.jpg)
When thinking of elephants in the context of the Trendall
family the Indian connection springs to mind. But it seems that the wider family has been
exposed to the anger of the noble beasts slightly closer to home.
The Evening Standard 30 November 1925 reports that an
elephant accompanied by two mahout was walking along the High Road in Whetstone
Middlesex when it was scared by motor
traffic. The elephant was owned by a
company in Tottenham Court Road and was being exported via the London Docks to The
Argentine. The paper doesn’t explain how
the poor creature came to be in North London or why it was going to South
America.. The elephant broke away from
the mahout and caused considerable damage to a local plant nursery and damaged
several cars and many yards of fencing and broke the window of a car
showroom. The breaking glass scared it
further and it made off down a side street (pursued by up to 16 members of the
Metropolitan Police) where it encountered the premises of Trendall and Co, Motor
Engineers. Mr Trendall and his assistant
were forced to take cover in a garage until the rampaging pachyderm, after
several further adventures, sought shelter in a shed. Mr Trendall told the Evening Standard that he
‘had the shock of his life’. The
elephant was eventually recovered and continued his journey after a night in
the shed. One mahout was slightly
injured.
I can’t work out which bit of the family ran this
business. Whetstone had been the home of
a group of Trendalls in the nineteenth century but none are known to have
become involved in the motor trade. In a
trade directory for the following year (1926) the site of the elephant shelter
is listed as being occupied by Trendall and Sheppard , a taxi company. We know that a Frederick Arthur Trendall was
a cab driver as he appeared as a witness in a trial in 1926 but we don’t know
where he lived.
There is a bit more work to do on this one. Let’s hope that this Mr Trendall did not
encounter any greater shocks in his suburban life.
I will update when more is known.
May 2022
Evening Standard 30 November 1925, P 9. Downloaded from Newpapers.com 01 May 2022
.JPG)
