Robert Elliott-Cooper

Born in Leeds, Yorkshire, on 26 January 1845, he was the only son of Robert Cooper, a stockbroker, and his wife Louisa Lucretia Elliott, younger sister of General Sir William Henry Elliott. He received an education from Leeds Grammar School before entering into a pupillage with the civil engineer John Fraser for whom he acted as resident engineer on railway construction projects in Yorkshire until November 1874. On 30 May 1874 Elliott-Cooper applied for a patent for "improvements in apparatus for locking railway signals and switches, and for locking railway signals and gates at level crossings", this patent was granted provisional protection on 26 June 1874. Between November 1874 and May 1875 Elliott-Cooper was in India inspecting engineering works. In June 1876 he established his own engineering consultancy in Westminster. One of his positions was as consultant to the Regents Canal and Dock Company. Elliott-Cooper became the Crown Agent Engineer for the construction of railways by the government in British West Africa on the death of Benjamin Baker in 1907, a position he held until 1916 and in which role he acted as arbitrator in railway disputes. In 1925 he served as technical advisor to the British Treasury in which role he supervised payments made to contractors under the Trades Facilities Act. He drew up the plans for the widening of Knowle Locks on the Warwick and Birmingham Canal in the 1930s. The ICE recognised his service with election as an honorary member on 22 February 1938. == Volunteer military service ==

On 27 September 1870 he was commissioned into the 1st Yorkshire (West Riding) Artillery Volunteer Corps as a first lieutenant, a rank replaced by that of lieutenant during British Army standardisation in 1871. The 1st Yorkshire (West Riding) Artillery Volunteer Corps was a Volunteer Force coastal artillery unit formed at Leeds in 1860 and armed with 32-pounder guns. Elliott-Cooper was promoted to captain on 5 June 1875 and major on 16 April 1879. He resigned his commission as a major on 27 February 1886 and was permitted to retain his rank and continue to wear the uniform. Elliott-Cooper later returned to the army by serving in the Engineer and Railway Staff Corps, an unpaid volunteer unit which provides technical expertise to the British Army. He was commissioned into this corps as a lieutenant colonel on 6 January 1900. He was awarded the Volunteer Officers' Decoration on 15 November 1904 in recognition of his twenty years service as a volunteer officer. Elliott-Cooper continued in the Engineer and Railway Staff Corps as a lieutenant colonel after that corps' transferral from the Volunteer Force to the newly formed Territorial Force on 1 April 1908. He was made Commandant of the corps on 27 July 1912 and promoted to the honorary rank of colonel. He resigned his commission with the corps on 21 March 1914 and was again permitted to retain his rank and wear the uniform. During the First World War he was chairman of the ICE War Office Committee and of the War Office Committee of Hutted Camps, a service for which he was rewarded with an appointment as Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath on 1 January 1919. == Personal life and death ==

In 1878 at or near Christchurch, then in Hampshire, he married Fanny, daughter of William Leetham, and they had six children: Evelyn, Gilbert, Malcolm, Millicent, Vera and Neville. Fanny died at age 92 in 1948. Neville became a British Army lieutenant-colonel and was awarded the Victoria Cross, Distinguished Service Order and Military Cross. He died in German captivity of wounds received in action during the First World War. He died aged 97 on 16 February 1942 at Knapwood House, Knaphill, Surrey, and his will was proved on 8 June 1942 by his only surviving son and executor Malcolm, his effects being valued at 76,000 pounds which would be worth over 3.2 million pounds in 2015. ==References==