Sir George Elliot, 1st Baronet, JP (18 March 1814 – 23 December 1893) was a mining engineer and self-made businessman from Gateshead in the North-East of England. A colliery labourer who went on to own several coal mines, he later bought a wire rope manufacturing company which manufactured the first Transatlantic telegraph cable. He was also a Conservative Party Member of Parliament (MP).
Early life
George Elliot - often known in the Durham coalfield as Bonnie Geordie - was born in Gateshead, County Durham, on 18 March 1814, the eldest son of Ralph Elliot, a coal miner and Elizabeth, daughter of Henry Braithwaite, of Newcastle upon Tyne.
Mining career
At the age of 9, living in Shiney Row, he was a trapper boy at Whitefield Pit at Penshaw where underground he would open the doors when the miners came along with the tubs. He used a quarter of his wages here to fund evening classes. In 1831 he was a union leader in a strike over the length of the working day. and in about 1832 he was apprenticed to Thomas Sopwith, a leading Tyneside mining engineer and land surveyor, and was involved in investigating coal resources in the Forest of Dean and surveying the line of the Great North of England Railway between Darlington and York. In 1837 he returned to Whitefield as overman and in 1841 became under-manager at Monkwearmouth pit, and then manager in 1844 at the age of 30. In the mid-1840s he became a managing partner in Washington colliery and in 1845 opened the Usworth mine. In 1848 he was appointed viewer to Lord Londonderry with responsibilities for collieries, railways and harbours - notably the development of Seaham Harbour - and in 1850 bought the Whitfield mine from him.
In the 1860s he acquired further mines in North Wales, Staffordshire, and in Nova Scotia and then in 1863 formed a partnership which bought for £365,000 all the South Wales coal mines of the late Thomas Powell. He then established the Powell Duffryn Steam Coal Co (PDSC) which grew to be the largest coal company in South Wales. He was acting manager of the company until 1877 and extended the business, buying coal mines near Aberdare including the rich coal mine and ironworks of Crawshay Bailey. In 1873, with William Hunter of Sandhoe, he opened Kimblesworth Colliery near Durham.
Elliot was keen to try new mining technologies and was an advocate of improved safety lamps, shaft detaching hooks, and coal-cutting machinery. He held trials on new methods of ventilation and made a major contribution to methods of mining coal simultaneously in adjacent seams. He was closely involved with professional activities in mining, being a founder member of the North of England Institute of Mining and Mechanical Engineers, a member of its council for many years and President in 1868–9. His inaugural address in November 1868 suggested that the various regional mining institutions should amalgamate to increase appreciation of the profession and to affiliate with the Institution of Civil Engineers to improve professional recognition. He was also a member of other professional engineering institutions and unlike some owners he supported the establishment of the Mines Inspectorate in the 1850s. He appeared as an expert witness before several government inquiries, and served on the Royal Commission on the coal industry that reported in 1871 and the Royal Commission on Accidents in Mines that reported in 1886.
Shortly before his death in 1893 he proposed the amalgamation of collieries into a massive semi-public enterprise monitored by the Board of Trade, which would control output, fix prices, pay fair wages, and establish a miners' welfare fund.
Business activities
In 1849 he bought Kuper & Co, a London maker of telegraph cables and wire ropes used in mines and formed a partnership with Richard Atwood Glass as Glass, Elliot and Co. In 1864 this was amalgamated with the Gutta Percha Company to form the Telegraph Construction and Maintenance Company (based at Enderby's Wharf in Greenwich, southeast London), and it was this concern that laid the first permanent transatlantic telegraph cable in 1866. A new company, George Elliot and Co, was set up to take over the manufacture of wire rope at new works in Newcastle and Cardiff.
He supported the development of Newport Docks as an alternative to Cardiff - the Alexandra northern dock in Newport was opened in 1875 - and was one of the promoters of the Pontypridd, Caerphilly and Newport Railway, to give a direct route from collieries to the Alexandra Dock.