George P. Sanderson

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George Peress Sanderson was born in India in 1848, the son of Rev. Daniel Sanderson, who was a Methodist missionary in India from 1842 to 1867. George Sanderson was sent home for schooling to his father’s family in Cockermouth, Cumbria. He was at the Wesley (Methodist) Kingswood School, Bath, from 1859 to 1863, returning to India in 1864 at the age of 16.

During his employment with the British Government in India he found time for big game hunting which included tigers, elephants and bison. He introduced a novel way of catching wild elephants for subsequent taming and training in forestry work. Instead of trapping elephants in pits, he tried a method of driving herds into a kheddah, a fenced, ditched enclosure. This technique was a spectacular success and in 1889 he organised a demonstration to entertain Prince Albert, Duke of Clarence & Avondale, when he visited India.

G. P. Sanderson wrote a book called Thirteen Years Among the Wild Beasts of India. He died of pulmonary phthisis in Chennai in 1892.

In an article published by the Kipling Society in 1971 it was suggested that "Petersen Sahib, the man who caught all the elephants for the Government of India" in the Jungle Book story, Toomai of the Elephants by Rudyard Kipling, was a reference to George Peress Sanderson.