Members of the Society will remember Eve not only through her regular attendance at our meetings but also as a dedicated member of the Committee and for her outstanding work in transcribing and indexing Cambridge College Chapel Registers. She was a very keen genealogist and carried out a great deal of research in the ancestry of the Elkins, her maiden name. A few months before her death she completed a 350-page book tracing the Elkins back to the early 16th century when her ancestors were living in the north Midlands. They were involved in farming and water-milling. It was the link with milling which led Eve to take part in a project to set up a National Millers Index and for some years she operated part of the Index covering the Midlands, the North and East.
She was born in Nottingham 2nd October, 1950, the youngest of three children. She attended the Forest Fields Grammar School in Nottingham where her main academic interests were languages. Reading, especially poetry, became a life-ling hobby together with English folk music. It was in a Nottingham Folk Club that she met her husband, Bari. They married at Nottingham in September 1970.
Both of them worked at the Queen's Medical Centre, Nottingham University, where she was an Office Administrator, in Community Medicine, and Bari, an anatomical preparator in the Department of Human Morphology. They lived at Sneinton not far from Nottingstone Place where General Booth was born.
They moved to the London area in 1977 when Bari became Prosector to the Royal College of Surgeons of England. Eve continued her career in medical administration with the Family Practitioner Committee for the Kensington, Chelsea and Westminster Health Authority being appointed deputy registrar. Their son, Robert, was born in 1985 at St George's Hospital, Tooting.
They left London in 1987, moving to Histon, just outside Cambridge, as Bari had taken a new post as Prosector to the University Department of Anatomy. Eve became immersed in village affairs, including running a playgroup and fund-raising for local schools. She had intended to return to work but in 1989 she developed cancer involving major surgery and several years of further treatment. She triumphed over this, enjoying a number of years of good health but in January 2000 she was found to be suffering from a brain tumour, totally unrelated to her previous illness, which meant she had one year to live. She faced this prospect with great fortitude, carefully planning her time and settling her affairs. She died as the year ended and was buried at All SS Church, Longstanton, 13th January 2001. Two hundred and thirty people were present at her funeral including several members of the Society she had served so well.
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