In 1904, Hexham, Northumberland, was a hubbub of Victorian commerce, its streets thronged with shops and inns. Whilst its slum areas were rank with the smell of industrial waste and choked with the smoke of mass production, the surrounding woodland and countryside still belonged to a more traditional and naïve world.

The local newspaper, the Hexham Courant, was full of adverts hocking “Dr William’s Pink Pills For Pale People” and evangelical testaments to the miracle of laxatives, but on 10 December 1904 it carried a report with the headline: “Wolf at large in Allendale.” The newspaper reported that during the previous two or three weeks much commotion had been caused amongst the farmers on the higher parts of Hexhamshire, around the village of Allendale.

Loss of livestock had become so serious that many farmers were housing their animals at night.