Читать книгу Saving Anne the Elephant - The True Story of the Last British Circus Elephant - Claire Ellicott - Страница 7

Anne was once a big star. People flocked from all over the country to see her and her fellow elephants perform in the greatest show on earth. Crowds lined the streets to greet her as she paraded from the train station to the showground to announce the arrival of the circus in town. Adorned in exotic headgear, she pirouetted and balanced on a tub to the roar of the crowd in the Big Top. Her photo was pasted on billboards and children queued to have their picture taken with her. During an extraordinary life, she met royalty, paraded through the main streets of Europe and performed for heads of state. She lived through the golden age of the Great British Circus when it dominated the television schedules and elephants jostled with brightly-painted clowns and daring trapeze artists for the spotlight. It was a time when tigers jumped through flaming hoops and sea lions clapped for the crowds.

That starry life seemed a very distant memory when I first met the elderly Anne in the metal hangar she called home at her winter quarters in Polebrook, Northamptonshire. Bobby had invited me down the day after the terrible crimes against her were exposed. There was a scattering of hay across the floor and, in one corner, ankles in chains, was Anne. Hearing our approach, she made her way towards us, dragging her severely arthritic leg. Although slow and deliberate, she quickly gathered pace and her eyes twinkled.

Bobby handed me some Warburtons bread to feed her. It was extraordinary to stand next to such an exotic and otherworldly creature in what looked like an agricultural yard in the Northamptonshire countryside. Impatient with me, her trunk darted from my hand to the packet, pinching as much bread as possible.

Standing below her, I was struck by her size and how human her reactions seemed to be. More of a cheeky toddler than an ageing elephant, she is thought, if calculations are correct, to be the oldest elephant in Europe. She survived five decades in the circus performing tricks and, in her later years, was rolled out to pose for photos with children. The year her dreadful suffering was exposed was the first time she had stayed behind at the winter quarters and not gone on tour with the circus. Lonely and constantly chained to the floor, and with just her cruel groom for company, she must have suffered even more.

Unbeknownst to her owners, animal rights group ADI (Animal Defenders International) had planted a secret camera in her barn. They passed the shocking footage to the newspaper. The previous night, I had been sent to Knutsford, Cheshire to find the Bobby Roberts Super Circus on the first night of its tour to give Moira and Bobby their right to respond to our story. When I arrived, the circus was just beginning the evening performance. I was quickly directed to Moira, who was taking money at the gates, and she agreed to speak to me. We went to one of the trailers and Bobby joined us afterwards. I played them both the footage that had been taken by ADI.

During an emotional, and at times angry, interview the Robertses talked to me about their lives with Anne and what she meant to them. Bobby, a short and stout man with heavy greyish-ginger sideburns and thick eyebrows, was indignant and hostile. Wearing his circus outfit – a suit with a white jacket, a black bow tie and a white, spangly waistcoat – he paced and shouted, throwing his hands up in disbelief at what had happened. He had to leave halfway through the interview to continue as ringmaster in the Big Top – the show had to go on. His wife Moira, small and with thick-rimmed glasses, was defiant and proud, not giving any ground. The couple swore that they had never mistreated Anne.

During our interview, I asked Bobby about one scene in the footage in which someone kicks her trunk. The person is off camera and cannot be seen properly. ADI had made an accusation that Bobby had kicked her, to which he responded: ‘It’s disgusting! I have never kicked Anne. They can accuse me as much as they like. She’s part of the family. I’m disgusted.’ He added of Anne’s groom, Nicolae Nitu: ‘He’s going. I can’t believe this has happened under my nose. His duty was to look after Anne. We trusted him and we’d check on her every hour or so. I can’t be there twenty-four hours a day. The boy is going to be fired tonight.’ He even accused ADI of planting the groom who abused her, in order to get Anne out of the circus: ‘The last time I saw this they [the groom] were paid to do this.’ Moira said that the pitchfork used by the groom was plastic and the metal thwacking sounds on the video were dubbed over later. Moira told me: ‘The man will be sacked. Soon as we get back he will sacked on the spot.’

Moira said that they left Anne behind that year because it was bad weather and they left Nitu to care for her. They had been planning to fetch her when the weather improved and her arthritis was bothering her less, she says.

By the time I had arrived at the vast circus grounds the next morning, Nitu was long gone, tipped off somehow despite the story only breaking in our newspaper that morning and him not being able to speak English.

