A life lived to defeat animal cruelty
Oct 17 2007 by David Charters, Liverpool Daily Post
Vicki Moore, animal rights campaigner _158
Tony, who had three children from a brief marriage to a farmer’s daughter in the early ’60s, met Vicki (Lucille) when she was serving the tables in a bunny-style costume at a Southport night-club, where his brother, David, was celebrating his stag “do”.
From a general affection and sympathy for animals, the couple began photographing and filming acts of cruelty at festivals.
Vicki would become an international figure, whose opinions were rarely out of the world’s media.
So it was that on that June day in 1995, Vicki was in Coria, on Spain’s Portuguese border, demonstrating against the howling crowd chasing a bull called Argentina down the streets. She was also researching as usual, particularly for an ITV documentary.
Moments earlier, Vicki had phoned Tony. Throughout the day, she had been enveloped by a mood of foreboding. She had been to many blood fiestas, but she sensed something peculiar. “I don’t know whether to go back or to stay away,” she told him. “I don’t feel it’s safe at all . . . Something is very, very wrong.”
Tony was unsure about what to say. After all, he wasn’t there, so he couldn’t appraise the situation. “I can’t tell you what to do,” he said. “It’s up to you whether you go back or not. You’ve got to make a decision on that I am afraid.”
An hour later, Tony received a call to say Vicki was dead, but a call a few minutes later corrected that: she was desperately ill and expected to die.
She didn’t die then, as we know. But she had numerous puncture wounds and broken bones. But, on regaining consciousness, she wanted to know about Argentina. The bull had been shot. Vicki started crying. She was relieved that his suffering was over, but tears came all the same.
“She had cried for all the bulls still being tortured in Spain,” wrote Matilda, 45.
Although she never fully recovered, Vicki returned to her calling. It was almost as if she was obsessed with the suffering of animals. Perhaps, she knew that she had little time left. For too long she delayed having the surgery to remove a large lump in her stomach caused by the injuries she had received in Coria.
Finally she relented and agreed to an operation. At first she seemed to be recovering well, but there were complications and these led to a haemorrhage.
Tony spent hours holding Vicki’s hand in the Royal Liverpool Hospital. But he had nodded off, still holding her hand. His dear friend left him.
“She’s gone,” the nurse whispered in his ear.
Telling Vicki’s story has meant much to Matilda, the young woman from Munich. She had been involved in animal campaigns, before meeting Tony in Salt Lake City, Utah, where they were independently researching rodeos.
Recalling the day when Vicki was gored, Tony reflects, “There was no reason why she should have been in more trouble than any other time. As one who feels guilty about everything that happens to someone else in those situations, I felt terribly guilty because I didn’t say, ‘don’t go in’.”
Tony, 73, and Matilda are sitting together, a copy of the book in front of them. On the back cover is a photograph taken by Vicki of men holding spears, still dripping with a bull’s blood. She believed in the dignity of life for all creatures.
“She believed that, if we have souls, animals have souls,” says Tony.
“It was not that she thought animals were more important than people,” says Tony. “She just felt that everyone was the same and if a person or an animal was in trouble, she would help them.”
In conversation about the animals, Vicki was not emotional. Her purpose was to film and photograph events, so that the public would see the cruelty involved.
“I had two reasons for writing the book,” says Matilda. “One is that I thought she deserved some kind of book or movie or whatever because she gave it all. The other thing was to get to know her better as a person because when I came here, I saw this admiration from people, whenever you mentioned her name.
“I wanted to know what she was really like because I am surrounded by her things. I live in the same place. I slept in her bed for a while. Now we have a new bed. But I have a scarf that I still wear which was hers.
“I didn’t find it difficult to write about her. I found it interesting because I discovered a completely different person than the public image.
“When I saw her TV interviews I thought that we couldn’t have got along because she seemed too rational. But then, when I read some of her writing and heard a recording of her talking on the phone when the tape was running by mistake, the real person came through. She was different – much kinder, much nicer, much more emotional, more fragile, more vulnerable.”
* LIFE on the Line: The Heroic Story of Vicki Moore, by Matilda Mench, is published by Bluecoat at £7.99.
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