2005/078

This collection contains Elliott's photograph album detailing his life in Kenya and Somalia before WW1, a folder of his letters home, his book "Jubaland and its Inhabitants", a pamphlet describing his war grave and a 1908 map of Jubaland used during the course of his Police work. This catalogue was produced with support from the National Cataloguing Grants Programme for Archives

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Francis Elliott was born in Gainsborough, Lincolnshire, on January 1st1881, the son of Rev Canon J. R. Elliott, former headmaster of Queen Elizabeth Grammar School, Gainsborough where Elliott was a pupil. He fought in the Boer War as a 2nd Lieutenant in the 3rd Battalion Lincolnshire Regiment. In 1907 he joined the East Africa Police and in 1908 was made District Superintendent of Police for Jubaland, British East Africa (now part of Somalia). In 1913 he was elected Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society for his research on Jubaland. On the outbreak of WW1, Elliott rejoined the Lincolnshire Regiment, attached to the King's African Rifles. He worked as an intelligence officer against the Marehan Somalis, and was mentioned in despatches. In 1915 Elliott saw action on the border with German East Africa as a temporary Captain in the K.A.R. and on his return was made District Commissioner of Jubaland. Owing to K.A.R. regular troops being deployed elsewhere in East Africa as the war waged on, the defence of Jubaland was left to African police troops working under Elliott. Following suspected errors of judgment in his part, he was killed alongside a number of his men at Serenli on the Juba River on 2nd February 1916, aged 35, during an attack on his station by hostile Somalis, and was buried at Bardera.