town.

But for some of those who had gathered, the free spectacle was just not interactive enough. As the parade headed down Station Road towards Jarvis’ Field, where the circus pitched up, some members of the crowd - for reasons that will remain a mystery, decided to start poking one of the stars of the show - a caged leopard - with sticks.

An interactive leopard experience is fun and games until the leopard escapes.

The leopard pushed aside a bar and squeezed itself out of the cage, resulting in instant panic. Hysteria gripped the crowd - mothers screaming, men, women and children racing in all directions and people throwing themselves into the Tone to try and escape the animal.

For its part, the leopard seemed as surprised by the ease of its escape as anyone else. It waited for two or three minutes, confused by its cage, before casually trotting off across a field and hunkering down in the relative safety of a crop of potatoes.

As chaos appeared to rule around him, the animal became more agitated. It scaled a wall and spent time wandering around Canal Road before hopping a fence into the gardens of Prospect Villa. When two circus men armed with sticks tried to recapture the creature, it became enraged, biting both of them - one badly injured in the attack.

While the general populace - and a large chunk of the circus performers - were taking evasive manoeuvres, a butcher’s son, Mr William Browning, became the unlikely hero of the hour.

A yeoman, and something of a crack shot, he had gone to retrieve his rifle, and his bullet hit the enraged leopard in the stomach - wounding but not killing it.

The injured animal crashed through a house window in a shower of broken glass, furious claws and teeth and landed on a table in the front parlour of Mr R G Kitching's home - where his family and a neighbour had taken refuge.

In the ensuing chaos, Kitching’s son swung at the animal with a stick as the terrified family bolted out of the parlour and hastily barricaded themselves in the kitchen. While they crouched behind the door, two more shots rang out.

Kitching told reporters shortly afterwards: “The carpet and wall are stained with blood where the animal died. The seat of one of the chairs has been ripped up where it clawed it in his death agony.”

The circus performers dragged the animal's bloodied corpse back to its cage, and the injured men who had tried to capture it were later treated at the Taunton and Somerset Hospital.

William Browning, the man who shot the animal, became a local hero. A butcher in Staplehay and a familiar figure in the open-air markets once held on The Parade. He passed away, aged 84, in December 1956 - his obituary headed ‘He shot a leopard’.

Words by Laura Linham