Elsa the lioness cubs. Elsa the lioness Elsa the lioness ( 28 January 195624 January 1961) was a female lion raised along with her sisters "Big One" and "Lustica" by game warden George Adamson and his wife Joy Adamson after they were orphaned at only a few weeks old. Though her two sisters eventually went to the Netherlands' Rotterdam Zoo, Elsa was trained by the Adamsons to survive on her own, and was eventually released into the wild. Her story is told in several books by the Adamsons, as well as the 1966 motion picture "Born Free". Elsa and her sisters were orphaned
Bartlett Adamson Bartlett Adamson George Ernest “Bartlett” Adamson (22 December 1884 – 4 November 1951) was an Australian journalist, poet, author and political activist. Adamson was born at Cascade, Ringarooma, Tasmania, on 22 December 1884 to a Scottish miner, George Adamson, and his English wife, Jane, nee Bartlett. He was educated at Zeehan and Dundas and then worked as a clerk at a mine. The family moved to New Zealand where he worked as a clerk with publishers Whitcomb and Tombs in Wellington. He was rejected for military service during World War I on medical grounds. He married Scottish-born Mary Anne McLachlan