Foster, Richard – Daredevil Dick tamed the big cats

Richard Foster (1892-   ?)

GRANTHAM-born Richard Foster became better known throughout Great Britain and Europe as Daredevil Dick the fearless lion tamer.

Educated at Grantham Wesleyan School and King’s School, he joined the family butchers shop run by his father J C Foster, in Watergate.

He enlisted for the mechanical transport unit during the Great War but was wounded-out in 1916 and returned to butchering.

But his heart wasn’t in it and when he saw Bostock and Wombell’s Menagerie was visiting Nottingham Goose Fair, the 25-year-old applied for a job.

Frank Bostock gave him a job looking after the elephants but when Captain Fred Wombell was badly mauled by one of the lions, Dick decided that was the job for him and took over.

He spent 15 years with the circus, mainly with lions, tigers, leopards, snakes and bears.

He had several close encounters and was badly mauled on one occasion and while performing in Southend, lost two fingers to a lion.

He was also a stunt double in several silent films involving the hero fighting with animals.

On leaving circuses he joined Belfast Zoo as superintendant. Even there, he was badly mauled when he was clawed on his arms and legs  as he tried to rescue two leopard cubs, about to be eaten by their parents.

There he had a role in a bizarre story from 1941. Apparently Sheila, the zoo’s elephant, was smuggled out of the zoo at night by another keeper as it was disturbed by the air raids. She kept it in her garage and returned it to the zoo before Dick turned up for work. Although local people knew all about this Dick did not, or perhaps he turned a blind eye.

All went well for 18 months, but then Sheila took off after a dog that barked after her and the unfortunate pachyderm was interned for the rest of the war.

The story was turned into an opera ‘Elephant Angel’ by Scottish Opera which was toured through Scotland and Northern Ireland in 2009, to critical acclaim. So Dick turned up as an opera character.