The images horrified Britain. An elephant, chained to the spot by shackles around two legs, cowered as a man with his face masked by a hat entered her enclosure with a pitchfork.
The man began to poke at the hay on the barn floor, and then without warning lashed out with the metal prongs, stabbing them into the elephant’s face. The animal flinched and recoiled, but made no attempt to strike back as the man beat her over the head and then kicked her rear leg repeatedly.
The videotape showed the man coming back day after day. In all, she was hit 48 times.
This did not happen in the Far East, where Indian elephants are often subjected to brutal training techniques. This was in England, in Northamptonshire. And it was not any elephant: her name was Anne, and she was the last circus elephant in the country, a television star.

Anne the elephant pictured in her current surroundings at Longleat Safari Adventure Park after her time as a circus animal
When Anne was finally rescued, vets feared she was so badly traumatised that they would have no choice but to put her down. But they reckoned without Anne herself. Grumpy, determined and highly intelligent, she is a born survivor — and her ordeal is inspiring campaigners to make sure no other animal suffers in a British circus.
Her owners were Bobby and Moira Roberts, both in their 70s. At the height of his success as a ringmaster, and from a family of circus-folk that stretched back seven generations to Napoleonic times, showman Bobby had 15 elephants. He called them his ‘girls’. Anne was the last of them.
When she came to Britain, Anne would have been about four years old, which puts her in her early 60s now. She was born in Sri Lanka, then known as Ceylon, in the early Fifties. Bobby insists his father, one of Britain’s best-known ringmasters, bought her from a mahout who had bred her in captivity: the price was £3,000, or £90,000 today.

Footage was taken inside an elephant shed at Bobby Roberts over a three and a half week period, showing staff repeatedly hitting the beast
Animal campaigners, however, say all elephants at that time were taken from wild groups, captured by poachers who would stalk a herd and slaughter all the adult females. When their young nuzzled at the dead bodies, trying to revive them, the poachers would trap them, to be sold into the European circus trade. Poachers would have then ‘broken’ her before selling her.
She would have been forced into a ‘crush’, or small pen bordered with logs, and denied food. Finally, she would have given in, and done anything her human captors demanded. It sounds barbaric — but people thought nothing of keeping wild animals as exhibits or pets. In 1967, the governor of California and future U.S. president Ronald Reagan rang up Harrods, which was renowned for stocking not only elephants but tigers, lions and alligators, offering a menagerie that almost rivalled London Zoo.
Reagan asked to buy an elephant. According to legend, the shop assistant on the other end of the phone inquired: ‘Would that be African or Indian, sir?’ In the Fifties and Sixties, circuses were hugely popular. Anne was a big star.
When she arrived in town, crowds lined the streets to see her led off the train and paraded with exotic headgear. Her most celebrated trick was to rear up on her back legs and perform a pirouette.

A camera planted inside her enclosure by members of Animal Defenders International recorded Anne’s shocking treatment over a month
At Blackpool, she was allowed to frolic on the beach with the ‘girls’, and holidaymakers would see her splashing in the sea. She was even photographed at the Eiffel Tower. Even the Royal Family loved a circus, and Anne was presented to the Queen, who fed her a bun. The next day, a schoolgirl Princess Anne came to visit — and was disappointed that the handlers had run out of buns. Instead, she was given sugar cubes, which the elephant snuffled out of her hand with the tip of her trunk.
But by the turn of the millennium, Bobby Roberts had just three elephants; Anne, Beverly and Janie. In 2001, Beverly died: Bobby claimed a member of the public fed her a poisoned apple. A few weeks later, Janie died from grief and old age.
Anne did not grieve, said her owners. She was a naturally solitary creature. None of this made her the most endearing animal, but her crotchety old lady character appears to be what has kept her going. After the death of Janie and Beverly, the circus let Anne retire, though she still travelled and posed for photos.
Bobby and Moira were loath to part with her. She was like a child to them, they said. But after intervention by animal rights campaigners, the couple agreed to talk with the RSPCA about rehousing her. No zoo would try to integrate her with an existing herd in captivity, because the older females would see her as a threat and she could be killed.
Two sanctuaries in the U.S. seemed suitable, but there were grave concerns about transporting her.
But campaigners could not let the case drop. Animal Defenders International (ADI), run by Jan Creamer and her husband Tim Phillips, had been worried about Anne since 1995, when they first saw inside the Roberts’ animals’ winter quarters in Polebrook, Northamptonshire.
In January 2011, an investigator squeezed under the fence and secretly installed a tiny video camera, peering through a hole in the wall of Anne’s barn.
With shackles on two legs, she was barely able to move. She was almost never unchained, except when the metal hoops were removed from one leg and immediately fastened around the other. She did not go outside.