The farm is in the genteel village of Polebrook, which is home to an historic listed hall which was used as a headquarters by the RAF during the Second World War. The Hollywood actor Clark Gable flew missions from the base in 1943. The circus grounds are almost opposite the hall. I arrived not knowing what to expect. The winter quarters looked more like a salvage yard than a circus and a few brightly-coloured lorries were the only clues to its main use. The atmosphere felt hostile and everyone was on edge. Bobby took me to see Anne. Wearing a brown and grey striped cardigan and a black baseball cap with flaps at the side to keep his ears warm, he took me to her enclosure, telling me that she was coming up to sixty. Calling her his ‘old lady’, he told of the last time he saw her before footage of the abuse was released. ‘The vet came past before we left,’ he said. ‘I know every bit of her and she’s fine. There are no marks.’

He told me how zoos would come to him for advice on not just elephants but pigs, horses, camels and tigers, and that he had once trained four tigers himself. When I asked him about the training, he answered: ‘It takes a long time. All people say is it’s cruel to do this. How many people have a dog that will fetch? Even children have to be trained.’ He also said that to protect himself and others, he had to restrain Anne so she would often be chained and kept in her enclosure surrounded by an electric fence. ‘Sometimes we had her on a chain. I had her on one. There is a chain running between all the boards,’ he said.

During the same interview, Bobby also argued passionately that circuses weren’t cruel to animals and that there was nothing wrong with the way animals were treated in them. ‘I don’t think there’s anything cruel [in the circus]. We have a strict code for animal welfare.’ He said that animal welfare officers ‘always come and check. They say to me some of these animals are kept in better conditions than what they are in stables.’ When asked if he would ever consider handing Anne over to an animal sanctuary, he said: ‘If the circumstances were right, I would part from her. But she would pine like I would.’

‘It will break his heart to part with her,’ said Moira. ‘She’d pine away and die.’ But they refused to allow her to go abroad: ‘We won’t let her go to the US because she won’t last the journey. If there’s a sanctuary over in the US, the journey would kill her. We have approached them [the sanctuary]. We have talked about it.’

Bobby added: ‘They’re not going to take an old elephant.’ Moira agreed: ‘She’s an old, old lady now. The vet says she is worn out. We don’t think she could stand the journey. We have spoken about this. Anne’s worked hard for us all her life and we feel like we have to work hard to keep her comfortable.’

While I was at Polebrook speaking to Bobby, the country was waking up to the news of Anne’s sad life. Her picture was on the front page of the Daily Mail with the words: ‘Exclusive: Torture of Britain’s Last Circus Elephant’. Inside, the headline was: ‘Anne’s Agony: Battered, kicked and stabbed, the desperate plight of Britain’s last circus elephant.’ ADI were quoted on the incredible feat that they had pulled off. Jan told us: ‘Poor Anne has been with the circus for over fifty years since she was a baby, having been caught in the wild and torn from her family. Elephants are social and extremely intelligent so this has been a living hell for her. At last we have managed to expose the circus operation for the cruel farce that it is. Anne’s tragic story symbolises the plight of circus animals and is a shocking indictment of the circus.’ Outraged at her treatment, scores of protesters then descended on the circus, demanding Anne be set free.

In the following days, the circus was picketed everywhere it went. Moira said the couple were under siege. She told me she had received death and kidnap threats and had contacted the police, who had taken a statement from her. She also told me that she’d given the details of the groom to the police, but they could not find him. She said at the time: ‘I have emails where our children’s lives have been threatened with kidnap. Bobby has been threatened with being shot. I’m trying to be strong, it’s not easy. The strain on us has been unimaginable. We just don’t know if our nerves can take any more.’

In an attempt to stem the vitriol, the family posted a statement on their website saying that they ‘shared the public’s outrage’. It read: ‘Anne has been with us for fifty-five years, not just as a performing animal but as a family pet. She has been trained through kindness and reward to willingly obey gentle, spoken commands. She is now an elderly lady.’ Next, it addressed Bobby’s ‘unblemished career’ and added: ‘He is deeply saddened that Anne, for whom he has deep affection, and who clearly loves Bobby, should have in any way suffered.’ But the protests, led by the Captive Animals Protection Society (CAPS), continued and followed the circus on its tour.

As a result of the backlash, the Robertses had to erect metal security barriers around the Big Top. Moira said at the time that the girl manning the box office had received death threats. Bookings had also fallen 99 per cent, she added. They were forced to sell heavily-discounted tickets for the two-hour show to those brave enough to make it past the picket lines. Bobby told the Blackpool Gazette when they arrived there: ‘We’ve had death threats, been frightened to let our grandchildren out of our sight.’ He said that at one point a man had phoned to ask how close his seat was to the ring because he had brought a gun to shoot Bobby.

‘We’re not some big corporate with lots of money,’ argued Moira, ‘we’re a traditional family circus. We haven’t had a holiday in forty-five years, we won’t leave our animals for longer than twenty-four hours, we’re up against rising costs and red tape, the worst economy we’ve known, and other circuses going for the same business.’ Days later, she told the Observer: ‘We’ve always been proud of our name, but we feel it has been blackened. As a family we feel finished.’

