Lt. Col. JH Patterson’s book has been in continuous print for nearly 120 years, in dozens of editions, and early editions continue to sell from £300-£2000. It has spawned novels, scientific investigations and several films and critiques. It’s subject matter is returned to regularly in news articles, magazines and is to this day a staple of East African tourist journalism.
Even before the book was published, an account in the World Wide Magazine 1 2 describes the construction of the Uganda Railway, firmly located as a triumph of Imperial power which would act as the vehicle by which slavery would finally be abolished in Africa, (see https://spuddybike.org.uk/indian-indentured-labour-the-man-eaters-of-tsavo/).
To construct a railroad of over 500 miles in length, under the most favourable conditions and in the most highly civilised country, is not a task to be lightly undertaken but when a work of such magnitude has to he carried out in the heart of the Dark Continent of Africa the difficulties are well-nigh appalling and, judging by what has been done or attempted by foreign Governments in their African dependencies, only surmountable by British engineers and under British administration.
Adding to this was both the stopping of the slave traffic in the region between Africa and the Middle East, which and the missionary zeal of ‘civilisation’, best summed up by Sir Harry Johnstone.
.. the railway has taught the negro the value of honest work and has saved thousands from death by famine. To the hungry people of East Africa dying from the result of three years’ drought the railway has brought food and shelter, and the Masai who, a year ago, were chiefly engaged in raiding and slaughtering are now working as navies on the line, decently clad for the first time in their lives.
can be read as an adventure, and ‘a book of it’s time’ and despite the condescending descriptions, it is clear that he has some respect for the Indian workforce and the Masai that is lacking from Sir Harry Johnstone.
After the publication of the book, it quickly established itself as the definitive account of Africa at the beginning of the 20th century, building upon earlier colonial travel and adventure texts set in the African continent, as well as those set in the Americas and Asia. 3 Press coverage 4 was fulsome,
No boy’s book of imaginary adventures published this season is likely to make its reader hold his breath more than this modest but veracious record
The Man-Eaters of Tsavo had a large influence on how Africa was perceived in America and Britain. It was especially popular among big-game hunters and “preservationists”, who were interested in taxidermy and creating game-reserves [ibid 3]. This included one of the biggest names in safari expeditions at the time: Theodore Roosevelt5
I think that the incident of the Uganda man-eating lions is the most remarkable account of which we have any record. It is a great pity that it should not be preserved in permanent form
He then went on to set about planning his own safari trip in conjunction with the Smithsonian Institution6 across Africa with the assistance of Patterson, the year long expedition ‘collected’ around 11,400 animal and 10,00 plant specimens.
In 1924, Patterson sold the bodies of the Tsavo lions to the Field Museum in Chicago for $5,000 where they were stuffed and put on display where they remain to this day.
In 1949, the official history of the construction and subsequent running of the railway was published 7. At 600 pages, it does not stint on detail, but indicates that the ‘story’ had been diminished in the public imagination.
The difficulties of building the railway make a fascinating story and one that has attracted a considerable amount of notice in the past, starting with the publication of that most interesting story The Man-eaters of Tsavo, by Lt. Col. J. H. Patterson, D.S.O., one of the engineers employed on the construction. Not so much is known of the trials and difficulties, administrative, financial and political, of making a railway track through the African deserts and bush into an efficient instrument of transport, which formed the basis of White Settlement in East Africa and which has played an important part in two world wars.
Three years later, Hollywood, alighted upon Patterson’s book as the basis for Bwana Devil 8. Mixed in with romance and chisel faced actors and 3-D, it was a runaway success. The Premiere screening was held at Hollywood’s Paramount Theatre, with the tag line “A lion in your lap, a lover in your arms”.
It is notable for sparking the first 3D film craze in the motion picture industry, as well as for being the first feature-length 3D film in colour and the first 3D sound feature in English. The Director, Arch Oboler has been compared to Olsen Welles, though it is difficult to even begin on this particular outing!
In 1953, in what is quite possibly very poor timing, another the film based on the construction of the Uganda Railway, Men Against the Sun9 was released, It tells of a group of white people and the many difficulties that beset them, including that of two man-eating lions. It was produced by Alastair Scobie, whose book of the same name is loosely based on the Patterson book.
In 1965, Ronald Hardy published The Iron Snake 10, about the construction of the Uganda Railway. It was his only work of non-fiction and is written as the Independence movement has come into full swing. It is far more critical of Patterson and the brutality that accompanied the contraction of the railway.
In 1996, The Ghost and the Darkness was released, with a star studded cast including Val Kilmer and Michael Douglas, it was not well received, based on Patterson’s book, but less accurately than Bwana Devil.
In the last 20 years, there was been a series of scientific investigations into the reasons for the Man-eating Lions, which has concluded that, far from ‘having a taste for human flesh’, the predatory behaviour on humans was driven by the changing environment for these top predators in East Africa at the time. As a result of the rinderpest outbreak of the late 19th century which killed 90% of Southern and East Africa’s cattle and buffalo. The outbreak was the most serious epidemic in Africa’s history, killing an estimated 1/3 of Ethiopia’s population. For the lions, it meant that their prey was severely restricted and resorted to other forms of food, the flora of the area, primarily dense thorn shrub was also an ideal habit for ambush for unwitting humans in an unfamiliar environment.
Perhaps a story which is at its heart about the untimely deaths of forty unnamed Indian peasants, and two named Anglo-Indians in a far away country 125 years ago, is really about the resilience of the natural world against human intervention, and that in the end, nature will out.
- Emmett, FW (1901) Curiosities of the Uganda Railway: An account of the Construction,commenced 1896, of the Uganda Railway from Killindini Mombasa to Fort Florence, Victoria Nyanzia. Wide World Magazine: London ↩︎
- The World Wide Magazine was a highly popular periodical of its time, established in 1898 as a companion to the more upmarket Strand Magazine it’s strap-line was “Truth is Stranger than Fiction” and appealed to the imaginative amateur, the armchair adventurer and the reminiscing old-timer. ↩︎
- Man Eaters: the myth of wild Africa. (2017) Kendall, A. Contingent Horizons-The York University Student Journal of Anthropology ↩︎
- The Man-Eaters of Tsavo. Saturday Review of Politics, Literature, Science and Art (London,
Eng.), Oct. 12, 1907:459–460. ↩︎ - The Spectator, 2 November 1907 ↩︎
- Smithsonian African Expedition (1909) ↩︎
- Hill, M.F. (1949) Permanent way: Volume 1: The story of the Kenya and Uganda Railway, Nairobi. East African Railways and Harbours ↩︎
- Bwana Devil ↩︎
- https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0246075/ ↩︎
- The title comes from an ancient tribal prophecy attributed to the Maasai, Kĩkũyũ, Kamba and Kalenjin tribes in Kenya in which a railway is described as an iron snake ↩︎