The amazing tale of 'Tiger' Sarll - you can hardly believe it
One of the delights of any research is stumbling across a story like ‘Tiger’ Sarll’s that is so astonishing you can hardly believe it is true. It is the possibility of this happening which makes us persevere when all we find are brick-walls.
Our picture, taken from the Cheltenham Chronicle and Gloucestershire Graphic for 15 October 1927, suggested an intriguing story ready to be unearthed - we weren’t disappointed. Thomas William Henry Bang Fee ‘Tiger’ Sarll became a soldier, big game hunter, war correspondent, photographer, and showman and we can discover more about his extraordinary life in the online sources here in our Research Centre.
He was born in London in 1882 and he was given the name ‘Bang Fee’ (meaning eagle in Mandarin) because of his family’s connections with the Chinese diplomatic community. At 17 years old he joined the army, possibly inspired by Florence Nightingale, and served in South Africa where he was wounded three times, and acquired the nickname ‘Tiger’ since he growled so ferociously at the enemy.
Until the start of World War 1 in 1914, ‘Tiger’ Sarll travelled the world, working variously as a game hunter, farmhand, gold prospector, actor, cameraman and military advisor. He found time to marry in 1908, not to his childhood sweetheart but her younger sister, much to her family’s anger. Their decision to hold the ceremony in a transparent diving bell in a pool in the London Palladium in order to win a £100 bet probably didn’t improve the situation. In 1910 they moved to Argentina but this didn’t work out as planned so while Thomas moved to Mexico in 1911 as a ‘tactical advisor’ for the Revolutionaries, his wife and young family returned to the UK.
Just before the outbreak of World War 1 ‘Tiger’ reinvented himself as a war correspondent and photographer. Once war broke out first the Belgians arrested him as a German spy, then the Germans imprisoned him as a British agent. Having escaped and returned to England, he rejoined the army with the help of family friend, Lord Kitchener, and ended up as a General Staff Officer stationed in Weymouth and was reunited with his long-suffering wife and children.
Immediately after the war, ‘Tiger' changed career again and imported luxury goods from North Africa. Then he began to source ‘exotic animals’, particularly large reptiles, for zoos and private collectors. Seeing the popularity of ‘animal shows’ in America, he created his own ‘Moorish Bazaar’ which toured the UK between the wars. Although his visit to Cavendish House in Cheltenham was a great success, he had some narrow escapes: during a visit to Reading in 1927 an off-duty police officer rescued him when a python started to swallow his arm.
The outbreak of World War II ended the ‘Moorish Bazaars’ but not ‘Tiger’s’ exploits which included the Dunkirk evacuation and fire watching in the London Blitz. However this is another story to uncover.
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