Dictionary of National Biography, 1912 supplement/Palmer, Elwin Mitford
PALMER, Sir ELWIN MITFORD (1852–1906), finance officer in India and Egypt, born in London on 3 March 1852, was second son of Edward Palmer by his wife Caroline, daughter of Colonel Gunthorpe. Educated at Lancing College, he entered the financial department of the government of India in 1870, and being attached to the comptroller-general's office on 10 Nov. 1871, became assistant comptroller-general. Leaving India, Palmer on 16 Aug. 1885 succeeded Sir Gerald Fitzgerald as director-general of accounts in Egypt where he had already served from 31 December 1878 to 30 April 1879. To Fitzgerald and Palmer 'Egypt owes a system of accounts which can bear comparison with those of any other country in Europe' (Milner, p. 253). He was created C.M.G. in 1888. Next year he succeeded Sir Edgar Vincent as financial adviser to the Khedive, and 'ably and prudently continued his predecessor's policy with 'brilliant results' (ibid. p. 251). He was largely instrumental in the conversion of the privileged, Daira, and Domains loans, and had much to do with the contract for the construction of the Assouan reservoir (Colvin, pp. 285-6). In 1898 the National Bank of Egypt was created by khedivial decree, and Palmer resigned his appointment as financial adviser in order to become its first governor at Cairo. In the same year he became chairman of the Cairo committee of the Daira Sanieh Company, which had taken over from the government the Daira or private estates of Ismail Pasha. In 1902 he was made president of the Agricultural Bank of Egypt, which was an offshoot of the National Bank. Palmer was a shrewd, hard-working man, with long financial training and great knowledge of accounts; he was a specialist rather than a man of general administrative capacity, and his particular faculties were brought into play in developing industrial and commercial enterprises at the time when Egypt began to reap the benefit of administrative reform and engineering works. He was made K.C.M.G. in 1892, K.C.B. in 1897, and held the grand cordons of the orders of Osmanie and Medjidie. He died at Cairo on 28 January 1906. In 1881 he married Mary Augusta Lynch, daughter of Major Herbert M. Clogstoun, V.C, and left one son and two daughters.
[The Times, 29 Jan. 1906; England in Egypt by Alfred (Viscount) Milner, 3rd edit. 1893; Sir Auckland Colvin, The Making of Modern Egypt, 1906; the Earl of Cromer, Modern Egypt, 1908.]