The RSPCA was deluged by calls from members of the public demanding it check on Anne’s health and sent Tim Bouts, at the time the head vet at Whipsnade Zoo. Questions were immediately asked about whether the Robertses had been giving Anne proper medication to cope with her arthritis, with which she was diagnosed in 2003. David Field, zoological director of the Zoological Society of London (ZSL), which includes Whipsnade, warned that the examination raised ‘major questions’ about the standard of care Anne had received for arthritis. He said: ‘The vet who examined her found that she was a very sick animal with severe arthritis. It is not something that sets in quickly. She will have suffered with this for a long time and we are concerned that she may not have had the correct treatment. Major questions need to be asked about the care she’s received over a prolonged period of time.’

Northamptonshire Constabulary working alongside the RSPCA also began an inquiry into what happened in the video with a view to prosecution.

Meanwhile, there was increasing political pressure on the British government to do something about Anne’s plight and prevent it from happening again by banning the use of wild animals in circuses. Just days after the footage was released in March 2011, actor Brian Blessed, an ADI supporter, marched on Downing Street to demand that Prime Minister David Cameron bring in the ban. He said: ‘The abuse suffered by this elephant by those that claim to care for her is outrageous. I am here today to make my feelings known to politicians and whoever else will listen to bring this appalling suffering to an end. It really is time for the government to do the right thing for these circus animals and finally implement a ban. We have been sitting on the fence for far too long, the suffering is terrible as clearly evidenced in this disgraceful video. It is unbelievable that wild animal circuses still exist in the UK and now is the time for the government to legislate and put a stop, once and for all, to the draconian and humiliating spectacle of wild animals in circuses.’

At the time of the march, more than 100,000 people had watched the ADI footage of Anne being battered, kicked and stabbed on YouTube. The organisation’s public relations man Phil Buckley said at the time: ‘We have had a lot of people phoning us in tears after seeing this.’

When the circus reached Knutsford, Cheshire, the public protests had intensified, and as the workers set up for the day, throngs of protesters numbering around 100 arrived outside the ground. A memorable picture from the time was of Gabriel Ryan, a four-year-old, who was accompanied by his mother. His face painted like a sad clown, he held a sign saying: ‘Animals take the smiles out of the circus.’ His mother, Sally Anne Ryan, said they had travelled from Wales to protest, saying: ‘Having animals in a circus is an economic decision and we think it is cruel and unnecessary. The pictures of the poor elephant illustrated how they are kept and the treatment meted out to them.’

On that day, Wednesday, 31 March 2011, Moira told me that she blamed herself, as she had hired Nitu: ‘I hired the man. I’m responsible. I thought I was a good judge of character. I’m not. I have completely lost all my faith in human beings. I hired him and I should not have done so.’ She also said Bobby had been ‘vilified’ since the footage emerged and had received death threats.

Meanwhile, behind the scenes negotiations had resulted in an agreement for Anne to be moved to Longleat. Moira said of the move: ‘As we had hoped, Anne will go to a retirement home where she will be looked after. We can have access as often as we like and she is going with our blessing. She is not being taken away from us. She is going where we want her to go and this is something we have wanted for the last two years.’

The couple invited villagers from Polebrook to say goodbye to Anne. Small groups went to the circus quarters carrying baskets of fruit as a farewell gesture. A family friend of the couple, who did not wish to be named, said: ‘It’s a sad day for many of us. There have been elephants in the village for sixty years.’ But for the Robertses the pressures weren’t over. ADI announced that they would be pursuing a private prosecution against the couple with the hope that the Crown Prosecution Service would take over, which is what eventually happened.

Finally, after decades of trying, the public pressure on the Robertses had worked and Anne was to be set free. But the next stage was ensuring that she was healthy enough to be moved. Her back leg was in a terrible state and she was old and had suffered for a long time. And the issue of where she might go was being hotly debated. There was a suggestion that she could go to ZSL Whipsnade Zoo, which had an existing herd of elephants she could be introduced to. Sanctuaries in the US offered her a home too. Meanwhile, MPs tabled a motion in Parliament calling on the government to deliver Anne from the squalor and cramped conditions in which she lived. But there were also murmurs about her going to Longleat Safari Park & Adventure Park as a temporary measure so she could have her health checked and tests done in quarantine before any decisions were made about her future.

Following the examination carried out by his vet Tim Bouts, David Field said: ‘Fundamentally, Anne can be rehomed. The biggest and most important thing for her is she needs specialist veterinary care. Her physical state may not be very strong and a quick assessment of her arthritis may show that she is even so bad, she needs to be put down.’ But he also said that everyone was hopeful that she would be moved from the circus within days. Things were suddenly looking up.