An Encounter with an Elephant

 

                                            An Indian Elephant - nowhere near Whetstone!

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