One of the most frightening and heartless of the Cautionary Tales for Children so memorably versified by that robust Edwardian belle-lettrist, Hilaire Belloc, is about Jim, who ran away from his Nurse, and was eaten by a Lion.

The poem begins innocently enough:

“There was a Boy whose name was Jim;
His Friends were very good to him.”

Among other things, they 

“even took him to the Zoo—
But there it was the dreadful Fate
Befell him, which I now relate.”

Despite all the goodness lavished upon him, it seems that Jim was a Naughty Boy, who instead of staying with his Nurse (Edwardian for nanny or carer) would run off in a crowd. Well, naturally enough he came to a Bad End, in accordance with the inescapable moral laws of all children’s stories at the time, especially stories of the Improving Sort.

“He hadn’t gone a yard when—Bang!
With open Jaws, a Lion sprang,
And hungrily began to eat
The Boy: beginning at his feet.”

The poem gleefully recounts the lion’s feast, without bothering to explain how the lion came to be roaming free in the first place. 

“Now just imagine how it feels
When first your toes and then your heels,
And then by gradual degrees,
Your shins and ankles, calves and knees,
Are slowly eaten, bit by bit.”

Suffice it to say, no one bothers to help poor Jim, although the lion’s keeper, whose physique seems ill suited to the occupation, is sufficiently exercised to attempt to run to the scene, full of puff, arriving just in time to save the boy’s head, the only bit left of him, from being consumed, as the lion slinks obediently back into its cage, “Snarling with Disappointed Rage”. Sad to say, the boy was dead. 

At this, Jim’s parents react with customary Edwardian sang-froid. 

“His Mother, as She dried her eyes,
Said, ‘Well—it gives me no surprise,
He would not do as he was told!’ ”

Lest this be considered a little too emotional, the father is described as “self-controlled” – ie he didn’t even need to dry his eyes. Instead, he takes the opportunity to lecture all the other children (who no doubt flocked to the grisly scene, agog with callous curiosity), urging them to

“attend
To James’ miserable end,
And always keep a-hold of Nurse
For fear of finding something worse.”

The last two lines have become a bit of a meme, but as a moral it seems to go against the spirit of the age, when surely one should be encouraging one’s little empire-builders in embryo to be adventurous and bold, seize the day (and perhaps even several foreign nations) — and not timidly cling to nurse’s apron-strings in case something Nasty might Happen. 

 

I was reminded of all this when I chanced upon one of the cases in The Law Reports in which, just like naughty Jim, a child was attacked by a lion. In Pearson v Coleman Brothers [1948] 2 KB 359*, the plaintiff was a seven year old girl who went with her sister, aged 12, to the defendants’ circus, which was being held in a field. 

The report informs us that the “menagerie” (ie the captive animals made to perform tricks and stunts in the circus for the entertainment and delectation of the crowd, each of whom had paid a shilling for the pleasure) was kept in a “zoo lager” (a sort of enclosure) alongside the circus tent. During the performance the plaintiff “felt the need to relieve herself” – a problem anyone who has looked after young children will be familiar with. Unable to find any lavatory facilities, she decided to leave the tent and look for “a secluded spot” to relieve herself. Unbeknownst to her the secluded spot she picked, after wandering round the outside of the tent and then climbing under a gangway of some sort, was adjacent to the lion’s cage, through whose bars the creature “was able to reach out a paw and maul her”. 

There is probably a bestiary to be compiled of those members of the animal kingdom whose instinctive propensities (ferae naturae or otherwise) have been the occasion of torts of negligence committed by witting or unwitting humans, starting with the snail whose decomposed remains were assumed to have given rise to the foundational negligence claim in Donoghue v Stevenson [1932] AC 562. Suffice it to say that the unnamed lion in the present case may furnish another entry. 

But only because the matter reached a particularly strong Court of Appeal, led by Lord Greene MR, accompanied by Evershed LJ (later to succeed Greene as MR) alongside the admittedly rather more obscure Wrottesly LJ. They reversed the decision of the deputy county court judge at Clacton-on-Sea county court, who had dismissed the plaintiff’s claim on the grounds that she was, in the place where the injury occurred, a trespasser. 

The Court of Appeal held that, far from being a trespasser, the plaintiff (having paid her shilling) was an invitee to the circus and had wandered about not out of curiosity but in a reasonable way in search of a secluded spot to relieve herself, so must be taken to have reached the spot where she was injured pursuant to the original invitation. It was impossible to say on the facts found by the circus judge (as Rumpole might rather aptly on this occasion have called him) that the zoo lager had been sufficiently marked off to show the child that it was a prohibited area. That was no doubt because the defendants did not even appear at the hearing and no evidence was given on their behalf. (Indeed, Greene MR in his scathing judgment says “From beginning to end the defendants have shown a masterly inactivity in relation to this litigation.”) 

The defendants were therefore liable for damages, as keepers of a dangerous beast, for a breach of the duty to the plaintiff to keep the beast so confined as to be incapable of injuring her. 

The report does not go into matters of quantum, other than to record that the amount of damages, if payable, had been assessed by the judge. The last line of Greene MR’s judgment does offer us some peace of mind: 

“It is, fortunately, a small amount because the little girl did not suffer any really serious injury from this unfortunate occurrence”. 

For all I know the lady into whom I hope this little girl grew up without too much more to vex or distress her may even still be alive, and would now be aged around 85. She may even have voted for Clacton’s current MP, a Mr Nigel Farage, who was lionised (as the saying goes) on his occasional visits to the constituency during the last general election, but has made himself oddly scarce ever since (though you could not call him an endangered species). 

At any rate, the fact that Miss Pearson, as she then was, does not appear to have suffered any really serious injury does relieve the residual anxiety I might have felt over writing about her case in a slightly facetious manner. I only wish that Mr Belloc could have treated the matter of Jim’s savage demise with the respect and seriousness it deserved. Frankly, I am scandalised that his parents, for all their phlegm and stoicism, did not rush to the nearest solicitors’ office and issue a writ for damages for the evident negligence of the zoo in allowing a capitalised Lion to wander free of its cage and not only maul, but devour, a small boy, viz their son, who must be assumed to have remained an invitee (the zoo’s entry fee is not mentioned in the poem) even after escaping the grip of Nurse’s hand. Allowing for the evident wealth of the family –

“They gave him Tea, and Cakes, and Jam,
And slices of delicious Ham,
And Chocolate with pink inside,
And little Tricycles to ride…”

– we must assume the prospect of substantial loss of future earnings, though as the boy lacked dependents there would be little claim for loss of dependency. Pain and suffering and loss of amenity must be added, of course: no doubt his severed head could have spoken eloquently on the subject had he not been deprived of lungs and larynx. In short, the claim must not only have succeeded, on the grounds later enumerated in Pearson v Coleman Bros, but the quantum must have exceeded all expectations.

It is, sadly, one of those many Cases That Might Have Been. One day, I hope to write about some more of them. 

[*Hat tip to my colleague Barnaby who found this case and brought it to my attention.] 

Featured image: Illustration, by BTB, from my somewhat browned copy of Belloc’s original Cautionary Tales for Children.