Great Sheep Panics

The Great Sheep Panic is also known as the 'Great Sheep Panic of 1888' or the 'Mysterious Oxfordshire Sheep Panic of 1888'. It was an event that occurred on 3 November 1888 across southern England, when tens of thousands of sheep fled from various fields across some 520 square kilometers of Oxfordshire.

On the evening of 3 November 1888, at around eight o'clock, thousands of sheep had, supposedly by a simultaneous impulse, burst from their bonds, fields, and dwellings. They had been found the next morning, widely scattered, some of them still panting with terror under hedges, and many crowded into corners of fields, some miles from the fields they had been left in the previous evening.

The Times reported on 20 November 1888 that "malicious mischief was out of the question because a thousand men could not have frightened and released all these sheep." Interestingly, another panic occurred in 1889, in Berkshire (southern England), not far from Reading. Again, on the night of December 4, 1893, another very remarkable panic among sheep occurred in the northern and middle parts of Oxfordshire, extending into adjoining parts of the counties of Warwickshire, Gloucestershire, and Berkshire.

The heavy, oppressive atmosphere accompanying the thick darkness, the susceptibility of sheep to atmospheric disturbances, and their nervous and timid dispositions would all tend to increase the fright the sheep experienced. The cause of the panic being a cloud rolling along so low down as (apparently) to touch the ground, the tops of the hills and the highlying ground would naturally be most affected; and this is observed to be the case, although locally the usual direction followed by thunderstorms has indicated a line along which sheep stampeded on nearly every farm[1].

[1] Author unknown: Sheep panic in Nature - 1921