"A Sister's Promise" by Pam Weaver

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Butlin’s quick phone call to Skegness proved that because of the damaged cage, the lion had never actually been sent. However, the manager of the Bognor Amusements, Clifford Joste, had already informed the authorities about the missing lion. Not surprisingly, the police immediately made this their top priority. Although he was never a party to deception, Billy Butlin was not slow to see the publicity potential of keeping mum.

When a zealous young reporter called Proctor picked up the story, the News Chronicle had a front-page exclusive. The next day, twenty reporters from Fleet Street arrived in Bognor and light-hearted lion hunts were organised around the Sussex villages.

However, things took a serious turn when John Wensley, a local farmer down on his luck, reported a dead and half-eaten sheep. As soon as Proctor published this story, near panic swept through the area. Terrified parents kept their children indoors and schools closed. Campers and holiday-makers left Bognor in droves, and hoteliers suffered a sharp downturn in takings. And all this at the height of the holiday season.

Billy Butlin realised that the public would only be put at ease if they could see the captured beast for themselves, so he arranged for another lion to be sent from Kent under cover of darkness. When the animal arrived in Bognor it looked bedraggled and was covered in green muck. Butlin told reporters and photographers it had been found in a local ditch. The following day, national newspapers carried pictures of Billy and Rex sitting side by side in one of the dodgem cars on the front pages, and everyone breathed a collective sigh of relief.

The whole thing might have been forgotten except for one thing. The police had spent many hours chasing a non-existent lion and public money had been wasted. As a result, four people were arrested, the reporter Proctor, farmer Wensley, Billy Butlin and Clifford Joste. After a magistrate hearing in October, they were sent for trial at Lewes Crown court.

Back in the day, newspapers reported court cases verbatim, and the 1933 reports of the trial read more like the script of a Whitehall farce. The defendants were accused of conspiring ‘to commit a public mischief . . . and putting the public in fear’ – serious stuff. The court was told of how a policeman on a bicycle was sent to escort sixty girl guides marching from their camp site to the railway station two miles away. Quite what that lone policeman would have done had the lion suddenly appeared out of the undergrowth is a mystery. The national papers carried pictures of a long line of farmers with pitchforks and carrying a fishing net, walking across a field as they searched for the lion, as well as people riding shotgun on the backs of lorries and cars as they roamed the Sussex countryside. There were accounts of a lion eating tomatoes in somebody’s greenhouse but, as it turned out, Rex himself had no teeth at all. Had he been cornered, all the poor lion could have done was gum somebody to death! Even the green muck from the ditch turned out to be distemper, thrown over the animal to make his capture appear authentic.

Eventually, it was proven in court that although the sheep had died, it had been wilfully mutilated by the farmer, and that he and Proctor had colluded together in the hope of making money.

The trial ended with the two men being found guilty of attempting to deceive the public (Wensley was fined £10 and Proctor was fined £30), but Billy Butlin and his manager, Joste, were exonerated and acquitted.

Despite the small setback of a court case, the publicity had the desired effect. Billy Butlin’s popularity grew greater than ever. In the 1960s, he negotiated with Bognor Council to sell the cabbage patch. Using the money as capital, he set up a holiday camp on the thirty-nine acres of an area now known as South Coast World.

In this book, Seebold might have had the same kind of dream as Billy Butlin, but it remains to be seen if he succeeded!

Acknowledgements

With my grateful thanks to all the team at Avon: Raphaella, Katie, Rachel, Maddie, Sarah, Amy, Helen, Ella, Elisha and Kate. I shall miss you dreadfully . . .

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