Britain was appalled by the pictures. Chained to the spot by shackles around two legs, an elephant cowered when a guy carrying a pitchfork entered her enclosure wearing a mask over his face.The man started to probe the hay on the barn floor, then without warning swung the metal prongs, plunging them into the face of the elephant. The man struck her over the head and then kicked her rear leg repeatedly, so the animal panicked and retreated without trying to strike back.Day after day, the videotape shows the man returning. She made 48 hits overall.

This did not occur in the Far East, where cruel training methods are routinely applied to Indian elephants. This took place in Northamptonshire England. And it was not any elephant: television star Anne was the last circus elephant in the nation.After her experience as a circus animal, Anne the elephant photographed in her present surroundings at Longleat Safari Adventure Park After her time working as a circus animal, Anne the elephant shown in her present surroundings at Longleat Safari Adventure Park

Vets worried Anne was so severely traumatised that they might have to put her down when she was at last rescued. They calculated without Anne herself, though. Grumpy, tenacious, very intelligent, she is a born survivor; her experience motivates activists to ensure no other animal suffers in a British circus.Bobby and Moira Roberts, both in their 70s, were her parents. Showman Bobby had fifteen elephants at the height of his popularity as a ringmaster from a family of circus-folk spanning seven generations to Napoleonic times. He spoke of them as his “girls.” Among them Anne was the last.Anne would have been around four years old when she arrived in Britain, which puts her in her early 60s now. Born in the early Fifties in Sri Lanka, then known as Ceylon, she Bobby says his father, one of Britain’s most well-known ringmasters, paid £3,000, or £90,000 today for her from a mahout who had bred her in prison.

Over a three and a half week period, footage was shot inside an elephant shed at Bobby Roberts showing staff members striking the beast repeatedly.Over a three and a half week period, footage was captured inside an elephant shed at Bobby Roberts showing staff members striking the beast repeatedly.

But animal activists claim that all of the elephants at that time were taken from wild groups, kidnapped by poachers who would follow a herd and kill all the adult females. The poachers would trap their young nuzzling at the dead bodies, trying to revive them, therefore enabling their sale into the European circus trade. Before selling her, poachers would have “broken” her.She would have been refused food and driven into a “crush,” or small enclosure lined with logs. She would have eventually given in and carried out whatever her human captors requested. Although it sounds savage, people considered nothing of keeping wild animals as pets or displays. Offering a menagerie virtually equal to London Zoo, the governor of California and future U.S. president Ronald Reagan visited Harrods, known for stocking not only elephants but tigers, lions, and alligators in 1967.

Reagan wanted to get an elephant. Legend has it that the other end of the phone shop worker asked, “Would that be African or Indian, sir?” Circuses were incredibly popular in the Fifties and the Sixties. Anne shone really brilliantly.Crowds thrashed the streets to see her led off the train and paraded with unusual headgear when she arrived in town. Her most famous move was performing a pirouette by rear-ranging on her back legs.Over a month, members of Animal Defenders International set cameras inside her enclosure to capture Anne’s awful treatment.Over a month, a camera positioned inside Anne’s enclosure by Animal Defenders International captured her awful abuse.

 

Holidaymakers would observe her splashing in the waves as she was let to cavort on the beach with the “girls” at Blackpool. She even appeared in pictures at the Eiffel Tower. The Royal Family liked a circus, and Anne was brought before the Queen who fed her a bun. When a schoolgirl Princess Anne visited the next day, she was let down by the buns running low in the handlers. Rather, she was handed sugar cubes, which the elephant snuffled out of her palm with the tip of her trunk.Bobby Roberts had just three elephants by the turn of the millennium, though: Anne, Beverly, and Janie. Beverly died in 2001: Bobby claimed a public servant had a poisoned apple. Janie passed away a few weeks later from old age and bereavement.Said her owners, Anne did not experience loss. She was a creature born alone. None of this made her the most appealing animal, but her crotchety elderly lady persona seems to be what has kept her going. The circus allowed Anne retire following the deaths of Janie and Beverly, although she continued traveled and posed for pictures.Bobby and Moira hated to be separating from her. They claimed, she was akin to a youngster. Nevertheless, the pair agreed to discuss rehousing her with the RSPCA following intervention by animal rights activists. No zoo would try to mix her with an existing herd in captivity since the older females would view her as a threat and she could be murdered.Two American sanctuaries looked appropriate, but moving her raised serious questions.Campaigners, however, couldn let the case fall apart. Run by Jan Creamer and her husband Tim Phillips, Animal Defenders International (ADI) had been concerned about Anne since 1995 when they first visited the winter quarters of the Roberts’ animals in Polebrook, Northamptonshire.An investigator slipped beneath the fence in January 2011 and surreptitiously placed a small video camera through a hole in Anne’s barn’s wall.She could hardly walk with shackles on two legs. Except when the metal hoops were taken off one leg and fastened around the other, she was practically never untagged. She stayed indoors not going outside.