Of all the curios gathered from around the globe by Frederick John Horniman for his Peoples Museum perhaps the most well documented is ‘Emerich’ the museums ill-starred Polar Bear. In the 100 years that the bear has been housed within the museums Taxidermic gallery it has ‘disappeared’ on no fewer than 3 occasions. In 1927 the bear went astray during a New Years Eve party held there by Horniman’s daughter Claudette. The bear turned up 3 days later  in the Museum’s basement covered in tinsel and  a note pinned to it’s behind requesting carriage to the North Pole. Then in the 1940’s the bear went missing again, this time for a much longer period of time; almost 60 years in fact.

However it is the first disappearance of the Bear at the turn of the century that has largely remained  a local mystery, mainly because there was scant reporting of the disappearance at all. According to Peter Horniman, Frederick’s eldest son, Horniman went to great lengths to keep the disappearance as quiet as possible, presumably coming so soon as it did on the heels of the  Hothouse debacle and so soon after the Museum’s Grand Opening.

What little is known about the disappearance comes from the memoirs of Superintendent Lionel  Stanhope who was called to the Museum to investigate the apparent theft of the 4 tonne Ursus maritimus.

Stanhope, himself still reeling from the riots that swept through Forest Hill the previous month, was also keen to avoid any further muddying of SE23’s reputation in the Nationals and both the policeman and the Museum owner appeared to have formed a tacit agreement to conduct any investigation and subsequent recovery of the Bear in as low key a fashion as possible; an agreement which paid off handsomely - resulting in very little ever being known about the disappearance until now.

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