Francis Stewart Briggs

Francis Stewart Briggs
Edgar Johnston and Frank Briggs (on right) when cadets at Oxford in 1916
Born	1897
Died	1966
Service/branch	Royal Flying Corps

Francis Stewart Briggs (18 September 1897 – 21 July 1966) was a pioneering Australian aviator. Frank Briggs learnt to fly with the Royal Flying Corps in the First World War. During the Peace Conference in 1919 he flew delegates between London and Paris and was the personal pilot of Australia's Prime Minister, Billy Hughes. On return to Australia, Briggs flew with C.J. De Garis and in 1922 joined "Jimmy" Larkin's "Australian Aerial Services" (AAS) company, headquartered at Hay, New South Wales. Frank Briggs married Miriam Carter in Hay on 3 August 1926. Later he joined the Shell oil company, taking charge of a new aviation department in Perth.

Francis Stewart Briggs was born in Fort William, India on 18 September 1897. His parents (both widowed) had married in at St Andrew's Church in Calcutta on 30 April 1895. His father, George Howard Briggs, who worked as a (non-musical) Conductor with the British Indian Army in the Bengal Ordnance Department, died in Allahabad of fever on 5 June 1897, three months before Francis was born. After service as governess to the household of the Raja of Dhar (Raja Udaji Rao Puar), Eliza Briggs (née Eldridge) and her son moved in 1909 to Saint Helier, Jersey in the Channel Islands then in 1912 to Adelaide. Before the war, Briggs was a telegraph operator at the Adelaide GPO.

(George Howard Briggs' first wife was Elizabeth Eleanor Sophia Ross, born 5 February 1857 in Umballa, India. They married on 13 September 1883 in Ferozepore, India. She died in Rawalpindi on 26 December 1888. Eliza Eldridge's first husband was Francis O'Hare, an army tailor. They married on 13 May 1883 in Battersea. Francis O'Hare died on 21 March 1892 at Fort William, India.)