Yes, you did read that right. The hijinks-laden escapade of 13 monkeys — all members of a travelling 'jazz band' — really did happen in London, 100 years ago.
The place: Notting Hill. The time: Friday 19 November 1926. Thieves break into the premises of 'amusement caterer' Mr T Murphy on Latimer Road. They're about to get more than they bargained for.
Spying a wooden, coop-like structure, they crack open the door, expecting a hen or two to waddle out. Instead, out pour 13 more-than-cheeky monkeys. The alarmed thieves scarper. So do the monkeys – making for the rooftops, then on to nearby Latimer Road station, where they entrench themselves beneath the railway arches/platform.
The monkeys, by the way, are pro musicians. In town for an engagement at the World's Fair, to be held at the Agricultural Hall on Christmas Eve. Reports do not suggest they take their instruments with them as they flee. (When you're on the lam, a drum kit is not your best friend.)
Keeping up with the rambunctious escapades of the monkeys isn't easy — especially as newspapers give slightly differing reports as to their names, crimes and whereabouts. But in a roundabout way, here is what unfolds:
🙊 From their makeshift Latimer Road lair, the escapees sally forth with all manner of monkey business — frightening old ladies, breaking into homes, yanking off roof tiles, tearing down curtains and making frequent raids on grocers' shops and stables ("One this morning was observed sitting on a horse's back"). Snookums, a cymbalist, helps himself to cigarettes. The drummer, Jennie (or Jenny or Jeannie, depending which report you read), ransacks a local sweetshop, troughing a pound of peppermint creams. She is caught soon after by "an old army man who had been in Singapore and understood monkeys".
🙊 The mood is not so humorous as it is threatening. Any attempt to approach the monkeys is met with a volley of banana skins and nutshells. One monkey finds a tobacco pipe and "puffed this while he gazed with scorn at his would-be captors." Another — or perhaps the same psychotic simian — "clutched at a hammer and brandished it with threatening intent."
🙊 Three of the sax players head to Notting Hill Gate station, where they take up residence and hurl chunks of wood at children.
🙊 "Smart little trumpeter" Issacs lets himself into the bedroom of a Mrs Harris of Mersey Street and her baby, almost scaring the former to death. "Issacs," writes the Province, "has already established a reputation for 'frightfulness' in the area".
🙊 Another monkey plays Santa, by sliding down a succession of chimneys (well it is almost Christmas). A woman taking tea spots the be-sooted monkey on her dresser and faints, the tea tray crashing to the floor. The monkey nicks a slice of bread then scarpers back up the chimney. "Another woman who has lived with her window open for ten years," writes the Courier and Advertiser, "has now nailed it up".
🙊 Reports from startled locals files steadily into police stations: "Latimer Road indeed has an endless supply of jungle tales." Mr T Murphy receives bills left, right and centre for everything from stolen chocolates to broken crockery, It's a wonder he doesn't suffer a nervous breakdown.
🙊 A group of the monkeys (reported as seven, but possibly six otherwise the figures don't add up) get hungry and bored, and are easily lured back to their cages.
🙊 Two more monkeys are captured the next day, as is Issacs.
🙊 That still leaves four: Bimbo, a drummer; cymbal crasher/cigarette snatcher Snookums; Sandy (specialist instrument unknown); and Franko, the band's leader — a dab hand with the baton, and described by the Daily News as "a saxophonist with ambitions for a cabaret career in the West End". Franko is worth over £100, and the show can't go on without him, says Mr T Murphy. A £25 reward is offered for his capture.
🙊 Some 20 people are now part of the hunt for the remaining fugitives: station staff, police, livid shopkeepers, bounty hunters. Traps are set, but the monkeys are wily/quite violent. The press know a good story when they see it. "I went monkey hunting in Notting Hill yesterday," writes an excited reporter for the Daily News.
🙊 Snookums is eventually captured, although not before an acrobatic display around Latimer Road station, which crescendos with him biting the hand of his captor.
🙊 Franko is spotted jumping on the roof of a Paddington-bound train (some say he boards the train), before vanishing into the night.
🙊 Meanwhile, Mr T Murphy receives a telegram from Tom Norman, a travelling showman at the Saracen's Head in Rugby:
Monkey captured here this morning, after doing considerable damage, for which I shall expect you to pay. Am sending him passenger to Euston.
It's Bimbo! In RUGBY ffs! And Norman has managed to bag him up in a sack, and send him back to London. Writes the Guardian: "The monkey, looking cold and crestfallen, struggled vigorously when the guard led it on a chain to the Parcels Office. It took three porters to hold it down while press photographers secured a 'snap'".
🙊 Fears grow that Franko and Sandy may have perished from exposure. But then, on 27 November, the Daily Express reports that Sandy has demonstrated that very morning that such reports are exaggerated, "by sitting on a pile of logs in a wood yard... and hurling lumps of wood at the custodian." Classic Sandy.
🙊 After this, the reports peter out. Was Sandy ever captured? And what became of Franco? We like to think that, as the Lancashire Daily Post suggested, he made it to Paddington and the Cornish Express, on which he journeyed to the softer climes of the English Riviera, living happily ever after. Hard to swallow perhaps, but then so too are the previous 1,000 words.
