Description
Queen’s South Africa, 2 bars, Cape Colony, Orange Free State, 5491 Corporal A.G. Elliott, East Lancs Regiment.
Officially impressed: “5491 Cpl A.G. Eliot, E. Lanc: Regt”
Alan Geoffrey Eliot was born in Manchester, Lancashire on 18th October 1879.
He signed up with the local Militia, the 3rd Battalion East Lancashire Regiment aged 18 on 28th August 1897.
His Militia papers note that soon afterwards he joined the full time regiment, “Joined East Lancs Regt 20th September 1897”.
After returning home from South Africa, he married in Barton upon Irwell, Lancashire.
Many years later in 1939, he was noted as a Widowed Book Keeper Engineer, living in Devonshire Street, Manchester.
In 1911 he was arrested for impersonating an Employee of the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway Co in an attempt to get a free season ticket.
Locally the case was known as “THE HALIFAX CASE”
The lengthy article in the Halifax Evening Courier recounts the entire case the title reading:
“HAVE A DRINK!, Remarkable Impersonation Case in Halifax, Man Poses as Railway Official, HOW AN INSPECTOR BECAME SUSPICIOUS”
“Alan Geoffrey Eliot (31) a fair, slender built man, dressed in a good, navy blue suit, and whose address was given as 95 Bromsgrove Road, Ilford, pleaded guilty to 2 charges against him by the Lanc and York Railway Co.”
