Elmhirst, Edward Mars (1915 -1957)

Edward Mars Elmhirst-Baxter was born on 18 December 1915, and was educated at Wellington College and St Bartholomew's Hospital. He qualified as surgeon in 1939, and dropped his second surname by public advertisement. During the Second World War he served in the Medical Corps in the Near East and in Burma. In 1942 he married artist Sheila Dimond (1920-1987). After the war he continued to serve in the Territorials, and was promoted to the rank of Major in 1947. He was surgical registrar at the Postgraduate Medical School (Hammersmith Hospital), and the Central Middlesex Hospital, and senior surgical registrar at Hampstead General Hospital (1951) and the East Suffolk and Ipswich Hospital from 1952. Failing to obtain a consultant post at home he migrated in 1956 to Bermuda, where he began to build a thriving practice. He died in Bermuda on 1 August 1957, aged 41, survived by his wife and five children.
He was well-known for his researches in heraldry, and was offered a position as herald-extraordinary at the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953. He also wrote a book on Merchants’ marks, published posthumously by the Harleian Society in 1959.