What would you do if you found a three foot long alligator (- or was it a crocodile ?) near a railway? Run? Assume it was waiting for the next train? This sensible watchman called for help and a rope. But quite how its owner managed to forget about it is bizarre. Let us hope it found a suitable environment in London – perhaps near Regent’s Park? After all, at three feet it must have been quite young – adults tend to be between eight and fifteen feet long.
“On the evening of the 10th Inst., as a watchman was proceeding to his beat, about thirty yards from the platform at the Trent Valley railway-station at Tamworth, he was surprised to discover an alligator, three and a half feet in length, apparently wounded. An alarm was instantly given, and a rope procured, when the monster was fairly captured, and placed in confinement until the following Sunday, when it was forwarded to London. It turned out to be the property of a gentleman who went up by the mail-train on the previous Thursday night, and who did not miss his travelling companion until his arrival in town. It is supposed to have fallen from the railway carriage, and got injured.”
The Birmingham Jour.
The Stamford Mercury, 24th August, 1849.