Edwin Holmes was born in Yorkshire, the son of the owner of a small building firm. He went to the local school and in 1914 joined the army as a private soldier and when fighting in the trenches in France was wounded and sent back to England. Subsequently he was given a grant and entered the medical school at Leeds and graduated MB ChB in 1923, also taking the Conjoint Diploma the same year. After junior hospital appointments he was appointed surgical registrar and tutor at the General Infirmary at Leeds and was greatly influenced by Berkeley Moynihan. During that time he met Miss Doris Carter who was a nurse at the Infirmary and they were married. In 1928 he obtained the FRCS and in 1929 he went to Baghdad and took charge of the department of gynaecology and obstetrics in the Royal Hospital, and was a lecturer in the Medical College of Iraq, remaining there till 1933 when he spent some months in the Persian Gulf working for the Anglo-Persian Oil Company. In 1935 he returned to the United Kingdom and settled in general practice in Lancaster, but in 1936, having obtained the MRCOG, he became consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist to the Royal Lancaster Infirmary, and later also to the Queen Victoria Hospital, Morecambe. He was a very hard worker and rarely took any lengthy holidays; much of his leisure time was devoted to reading, with a special interest in archaeology. Medico-legal work also interested him and he was always ready to assist in court cases when a medical report was required. Edwin Holmes had two sons, and a daughter who trained as a nurse at the Middlesex Hospital. After his retirement in 1961 he had a slight stroke, but lived on till the age of 72 and died of a pulmonary embolism on 6 July 1967. His wife and family survived him.