What Happened the Last Time a Wild Tiger Went on the Loose in Shanghai? – Clue – It Didn’t End Well

In 1930 or thereabouts a circus visited Shanghai and camped out on some waste land behind the Astor House Hotel in Hongkew. However, security was not all it might have been and a wild tiger, part of the show, escaped and sought freedom in the lanes and alleyways north of the Soochow Creek. It first came to the Shanghai Municipal Police’s attention when it scratched a rickshaw puller who was sleeping next to his vehicle down near the Bund. Not too badly as the puller made it the Central Station (which means he couldn’t have been that badly scratched or alarmed as the Central Station was across the Soochow Creek, over the Garden Bridge and up on Foochow Road – Fuzhou Road if you prefer).

A police officer (called Conning in some accounts – though no officer of that name was ever in the SMP to my knowledge) headed over the wasteland behind the Astor with a nice piece of bloody steak – tied it to a stake and sat back and waited to see if the tiger would appear. The European officer took along a Sikh constable with him. They eventually found the tiger in the Summer House at the Public Gardens on the Bund, what is ow Huangpu Park.

Approaching the Summer House the European officer lobbed in the bloody steak to entice the tiger out and grapsed the rope ready to haul in the beast. Rather than wait and see what the plan was once the copper had a live tiger, that had tasted blood, on the end of a short rope the Sikh officer rather wisely took out his .455 revolver and shot it.

The old Public Gardens on the Bund with the summer house where the tiger lurked to the left of the bandstand