The Hexham Wolf of Allendale, Northumberland, 1904

October 1904. A wolf escaped from Captain Bain's private menagerie at Shotley Bridge, County Durham. The Hexham Herald called it a cub, "four and a half months old." At the Shotley Bridge police station it was recorded as "of no harm to man or beast." A few weeks later, the sheep began to die.

It started in Hexhamshire and the Allen valleys of Northumberland, around mid to late November. Sheep were found "with bowels exposed," bitten at the neck and legs. Of one animal, only "head and horns" were left. Accounts put the losses at over 40 sheep.

On 9 December a grey wolf that had just made a "great slaughter of a flock of sheep" was tracked for miles. It escaped. The next day the Hexham Courant ran its headline. "Wolf at Large in Allendale." Farmers began stabling their stock at night.

Witnesses could not agree on what they saw. Some said black and tan. Others said dun, or grey. Then came a sighting behind Allenheads School. An "imposing looking" wolf, "much larger" than Bain's cub.

On 15 December the Haydon Hounds took up the trail, led by "the celebrated bloodhound" Monarch. They found nothing. On 17 and 18 December a party of about 100 searched the hills, then a party of about 200, "half armed." Both failed.

On 20 December Maj. W. H. C. Beaumont MP chaired a farmers' meeting, and a great hunt set out from Hexham. Gamekeepers, farmers, sportsmen and mounted police went along, with "two women with guns, one of them in a blue walking dress." The Hexham Wolf Committee offered £5 for the wolf's skin. Outside hunters arrived, among them W. Briddick, a "skilled Indian game hunter" who promised to find the wolf "on scientific lines."

29 December 1904. Platelayers near Cumwhinton station, by Carlisle, found the carcass of an animal cut in two by a passing train and thrown a distance of 40 yards. The press called it a "magnificent specimen of male gray wolf," five feet in total length and thirty inches from foot to shoulder. A member of the Hexham Wolf Committee identified it as a full grown grey male wolf. A representative of Bostock and Wombwell's menagerie agreed.

Bain inspected the body and judged it too old to be his. On 7 January 1905 the Courant said it did not match the descriptions it had recorded. The Committee said the beast was still at large. In late January a wolf was reported with a snare on its leg. Then the reports stopped.

The debate never settled. Some later writers believe the Cumwhinton wolf was the killer, since the attacks dwindled after it died. In February 1905 Captain Alexander Thompson of Tacoma claimed it was a "malamoot," an Alaskan sledge dog said to have escaped at Liverpool. The taxidermist A. S. Hutchinson confirmed it was a wolf. The clashing colours led some to suggest several animals, or a family group living in the woods.

When a sheep killer struck in Kent in 1905, locals first assumed a wolf because of Hexham. Writers later linked the case to the Hexham Heads of 1971 and 1972, and the half man, half beast reported with them, the beast part said to be a wolf. Since 2014 the Allen Valleys Folk Festival has burned a wooden wolf head in Allendale Market Place each September. A storyteller tells the legend. The crowd howls.