Tantanoola Tiger 1895 page 2

No action has been taken with reference to Mr. M. J. Hannagan’s discovery of a tiger near Nelson “of the size of a small greyhound dog,” and it is not likely that any will be taken (says the South-Eastern Star), although other reports have been received of a strange animal having been seen in that locality.

Mr. James Marks, of Claraville, saw what he says was a yapock in the same place that Mr. Hannagan did, and when he tried to hunt it from some bushes he found that it had disappeared into a hole that connected with water. Mr. James Glanville, who lived near the creek for some years, has seen the same animal, but says it is not a tiger; it resembles a large cat very much, and the description given by Mr. Hannagan tallies to a great extent with that of the yapock. Our contemporary continues thus:-

“Mr. Marks, who does a good deal of work as a taxidermist, and who takes considerable interest in natural history, has informed us that he believes the animal which has been seen at other times and which is supposed to be a tiger, is really a thylacinus, which in almost every respect answers a great many of the descriptions of the animal seen. The description given of the animal in Cassell’s Natural History, vol. iii, says that it is a dog-like, slim, and narrow-muzzled animal with clean and rather short limbs, a foxy head, and a tail about half as long as the body, which in males is about 45 in. in length. It is about the same size as a jackal, and the fur is short but rather woolly, and greyish-brown faintly suffused with yellow in color. It has from 12 to 14 black stripes on the body, and the tail has long hairs at the tip only. The eyes are keen, large, and full, and have a nicitating membrane (like the owl).

"The animal walks half on its soles or palms and thus is semi-plantigrade, the body being brought nearer the ground than that of a wolf in running. The animal has a marsupial pouch and it is found in Tasmania. Mr. Harris says it lives in caverns and rocks in the deep and almost impenetrable glens in the neighbourhood of the highest mountains in Tasmania. Mr. Gunn says the animals are common in remoter parts of the colony (Tasmania) and used frequently to be caught at Woolnooth and the Hampshire Hills. They attack sheep at night, but are occasionally seen during the day time, upon which occasions, perhaps through their imperfect vision, their pace is slow. Mr. Gunn also observes that the thylacinus sometimes attain so large and formidable a size that a number of dogs will not face it.

"Aquatic habits have been attributed to it, but Mr. Gunn’s observations do not confirm this. It is a marsupial animal and the female has four well-developed teats. The picture represents a thylacinus in the act of killing a platypus, which is said are found in the Glenelg. It will be remembered that the boy Smith said the animal he saw had large teats, whereas had the animal been a tiger they would not have been visible. Has Mr. Marks solved the tiger mystery?"

ADELAIDE, WEDNESDAY.

A Mount Gambier telegram states that the chief topic of conversation there is the shooting of the animal supposed to be the Tantanoola "tiger."

Thomas Donovan came from Mount Salt this afternoon with the carcase of what is pronounced to be a large common Euroopean wolf, which he claims to be the animal referred to. Before sun-rise to day he saw a number of sheep disturbed on a range four miles west of Mount Salt, and observed an animal worrying one. Donovan crept to within 100yards of it and shot it with a rifle. The animal ran 300 yards before falling.

The carcase, which good judges declare to be that of a pure wolf, will be stuffed for exhibition. How the wolf got into the country is a puzzle.

At last the Tantanoola mystery has been solved. For many months the residents of the South-East have been much exercised in spirit over the vagaries of some member of the genus Carnivora, which has generally been accepted as a “tiger”.

The tiger has become famous. All Australia has heard of the animal, and no doubt the entire civilised world will be interested in learning its ultimate fate. It has, in fact, been the cause of much jealousy. Their Victorian neighbors were not so long behind the Mount Gambier people in laying claim to a share of the beast’s attention; and at one time hopes were entertained in the Quorn district that the distinction had been conferred on that locality by its presence.

Many sceptics have declared their belief that there was “no such pusson,” and some have been so ungenerous as to ascribe the appearance of the strange striped quadruped entirely on the influence of the locally-made spirits.

However, all these doubts have been set to rest. South-Eastern residents have now the satisfaction of knowing that they have not cried “wolf” too often, and that the imputations against their veracity and sobriety were quite uncalled for. It was no mythical creature which had been preying on the herds and scaring the inhabitants. But, also, it was not a tiger.

The invader has been shot, and its mortal remains have been brought into Mount Gambier; and now it appears it was a wolf. The animal, which was shot on Mr. Gardiner’s outstation yesterday morning, is fawn-colored, with a dark back, and is described as “exceptionally large” – it measures 4 ft. 6 in. from the head to the tip of the tail. The skin is to be stuffed, and no doubt the ultimate fate of this interesting member of the vulpine tribe will be that it will be exhibited for the benefit of admiring crowds as “The Tantanoola Tiger.”

