Now! Then! 2024! - Yorkshire On This Day

Excerpt

At three o’clock my two boys, whilst walking in Headingley Lane, observed a dog lying in the road and “behaving very queerly.” The dog followed them into the garden and into the house. My wife being alarmed at the dog’s manner, and by what had been told her by the boys, called my attention to it. I immediately went out, and whilst I was searching for the dog the gardener’s wife brought me her little boy, aged four, who had just been bitten by the dog as it escaped from the garden. As the dog had disappeared we gave warning to the police, who at 6.30 brought word that it had been killed at the Wesleyan College at five o’clock. It seems that the dog had reached the college from Woodhouse Ridge, and had straightway attacked two of the students, who with difficulty escaped being bitten. It next flew at the gardener, who fortunately succeeded in killing it. The dog was a lean, half-starved, young fox-terrier, evidently uncared for. My chief object in writing is to call the attention of my neighbours to the fact that the dog was at large for two hours after the time when the gardener’s child was bitten. Under pressure of the alarm caused by the recent sad prevalence of hydrophobia in man, most praiseworthy and successful efforts have been made by the police of Leeds to sweep off all stray dogs, but I cannot deem that the public are duly alive to the dangers that surround them until public opinion has compelled the Government to enforce far more stringent measures throughout the whole kingdom.

Order the book

Subscribe to the free daily email

To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.

Abbreviations:

• ER: East Riding
• GM: Greater Manchester
• NR: North Riding
• NY: North Yorkshire
• SY: South Yorkshire
• WR: West Riding
• WY: West Yorkshire

Comment

Comment

Something to say? Get in touch

Original

MAD DOGS.-Mr. T. Pridgin Teale writes to the Leeds Mercury:-“As my family and myself have been seriously alarmed by the appearance in my garden and house on Wednesday of a dog which I have reason to believe is rabid, I think it is right to call public attention to the circumstance. At three o’clock my two boys, whilst walking in Headingley-lane, observed a dog lying in the road and “behaving very queerly.” The dog followed them into the garden and into the house. My wife being alarmed at the dog’s manner, and by what had been told her by the boys, called my attention to it. I immediately went out, and whilst I was searching for the dog the gardener’s wife brought me her little boy, aged four, who had just been bitten by the dog as it escaped from the garden. As the dog had disappeared we gave warning to the police, who at 6.30 brought word that it had been killed at the Wesleyan College at five o’clock. It seems that the dog had reached the College from Woodhouse Ridge, and had straightway attacked two of the students, who with difficulty escaped being bitten. It next flew at the gardener, who fortunately succeeded in killing it. The dog was a lean, half-starved, young fox-terrier, evidently uncared for. My chief object in writing is to call the attention of my neighbours to the fact that the dog was at large for two hours after the time when the gardener’s child was bitten. Under pressure of the alarm caused by the recent sad prevalence of hydrophobia in man, most praiseworthy and successful efforts have been made by the police of Leeds to sweep off all stray dogs, but I cannot deem that the public are duly alive to the dangers that surround them until public opinion has compelled the Government to enforce far more stringent measures throughout the whole kingdom.”

329 words.

Tags

Tags are assigned inclusively on the basis of an entry’s original text and any comment. You may find this confusing if you only read an entry excerpt.

• Dog (12) ·
• Encephalitis (1) ·
• 📌Headingley (14) ·
• 📌Hinsley Hall (1), originally Headingley Wesleyan Methodist College (1867), now owned by the Leeds Catholic Diocese ·
• 📌Leeds (235) ·
• Rabies (1) ·
• Thomas Pridgin Teale (died 1923) (4) ·
• Viral disease (1) ·
• Woodhouse Ridge (1) ·

All tags.

Similar

• 21 March 1880: The surgeon Thomas Pridgin Teale tells Leeds fathers to get involved in their children’s early years
• 8 January 1925: Writing to Berkeley Moynihan, Clifford Allbutt recalls surgery at Leeds Infirmary in the 1860s
• 21 March 1890: Following a miners’ strike, an anonymous Yorkshire vicar says that only parliamentary reform will bring industrial peace
• 8 July 1840: Hairdresser John Kitching of Wellington Road, Hunslet (Leeds) misinterprets the disposal by the murderer of the corpse of rag merchant William Rothery in the Aire as the drowning of a dog
• 30 May 1835: Alfred Austin, future poet laureate, “Banjo-Byron that twangs the strum-strum,” is born into rural splendour at Ashwood, 48 Headingley Lane, Leeds
• 26 May 1941: Headingley’s Shire Oak falls, legendary site of Anglo-Saxon local government between Aire and Wharfe
• 31 January 1833: Thomas Tennant, Mayor of Leeds, tells a court how he was mugged on Bank Street on his return from a business trip south
• 14 November 1879: Alemayehu, orphaned son of the deposed Emperor Tewodros II of Ethiopia, dies at the Headingley home of his tutor at Rugby School, Professor Ransome
• 26 November 1980: Following the Headingley murder of Jackie Hill, West Yorkshire Police receive a letter from Trevor Birdsall clearly identifying his friend Peter Sutcliffe of Heaton (Bradford) as the Yorkshire Ripper
• 14 July 1663: Leeds borough returns for the hearth tax, designed to pay for the household of Charles II