Sir George Elliot, 1st Baronet

Sir George Elliot 1st Baronet, MP, JP
"Geordie": Elliot as caricatured by Spy (Leslie Ward) in Vanity Fair, November 1879
Born	(1814-03-18)18 March 1814 Gateshead, England
Died	23 December 1893(1893-12-23) (aged 79)
Resting place	Houghton Hillside Cemetery
Occupation	Businessman Member of Parliament
Organization	Conservative Party
Known for	Philanthropy
Children	Sir George Elliot, 2nd Baronet, MP

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).

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.

At the age of 9, living in Shiney Row, he was a trapper boy at Whitfield 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 Whitfield 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.