Its extinction will cause relief to the local sheepowners; but to the South-Eastern journalists the loss will be almost irreparable. The “tiger” has instigated nearly as many interesting and imaginative paragraphs as the once popular “bunyip” and the enterprising pressmen of Mount Gambier and the vicinity will now have to seek some fresh source of inspiration.

The Tantanoola tiger has been shot. Mr. Thomas Donovan, who formed one of the hunting party last year, went out to Mr. Gardiner’s out-station yesterday, and this morning, accompanied by Mr. Walter Taylor, made for the locality where the tiger was reported as last seen by Mr. Houston.

About four miles from the homestead they noticed a sheep running about, and that one had been singled out from the flock and was being attacked by a strange animal. They removed their boots, and got within 200 yards, when Donovan fired shooting the beast through the heart.

The supposed tiger, which has been brought to the Mount, proves to be an exceptionally large wolf, and measured 4ft. 6 in. from the head to the tip of the tail. It is fawn-colored with a dark back, and the head is very large for the body. Mr. Marks has the animal and intends to stuff the skin.

The report that the Tantanoola tiger had been shot created great excitement here, and this afternoon scores of people waited on Mr. Marks to get a view of the animal brought in by Mr. Donovan, which stands over 2 ft. 6 in. high. Mr. Marks, who is an authority, describes it to be an aged European she-wolf, its tusks being over an inch long. Mr. Engelbrecht agrees that it is a wolf. Its weight is about one cwt. Mr. Marks hopes to have it ready for exhibition by Saturday.

If the Tantanoola tiger had turned out to be a white mouse, not a wolf, one could not have felt much more disappointed. Of course a wolf is a formidable enough creature in its way when it is empty and well backed up, as our own premier footballers are, or ought to be, on a Saturday afternoon. But it is a comparatively inadequate animal for sensational purposes, and, as regards size and stripes, scarcely fills the bill. And a tiger ought not to be able to change its stripes any more than a leopard can its spots. The culminating objection to the quadruped bagged by Mr. Donovan, of Mount Salt, is, of course, that instead of solving the problem it further perplexes it.

The presence of the Mount Gambier tiger in the district was explained by the fact that a youthful specimen of the tribe, feeling bored by the monotony of his menagerie, or finding his rations irregular, or his salary unpunctually paid, walked out of the show one evening, presumably while the audience were taking their lemonade between acts and the proprietor was checking the house. But the presence of the wolf requires us to subscribe to a new doctrine of natural selection - the right, that is to say, of any animal to select his own habitat at pleasure, dissever himself from his species, and dispense with any origin at all. This Darwin and Huxley, who were strict disciplinarians, would never have permitted. If it goes on we shall be having stray elephants captured at Jumbunna, chimpanzees in the Blue Mountains, and perhaps humpbacked whales in the upper reaches of the Murray. Mr. Donovan's hastily-sped bullet has put it out of the power of the Mount Salt wolf to give an account of himself, but an explanation is evidently called for from somebody. Why could not Mr. Donovan have asked his victim's pedigree first and fired afterwards?

The Tantanoola tiger has at last been slaughtered, after a ressistance that will probably become historical. The animal was first seen nearly 12 months ago, and then, in the days of its hot youth, it simply defied everyone to come on. No one answered, and since then it has cowed everyone it has come across. But the natural history desperado made one fatal mistake. It tool no account of the racial characteristics, and seems to have entirely overlooked the fact that sooner or later it would meet a man by the name of Donovan. Consequently it went out in its usual airy way the other day and began to annoy the neighbourhood. The neighbourhood was Scotch or English or Welsh or some other inferior variety of people, and the tiger did just what it liked for a considerable time.
Then the inevitable Donovan appeared, and the tiger’s fate was upon him. Anyone else would have realised this, but the tiger went on cropping up sheep as if nothing had happened. Donovan crept up and filled the terror of the jungle with small shot and way it started for its lair, mortally wounded, but plucky as ever. That is all! – all except that up to date the tiger is a wolf, and will probably become a rabbit before long.

