A MAN OF THE CHELLEAN PERIOD 179 
The discovery was made late in September 1888. 
The first evidence I am to cite is a letter from Mr Robert 
Elliott 1 — a printer by trade, but an enthusiastic collector 
of everything relating to prehistoric times — to Mr E. T. 
Newton, the letter being written when Mr Newton was 
preparing for publication a descriptive account^ of the 
Galley Hill man in 1894 — six years after the actual 
discovery : — 
"According to my promise, I write to let you 
know the particulars of my find of human remains in 
undisturbed gravel, capping the chalk, at the top of 
Galley Hill, in Kent, at the end of September 1888. 
" It was my custom to visit the pits at Milton 
Street, Swanscombe, Galley Hill, and neighbouring 
excavations every fortnight regularly (in search of 
flint implements) for more than two years before 
the discovery of the human remains — so that I was 
well acquainted with the fact beforehand. 
" It was on one of my fortnightly visits that I 
was informed by a man, named Jack Allsop (who had 
for a long time looked out and saved for me any 
implements or stones of similar shape, obtained while 
screening the ballast), that he had found a skull 
under the gravel. This I could hardly credit at 
first ; but on my asking him to show it to me, he 
produced it in several pieces from the base of a pillar 
of laminated clay and sand, where he had hidden 
it. 1 asked where the rest of the bones were. He 
pointed to the section opposite this pillar, and a few 
feet from it, and told me that he had left the other 
bones undisturbed for me to see ; and there, sure 
enough, about 2 feet from the top of the chalk and 
8 feet from the top of the gravel, portions of bone 
' Mr Elliott died, at the aj^e of seventy, in 1909. He was a Scot— one of 
the " black ^' Elliotts from the border country. In his old age he fell into 
financial straits, and had not Dr Frank Corner, at great personal sacrifice, 
rescued the Galley Hill and other specimens, they would have passed 
into a Continental museum. 
- See Quart. Journ. Gcol. Soc, 1895, vol. li. p. 505. 
