Elliot, Hugh Hislop, military officer, India. Entered military service as cornet, 1849, 1st Regt. Light Cavalry Lancers; lieut., 1853 (or 1852); aide-de-camp, 1854–56, to Lord Elphinstone, governor of Bombay; captain, 1860.

       In March 1852, Elliot joined Lieut. William. Rice of the 25th Regt. Bombay Native Infantry, on Rice's third tiger-shooting expedition in Rajpootana. While stooping to look for tiger prints, EIliot was seized by a wounded tigress and dragged some ten or twenty yards; he was saved by Rice's well-placed shot through the top of the animal's skull. Rice related the incident in detail in his Tiger-Shooting in India, 1857 (pp. 104–109), in which he included a full-page plate with the legend "ELIOT BEING SEIZED." The brief account of the incident that appeared in H.W. seems to be an excerpt from a letter written by Elliot. Either by intent or through typographical error, the H.W. account gives Rice's name as "Grice" and his regiment as the 26th, The Office Book records the item without notation of author or payment.
      Harper's reprinted the item, without acknowledgment to H.W.
                                                                                                       East-India Register

Author: Anne Lohrli; © University of Toronto Press, 1971