John Henry Patterson

John Henry Patterson DSO (10 November 1867 – 18 June 1947), known as J. H. Patterson, was an Irish member of the British Army, hunter, author, and Christian Zionist, best known for his book The Man-Eaters of Tsavo (1907), which details his experiences while building a railway bridge over the Tsavo River in British East Africa (now Kenya) in 1898–1899. The book has inspired three Hollywood films: Bwana Devil (1952), Killers of Kilimanjaro (1959), and The Ghost and the Darkness (1996).

In the First World War, Patterson was the commander of the Jewish Legion, "the first Jewish fighting force in nearly two millennia," and has been described as the godfather of the modern Israel Defense Forces. Patterson was born in 1867 in Forgney, Ballymahon, County Longford, Ireland, to a Protestant father and a Roman Catholic mother.

He joined the British Army in 1885 at the age of seventeen and eventually attained the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel and was awarded the Distinguished Service Order (DSO). He retired from the army in 1920. In 1898, Patterson was commissioned by the Uganda Railway committee in London to oversee the construction of a railway bridge over the Tsavo River in present-day Kenya. He arrived at the site in March of that year.

Almost immediately after Patterson's arrival, lion attacks began to take place on the workforce, with the lions dragging men out of their tents at night and feeding on their victims. Despite the building of thorn barriers (bomas) around the camps, bonfires at night, and strict after-dark curfews, the attacks escalated dramatically to the point where the bridge construction ceased due to a fearful, mass departure by the workers. 

Along with the obvious financial consequences of the work stoppage, Patterson faced the challenge of maintaining his authority and even his personal safety at this remote site against the increasingly hostile and superstitious workers, many of whom were convinced that the lions were, in fact, evil spirits, come to punish those who worked at Tsavo and that he was the cause of the misfortune because the attacks had coincided with his arrival.

The man-eating behavior was considered highly unusual for lions. It was eventually confirmed to be the work of a pair of rogue males, who were believed to be responsible for as many as 140 deaths. Railway records attribute only 28 worker deaths to the lions. Still, the predators were also reported to have killed a significant number of local people, of which no official record was ever kept, which attributed to the railway's smaller record.

Various theories have been put forward to account for the lions' man-eating behavior: poor burial practices, low populations of food source animals due to disease, etc. There was a slave trade route through the area, which contributed to a considerable number of abandoned bodies. Patterson reported seeing considerable instances of unburied human remains and open graves in the area. 

It is believed that the lions (which, like most predators, will readily scavenge for food) adapted to this abundant, accessible food supply and eventually turned to humans as their primary food source. A modern analysis shows one of the lion's skulls had a badly abscessed canine tooth that could have hindered normal hunting behavior. However, this hypothesis accounts for the behavior of only one of the lions involved, and Patterson himself had disclaimed such theories, saying he had damaged the lion's tooth himself.