Dr Elliott was a dentist in Tamworth-in-Arden, Warwickshire. His collection of 3,900 shells and 28 notebooks was donated to Coventry Technical College in 1946/7 by his widow and later acquired by the Museum in 1975.

Part of the collection contains 140 species of shell in 96 hand-made boxes. It is called the 'African Collection' because the boxes have been constructed from order cards supplied on the Royal Mail Steamer Ship "African". The order cards which date from 1872 to1878, were used to order alcoholic drinks on board the vessel. Some boxes have also been made out of playing cards. Each box has been carefully labelled in exquisite copperplate handwriting and framed in red ink.

The steamship 'African', built in 1872-3, was initially used on the Mail service Southampton to Cape Town. In 1881, she was transferred to the South African coastal service and four years later, in 1885, she was sold to F. Stumore & Co. in London, but the name "African" was retained. On 15th February 1887, she met her demise, being wrecked in the Red Sea on Ras Abu Madd en-route to Jeddah (information courtesy of the Merseyside Maritime Museum).

This collection is fascinating, not so much for the shells that it contains, but for the way in which they have been stored and their associated history. It is a perfect example of a collection that fabulously blurs the boundaries between natural history and social and industrial history.