A police officer patrols the Bobby Roberts Super Circus on Knutsford Common, Cheshire, in the aftermath of the Anne the elephant affair

When Anne was finally rescued, vets feared she was so badly traumatised that they would have no choice but to put her down. But they reckoned without Anne herself
All she could do was to shuffle sideways and back, one step in each direction, which she did constantly — rocking back and forth in frustration and boredom. Here was an animal in deep distress.
Anne’s keeper, a 25-year-old Romanian worker named Nicolae Nitu but known to everyone as Jimmy, was assaulting her daily in a series of unprovoked, vicious attacks.
O ver the space of three weeks, he hit her, kicked her, punched her, smashed her over the head with a metal stave, stabbed her in the face and beat her with a broom handle. On several occasions, her arthritic knees almost gave way under the force of these attacks.
At one point, she tried to flee, but the chains held her fast.
Tim and Jan at ADI had reservations about contacting the police since animal cruelty is not regarded as a serious crime by the courts.

Claire Ellicott’s book about Britain’s last circus elephant
So they assembled a record of each of the 48 blows Anne suffered during the weeks of filming, as well as documenting all her keeper’s movements, so he could not claim the elephant had attacked him or forced him to react in self-defence.
Then they contacted the Daily Mail, in the hope of stoking up public interest before making their complaint to the police.
What followed exceeded all hopes. A front page of the Daily Mail in March 2011 carried the headline, Exclusive: Torture Of Britain’s Last Circus Elephant. On an inside page, a headline read: Anne’s Agony. Scores picketed the circus, demanding freedom for Anne. When some of the worst moments from the film were posted on YouTube, Bobby and Moira received death threats, though they insisted they had no idea Nitu was maltreating Anne, and said they would have sacked him.
Their claims were weakened by one moment on the tape, when Bobby made a rare visit to the elephant’s quarters. The animal reached out to him with her trunk as though pleading, and he kicked her away sharply. He claimed he was afraid she would leave a mark on his suit.
Eighteen months after the story was made public, Bobby Roberts was convicted of causing unnecessary suffering to Anne by chaining her to the floor, failing to prevent her groom from beating her and failing to ensure her needs were met.
It was the first time a circus owner had been prosecuted under the Animal Welfare Act 2006. Found guilty of animal cruelty, he was given a conditional discharge, with no fine.
N icolae Nitu fled the country on the day the Mail published the story, and returned to Romania, working as a builder. He cannot be extradited to Britain to face prosecution because the law regards animal cruelty as a minor offence.
Justice for Anne was delivered by the British people, who rallied to her aid, raising £410,000.
Longleat Safari Park offered a temporary haven and have completed a £1.2 million elephant mansion. It features 1,000 square yards of deep sand floors, heated to a constant 18c. Skylights ensure it is always light and there are automated feeding and systems.
With nearly two acres of gardens, a plunge pool and parkland views, Anne is finally living the life of an aristocrat — as befits the oldest elephant in Europe.
She has three goat companions, whom she ignores most of the time.
Outside, there are a collection of toys — her favourite is a plastic ball on a rope. There are scratching posts. And she has plenty to keep her mind occupied, such as a game known as KerTrunk, where she can release nibbles and treats by pulling poles from a large tube (children have long played a similar version with marbles, called KerPlunk).
She has a warm shower every day and her favourite radio station Classic FM is played. At 3.30pm, she has a bale of hay, which she enjoys dunking in water. This is Claridge’s for elephants . . . and she’s got it to herself.
During last year’s General Election campaign, Tory and Labour politicians promised to outlaw the use of wild animals in circuses. David Cameron called it an ‘outdated practice’.
This proposed ban has been supported by many celebrities and actor Michael Sheen, whose great-great-grandmother was a lion-tamer, has written to the PM saying ‘the true spirit of the circus is best illustrated by thrilling performances by human entertainers like clowns and trapeze artists, not by wild animals whose spirits have been broken.’
They say elephants never forget. Neither will this country’s animal-lovers.
n Adapted from Saving Anne The Elephant: The True Story Of The Last British Circus Elephant by Claire Ellicott, published by John Blake.