Eyden, a volunteer with the Western Heights Preservation Society, external, said when the tiger first arrived in Dover, it was marched from the docks up to the citadel and about 3,000 people gathered to watch.
One woman “flew into a panic”, he told Secret Kent.
“She fled home and wrote to the colonel saying ‘I can’t leave home because of this, I’m too frightened it’s going to come and attack me’.”
Eyden said seeing a tiger at that time would have been like seeing a “mythological beast or a dinosaur, something you only read about… so to her it was like seeing a monster from the abyss”.
At one stage, the mayor got involved and asked for the tiger to be removed from Dover because people were shopping in Folkestone, Eyden said.