Pangolin Obituary

The death has been reported of Dame Evadne Manifold-Thrust (b 1906). 

Dame Evadne was an early C20th century Olympian who gained two bronze medals in Club Hurling and Club Retrieval. The present Olympic Games under way somewhere abroad are a poignant reminder of Dame Evadne's altogether more amateur era.

Before her ennoblement, Evadne Thrust, as she was then, supported herself, first as a Stoker 2nd Class on the ill-fated SS Fortinbras (torpedoed, Leeds Liverpool canal 1917) then as part of The Strapping Lasses trapeze team with McFarter's travelling circus. In the days before drugs testing, Evadne often turned up to training clutching a crate of Hinchcliffe's Strewth Brown Ale.

Her marriage to fellow club hurler Sir Jack Manifold (1927) meant that Evadne had to retire. She was a far better hurler than Sir Jack and had no wish to embarrass him.

  

After Sir Jack's sad death, under the wheels of a runaway hearse in 1942, Dame Evadne threw herself into the Campaign for Noisier Hearses, becoming president in 1949, a post she held until her death. Police are investigating the circumstances of Dame Evadne's demise which apparently involved an electric milk float.