Back in 1981 I was visiting Hackney and spent a couple of nights in my old flat on the Kingsmead estate in Homerton where I had lived before leaving the Uk. I’d just come back for Christmas and was catching up with my mates.
I was drinking beer when for the first time in my life I heard a police helicopter overhead. A while later the news came over the radio that the police were looking for an escaped bear. The helicopter hovered shining a light over the marsh which was right next to the edge of the estate.
We went out to have a look but were stopped by soldiers with guns. They were completely noncommittal but as people gathered whispers about the bear started to circulate. It was cold, there was snow on the ground, we had beer in the flat. We soon went home.
We woke up late the next day and listened to the news some more.
By this time there was a full scale emergency. Different people had seen the bear. Apparently there wasn’t any connection between them.
London zoo bear keepers had examined prints left in the snow. They confirmed a young adult brown bear was on the loose.
Although I didn’t know it at the time, two adult brown bears had been found many weeks earlier, skinned headless and thrown in the canal.
A bit of the story is reported here https://horridhackney.com/f/the-beast-of-hackney-marshes-1981-2012
For the next couple of weeks into early 1982 I went over there a few times but the soldiers wouldn’t let anyone on to the marsh.
The news reported a big operation to encircle the marsh and then slowly close in around the old filter beds which was the bear’s likely hiding spot. They had to do it carefully to make sure the bear was encircled and didn’t run away. When they got to the middle there was no bear. I guess there was a bit of a panic, but the next report I heard was that it was a hoax. The police admitted they been fooled. The combination of witnesses and bear experts had tricked them
Of course this was bearshit.
They’d spent vast sums of money to trap the bear and failed. They needed to get the egg off their faces and stop looking for a bear that wasn’t there. And reassure the folks that lived nearby. So they propagated the hoax story.
The observant didn’t wear it.
It seems that in Stratford a circus company had winter quarters. And performing animals. Stratford is just across the marsh. It’s where the Olympic park is now.
It might have been them who disposed of their unwanted bears by skinning them and throwing the remains in the river.
They might have been the owners of the bear that escaped and was spotted and reported. And which left footprints in the snow.
They might have recaptured it before the cops and the soldiers closed in on it. It was after all their performing bear. It was probably hungry and they could easily feed it and catch it. It knew no other life. Probably.
It was also worth something. Performing bears would have been valuable assets.
But there definitely was a bear loose on the marshes in east London that winter and it’s now an urban legend.
Rural Reading 