Robert Elliott-Cooper spent much of his career as a railway engineer with projects in his native Yorkshire, India and West Africa.
20 Facts About Robert Elliott-Cooper
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Robert Elliott-Cooper had a long involvement with the British Army's Volunteer Force, serving as an officer in the 1st Yorkshire Artillery Volunteer Corps and later as a technical specialist and colonel he commanded the Engineer and Railway Staff Corps.
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Robert Elliott-Cooper 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.
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On 30 May 1874 Robert 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.
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Between November 1874 and May 1875 Robert Elliott-Cooper was in India inspecting engineering works.
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Robert Elliott-Cooper was appointed a tax commissioner for the City of Westminster and its liberties on 9 August 1899.
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Robert 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.
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Robert Elliott-Cooper was chairman of the Engineering Standards Association committee on steel bridges from 1911 to 1928 and a member of the British Standards committee which established standards for the use of Portland Cement in 1919.
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Robert Elliott-Cooper was elected president of the Smeatonian Society of Civil Engineers in 1923.
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Robert Elliott-Cooper drew up the plans for the widening of Knowle Locks on the Warwick and Birmingham Canal in the 1930s.
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Robert Elliott-Cooper was promoted to captain on 5 June 1875 and major on 16 April 1879.
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Robert Elliott-Cooper resigned his commission as a major on 27 February 1886 and was permitted to retain his rank and continue to wear the uniform.
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Robert 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.
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Robert Elliott-Cooper was commissioned into this corps as a lieutenant colonel on 6 January 1900.
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Robert Elliott-Cooper was awarded the Volunteer Officers' Decoration on 15 November 1904 in recognition of his twenty years service as a volunteer officer.
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Robert 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.
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Robert Elliott-Cooper was made Commandant of the corps on 27 July 1912 and promoted to the honorary rank of colonel.
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Robert Elliott-Cooper resigned his commission with the corps on 21 March 1914 and was again permitted to retain his rank and wear the uniform.
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Robert Elliott-Cooper died in German captivity of wounds received in action during the First World War.
20.
Robert Elliott-Cooper 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.