Amongst the country editors of South Australia and West Victoria, who must sometimes grow a little weary of calling attention to the scandalous state of disrepair into which the footbridge near the residence of our respected townsman, Mr. Brown, has fallen, and who no doubt tire, too, of imploring the Czar to be merciful amongst them the " Tantanoola tiger" had almost become an idol, too. He was a kind of serial for them. Nothing easier than to manufacture a Mr. Jones or a Mr. Johnson who, going home by night, was suddenly confronted by the soft-stepping man-eater; unluckily, of course, Mr. Johnson didn't have a gun, and so the tiger escaped - "to be continued," so to speak.

Now, after all, the tiger, having permitted himself to be killed perhaps out of regard for the newspapers, which are now busy over the Credit Foncier Bill and will presently have a general election on hand proves himself to have been only a wolf; certainly, at least, he was wearing wolfs clothing when the end, in the shape of a bullet, came. Yet mark with what reluctance the newspapers part company with so old a benefactor - how loth they are to brand so good a friend a mere wolf, and a she wolf at that!

"The Tantanoola tiger has been shot,” one heroic writer begins. Then, after speaking of her as "the tiger," he slides into describing her as the "strange animal," and at the next mention she is no more than the "supposed tiger." From this point the descent is more rapid; in three steps more she is an “exceptionally large wolf” and then she becomes simply a wolf. Next week she may be only a dog. After all, though, it was perhaps kind to thus break the news gently and not to smash this idol with one blow!

The "Tantanoola tiger," which has supplied country journalists with so much food for sensational paragraphs, has at last been proved to be merely a wolf. The whole affair may possibly afford some philosophic writer of the future material for an instructive chapter on the growth of myths, and will at once suggest to the inductive reasoner an explanation of the manner in which many of the most extraordinary and cherished beliefs of mankind have arisen. It is also a salutary warning as to the liability of all human testimony to error and exaggeration; and, in view of the recent developments in the Butler and Dean cases, it should make magistrates, judges, and juries more careful than ever in attaching absolute credence to the evidence of even the most reliable witnesses. It should also greatly discount stories of ghosts and so-called spiritual phenomena. When the evidence of men's eyesight cannot be relied on in clear daylight in a matter of this kind, it surely is not to be expected that their statements as to what they imagine they have seen in the dark or in a dim light should be accepted without question.

George Dean was the 27-year-old captain of the Possum, a night ferry running between Circular Quay and the North Shore. In March 1894 he married Mary Seymour. Just over a year later - on 19 March 1895 - he appeared at the Court of Petty Sessions, North Sydney, charged with administering poison to his wife, with intent to kill her.

George Dean was found guilty of attempted murder and sentenced to death but his sentence was commuted to penal servitude for life because of his youth and his “humane and gallant efforts in saving human life by rescuing drowning people at some risk to his own ...” (Mr Justice Windeyer’s report).

The verdict caused a public outcry. Protest meetings were held all over the state, petitions poured in, and a 'Dean Defence Committee' was formed to fight his cause.

Royal Commissioners Francis Edward Rogers, Phillip Sydney Jones and Frederick Norton Manning were appointed to enquire whether Dean should serve his sentence or be released from gaol. The Commission focused strongly on the characters of Mrs Seymour and Mrs Dean. Commissioners Jones and Manning agreed that Mrs Dean had administered the poison to herself, with no intention of taking a fatal dose. Commissioner Rogers dissented. Following the Royal Commission, Dean was granted a free pardon and released from gaol in June 1895.

That was not the end of the story. In July 1895 Dean's lawyer, Meagher, admitted to Sir Julian Salomons, a former Chief Justice and Prosecution Lawyer at the Commission, that Dean was guilty. In October a chemist from the North Shore who sold the poison came forward. Dean was arrested and later confessed. He was convicted of False Declaration on 24 October and was sentenced to five years. On the following day he was convicted of Perjury with Intent to Procure an Acquittal on a Capital Charge and was sentenced to fourteen years, the sentences to be served concurrently.

Our Mount Gambier correspondent writes:-

“Belief in the existence of the Tantanoola tiger is still strong in the minds of many who refuse to admit that the wolf shot by Donovan and the animal seen at various times in the Burringal and Tantanoola districts are identical. Mr, Houstan, who was the last to report having seen the tiger in the neighbourhood of Burnaloot, writes to the Star declaring that Mr. Donovan’s wolf is nothing like the animal he saw. Mr. Donal Smith, of Wye, writes to say that there is another animal of exactly the same description as that shot by Mr. Donovan in the scrub near the mouth of the Glenelg.

“The Tantanoola people also still believe in their tiger’s existence and a correspondent from that place pertinently asks the question, ‘If there was a wolf at Mount Salt why should there not be a tiger at Tantanoola?’ The wolf was exhibited again today, but few knew of the fact, so the show was not largely patronised. After another day or teo in the Mount the animal will be exhibited at Millicent, then in the several south-eastern townships, and afterwards in Adelaide.”

