Career
After a few different jobs joined the Royal Flying Corps during the First World War. Elvin was shot down over France and was a prisoner of war for two years. He died at sea whilst on a trip to South Africa.
In 1924 He was working at the British Empire Exhibition at Wembley in a cigarette kiosk.
The following year he decided to buy his own shops within the grounds, eight for a total of £100. By the end of the Exhibition he had made over £1000 profit from his shops.
At the end of the exhibition a buildings entrepreneur bought the grounds and Elvin became a buildings demolition contractor to clear the site. He bought the derelict buildings one by one and sold off the scrap. went into liquidation at the end of the Exhibition after it was pronounced "financially unviable".
Elvin offered to buy the stadium for £127,000, using a £12,000 downpayment and the balance plus interest payable over ten years.
After complications following the death of the original owner, Elvin bought at the agreed price with the new owners, (Wembley Company) who honoured Elvin"s original deal. They then immediately bought it back from Elvin leaving him with a healthy profit. In 1934 Elvin opened the doors to a new indoor multipurpose sports arena alongside the main stadium at Wembley.
The Empire Pool and Sports Arena was built for the 1934 British Empire Games.
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The first sport Elvin introduced to the stadium was greyhound racing. Elvin had noted the popularity and success of greyhound racing at the Bellevue race track in Manchester and recognised the sport as a good business proposition.
The dog racing provided the stadium with its main source of regular income, especially in the early days, and continued to attract crowds of several thousand up until the early 1960s. In 1929 Elvin decided he wanted to operate a speedway team from the stadium.
With the help of speedway promoter Johnnie Hoskins, he constructed a speedway track at a cost of £250,000.
Elvin announced that the Wembley Lions would enter the new Southern League. The World Championship was held at from 1936 until 1960 and then seven times more afterwards. The ashes for the speedway track were supplied by Richard Biffa Limited who"s operating base at the time was in Wembley Hill Road.
Richard Biffa later became Biffa Waste Services.
The stadium saw a crowd of 85,000 for the first World Final in 1936 while the largest crowd was for the 1981 World Final when some 92,500 saw the last final held at the great stadium. Foreign one Lions" league meeting in 1948, against the West Ham Hammers, it witnessed a crowd of 85,000 inside and another 20,000 outside unable to get in.
The Empire Pool and Sports Arena was housed two teams, the Wembley Canadians (later called the Wembley Monarchs), and the Wembley Lions. In 1990 he was inducted into the British Ice Hockey Hall of Fame.
