MAULED BY A LION.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVIII, Issue 2740, 19 February 1910, Page 3 (Supplement)

MAULED BY A LION.

ATTACK ON A KEEPER AT THE CRYSTAL PALACE.

Prince, tlie largest lion in the menagerie at the Crystal Palace, is in disgrace, “Daily Mail” of Jan. 1.) As the result of his bad temper, Ralph Gardiner, a. keeper, is lying in Norwood Cottage Hospital with one of liis arms badly bitten. The incident- occurred on the evening of Boxing Day. Prince, who is five years old and' was born in the menagerie. had just been fed when Gardiner passed in front of the cage and put his hand through the bars to stroke the animal’s head. With a savage snarl the lion seized the hand and tugged the keeper’s arm through between the bars into the cage. “I wa s walking with Gardiner,’ said Henrv Foster, another keeper, on Tuesday, '“when the lion caught hold of him 'without any warning. The beast bit into the arm, and poor Gardiner cried out in agony. "With an iron hoe which I had in my hand I belabored the lion about the nose and head until he let go, and we dragged Gardiner away. Prince has always been a good-temper-ed animal up till now, and we have often stroked him before, and he has seemed to like it. The lion’s food was in the cage, and my idea is that when Gardiner put his hand in Prince thought the meat was to be taken from him.” For over an hour Gardiner was under an anaesthetic at the hospital while the severed tendons and arteries of the arm wero being joined.