Wartime embarkation leave was always a sorrowful time for serving soldiers 14 days to say goodbye to loved ones and then perhaps never to return home again. Most took it in their stride, but for Gunner Percy Eliott, 34, who had to say farewell twice, once to his wife and once to his mistress, it was all too much.
Eliott spent the first day of his leave, FEBRUARY 3rd, 1942, with his wife, and the rest of it with his mistress Mrs. Lizzie Taylor, 33, in Middleton, Greater Manchester. On February 18th he and Mrs. Taylor were found in the gas-filled room of an empty house. Mrs. Taylor was dead, but Eliott recovered.
Gunner Eliott was sentenced to hang for murder in the failed suicide pact, but the sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. He served just over two years.