Lord Toucan, The Vanishing Earl

Lord Toucan was/is the 7th Earl of Rotherham in the borough of South Yorkshire. The son of the 6th Earl the famous “Safari Park Earl” who in 1952 set up Britain first walk through safari park in Rawmarsh. This park had many strange and exotic animals for the people of Rotherham and its surrounding areas to see. The attractions included a tiger, a pride of 3 lions, 2 pandas, and the first killer whale in captivity in the world. Unfortunately the park had to be closed after only 8 weeks when most of the attractions had been eaten by the local miners, the whale being served with chips at Clegg’s fish shop throughout that September.

When the 6th Earl died, he was on his way to a fancy dress party in a gorilla costume and shot and eaten by a troop of boy scouts outside Rawmarsh working men’s club, in 1982 the new Earl, Lord Jerribone Ildlebeck Spencer was 22 at that time and embraced the tradition of English gentry with gusto.

But Lord Jerribone soon tired of the fox hunting and debutant chasing and began to take an interest in the rapidly growing sport of carp fishing. He commissioned a set of 3 hand made carp rods by Harvey’s of York, the foremost custom rod maker in Yorkshire. Harvey’s rods were hand build by a team of 12 year old Rotherham virgins from the finest carbon available at the time, it was not the price of the carbon that made these rods cost so must but the rarity of 12 year old virgins from Rotherham that meant only 6 rods per year can be produced.

By 1984 Lord Jerribone was starting to amass debts everywhere, he is said to have owed £ 600 to Harvey’s for his latest rods, £ 230 to his local tackle shop, Mitherson’s of Sprottbrough for bait but worst of all he owed £ 450 to Brian “stumpy” Unwin for membership of the Chesterfield boating lake carp syndicate.

Stumpy Unwin was an unsavoury character, with suspected underworld connections, who ran the syndicate. He was a former night watchman at the Clitheroe wooden leg company till it was destroyed in 1977 in a blaze that rumour had that Stumpy had started himself so the crooked bosses could claim the insurance. In a cruel twist of fate stumpy was trapped in the factory by a fallen roof beam and by the time he was rescued his left leg had been burnt completely off. He was rushed to the nearest pub, the “Cricketer’s Arms” and there a local surgeon Lance Winchester performed an emergency operation, but due to the fire there was a shortage of artificial legs so Lance attached a Gunn and Moore No 6 cricket bat to Brian’s torso earning him nickname “Stumpy”.

Stumpy became so proficient at walking with the bat as a leg that the only way you could tell of his impediment was a slight creak in winter and the smell of linseed oil. He resumed a normal life except that he was no longer allowed to play cricket due to the umpire’s inability to give him LBW.

In the summer of 1985 with creditors chasing him Lord Toucan decided not to leave the grounds of Rawmarsh Manor house and spent his time fishing the estate lake, often spending days and nights camped out in an old marquee, dressed as Timmy Mallet in an attempt to fool those were seeking him for payment of debts.

It was September 6th 1985 when Lord Toucan disappeared, he had spent another night on the lake’s bank and when his butler arrived at 8:30 to cook him breakfast of the lord there was no trace. The police were called but remained baffled because there was on one set of footprints to and from the tent, those of the butler, in the early morning dew on the grass.

As the weeks when by there was no trace of the Earl but rumours began to circulate round South Yorkshire, some said that he had fled the county to avoid his creditors, other claimed that “Stumpy” had organised for a hit man to kill the Earl but none of this explained the lack of footprints in the dew. Wild theories were put forward that the Earl had used a series of small helium balloons to float across the grass, whilst others said that a team of homing pigeons had been trained to sewn to the jacket of the hit man and flown his in and out carrying the Earl’s body away with him.

“Stumpy” was interviewed again in 1987 when a pair of multi coloured specs and an Hawaiian shirt was discovered in woods outside Barnsley but these turned out to belong to a Timmy Mallet tribute act and lost after a night out in Wombwell.

To this day the mystery continues and every few years there will be a reported sighting of the missing Earl but as yet none of these have proved anything concrete.

Of the characters in this story only the Earls fate is unknown.

“Stumpy” Unwin died in 1990 in what many believe to have been a mob hit. His death was officially recorded as “misadventure” but there are those who think that he did not accidentally fall backwards on to a bank stick 15 times.

Lord Jerribone’s butler took up residence in his master old tent at the bank side and remained there, awaiting the return of his master, until he died of foot and mouth in 1996.

And final Lance Winchester went on to perform many new breakthrough transplants in the sport/ limb area, including a snooker cue to replace an arm, dominoes for fingers and in his most celebrated operation a homing pigeon grated to the shoulder of a man so he could find his way home after a night drinking with his mates.

Tally Ho!