Lion in the Garden

The Northern Daily Mail - Hartlepools and Durham Diary - by Commentator

31st October 1958.

My Dad wrote a piece for this publication (our family were living in Bancroft Northern Rhodesia.)

LION IN THE GARDEN

When Mr. Tom Guthrie, of West Hartlepool found a large footprint in his garden, a neighbour assured him it was the spoor of a lion, and the neighbour was right.

It happened at Bancroft Northern Rhodesia, where Mr. Guthrie has been working in copper mines.  His home and a quarter acre of garden is in bush country.

A letter home says of the garden:  “We have bananas the whole year round in profusion …. Pomegranate, guava, mango, pawpaw.

“The paths and stoep (verandah) are also bordered with roses and fern.  Roses grow exceedingly well.

“There is no TV and radio is poor but I feel we are adequatrely compensated …. In this beautiful continent which I have learned to know and love so much.

After an absence of eleven years Mr. Guthrie will be on leave, with a journey home by air, ,for Christmas.

Old Boys of St. Joseph’s and St. Cuthbert’s who would like to look him up, he says, will find him at 1 Mozart Street, from December 9 to mid-January.

There is a letter on The northern Daily Mail letterhead, dated October 31st 1958 in the same plastic sleeve.

T. Guthrie,

Box 492

BANCROFT

N. Rhodesia

Dear Sir,

Thank you for your letter of October 24.  I enclose a cutting of any entry from it in our Diary feature today.  I am also obliged to you for the One Pound donation to charity which we have forwarded to the Hartlepools Workshops for the Blind.  I attach the receipt and letter from the secretary and manager of the Workshops.

Yours sincerely,

W.F. Dines

EDITOR