Feared by all, from the mouth of the river Blackwater to the anus of England known as the Thames Estuary, talk of the Bobby was always confined to whispered warnings even in the relative safety of a popular tavern. Known to prey on the weak and drunk, the Bobby terrorised the gentlefolk of Essex for over two decades in the mid eighteenth century ensuring its place in local legend. The beast was thought to have been roughly the size of a donkey but larger and ten times as dreadful. Always appearing at night, but never seen as a whole, the beast struck without warning at the unwary traveller, often knocking the hapless victim to the ground in a flurry of ungodly hair and loud snorting only to find that when they arose, bruised and bleeding, all their hay and apples had gone. Of note, from local records it is reported that in 1758 the Bishop of Maldon implored his congregation to stay in their homes between the hours of 6 in the evening and 7 the next day to avoid attack by the apparently ferocious Bobby creature. However it is later reported that the Bishop was taken into custody and then thrown into the sea without trial after it was discovered he had been committing lewd acts upon his own person in the village square late at night. Evidence of the Bobby becomes scarce after 1773 although brief mention is made in a parish magazine late that year of an inexplicably deformed skeleton of a man with four long limbs and an impossibly long head. It is rumoured that the locals found the unidentifiable remains scattered around four mysterious curved metal rods, presumably evidence of the monster’s diabolical strength.
from The Book of Essex Monsters by Prof. Dreg Twedloxx & Assorted Authors (1947)