The Tantanoola tiger seems to have been bagged at last. South Australia and Victoria have been periodically roused by the account of some citizen who had seen the beast, and the public imagination became inflamed to such an extent that an Indian jungle planted at Mount Gambler and swarming with tigers could hardly have done more mischief. The creature has been shot at last. Nurses can no more with truth declare that the Tantanoola tiger is coming. And, alas for the verities, it turns out to be a wolf! However, a controversy is raging in the two colonies over the- questions whether the animal escaped from a menagerie, whether it is a specimen of the European wolf, and whether the trouble is really over. South Australia swears that Victoria is responsible for all the "bobbery"; while Victoria as firmly declines all responsibility. Meanwhile the local humorist is having a high old time.
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Here is a specimen of the fun some folks can make of a very serious matter:—

"I am perfectly certain that the Tantanoola Terror is not a European wolf," writes Hugh Kalyptus to the "South Australian Register." "All the indications point to its being a 'wehr-wolf,' that is a fearful creation which is a man say a Single-taxer—by day and a wolf by night. These uncanny animals used to be common in the part of Germany where I come from. A man sells himself to the Evil One for a term by which he is put up to all the tips for the races, the best line of Westralian stock, and how to get a drink on Sunday in spite of Nock's Act. The condition is that he becomes a wolf at night, returning to his human shape after 12. From my experience among these animals in the Hartz Mountains I am positive that this Tantanoola Terror is a wehr-wolf; the fact that it was once seen as a wild Chinaman proves this. I have never seen a wehr-wolf myself, but would like to be one—I have had such infernal bad luck in shares. The Mount Gambierites had better have a look round and find a local politician or something with a bullet-mark on him; for when the wehr-wolf is wounded he makes for home and turns again to his human form—they might find him in Parliament House."

IT IS HARD FOR THE RESIDENTS OF THE South-East to descend from the pedestal of fame conferred upon their district by the supposed possession of a real, live, and very frisky tiger to the comparatively commonplace lavel to which they have been reduced by the explosion of that theory and the exhibition of a dead wolf – and that not even a pure bred. That the ferocious beast which has been alike the pride and terror of the country0side, and which has given unwonted – and perhaps in these days of advertisement a not altogether disagreeable – notoriety to the hitherto little known town of Tantanoola, should have been divested of much of the halo of romance and mystery which surrounded it is “’ard, werry ‘ard.”

In fact some of the inhabitants positively decline to surrender their tiger. They live in expectations, not to say hopes, that ere long that noble animal will again assert himself and show that he is in no way connected with the wolf recently shot by Mr. T. Donovan. That creature has been stuffed and degraded to a mere object of exhibition; and having been placed on show in several South-Eastern towns with profitable results, that is for the proprietor – has been brought to the city. It is now at the Zoological Gardens, where yesterday it was interviewed by a representative of The Advertiser. The wolf, it may be remarked, had nothing to say for itself; but there can be little doubt that the large-sized dingo theory will not hold water. There are too many points of resemblance to the crossbred wolf now under Mr. Minchin’s protecting care.

Although the deceased is much bigger and stronger, the marking in nearly every sense the same. It appears somewhat like a large and very powerful dingo, but the head and course hair on the back are unmistakable indications of the wolf. Its tail, also, instead of only being “brushed” only underneath, as is the dingo’s, is so all round like that of a wolf. But the clearest sign of its origin is that the underfur is a pure white instead of black, such as the characteristics of the dingo tribe. The animal has a clearly-defined black collar from the neck to the shoulders – another of the marks set out by authorities as distinguishing a wolf.

It seems pretty certain that it is a cross between a dog – probably of the Esquimaux breed – and a wolf. Its size and strength can be gauged by its dimensions. It measures 23 in. round the neck, and when the ears were straight there was a difference of 13 in. from tip to tip. From the crown of the head to the tip of the nose goes 10 in. So much for the animals identity. Its origin has not yet been settled. “That’s another story;” and one the unravelment of which may form an interesting task for some enterprising south-eastern journalist.

The exhibit is accompanied to the city – where it will be on view for the next week or two – by Mr. Donovan, the captor, and Mr. J. Marks, the taxidermist, who stuffed it excellently. Mr. George Riddoch, M.P., had a look at the wolf yesterday, but though he was satisfied as to its breed he is sceptical as to it being the beast of prey of which so much had been said and written. He still expects to hear of fresh depredations by a tiger in the South-East.