Edward Alabaster was born on 14 April 1893 at Parkhill, Moseley, Birmingham the fifth son of Arthur Alabaster, a manufacturing jeweller, and Catherine Birch. He was educated at King Edward VI School and Birmingham University. When the first world war broke out in 1914 Alabaster was only two-thirds through his medical training; he immediately joined Lady Sybil Paget's Red Cross Unit serving as a dresser in Serbia and Salonika, but in 1915 he returned to England and qualified in 1916. He then joined the RAMC and was posted to Mesopotamia where he remained until the end of the war, with the rank of Captain. He received in recognition of his services the Serbian White Eagle Cross and the 1914-18 war medals. After the war he decided to specialise in ophthalmic work, and took the DO in 1921 at Oxford. Soon afterwards he was appointed surgeon to the Birmingham and Midland Eye Hospital, which he served for over 30 years. He was elected a Fellow of the College in 1948. Alabaster became an authority on the treatment of squint, and he took this as his subject for the Montgomery Lecture in Dublin in 1973. He was also a Richard Middlemore lecturer in 1936 and 1954. Alabaster was the first in Birmingham to perform cataract extraction by the intracapsular method. Among other appointments he was consulting surgeon to the Children's Hospital, Birmingham, and ophthalmic surgeon to the Worcestershire County Council Education Department. In later years he developed an interest in diet and nutrition and lectured on the nutritional background of certain ophthalmic problems. He became President of the Midland Ophthalmological Society. In 1924 he married Margaret Verrinder Sydenham, daughter of Colonel Edward Verrinder Sydenham, DSO, who was a descendant of the famous seventeenth-century Dr Thomas Sydenham. After retirement Alabaster served in National Health clinics, but unfortunately developed diabetes and in 1967 underwent an amputation of a leg. In younger days Alabaster was a keen player of tennis and golf, but his chief interest was always his work. Three months before his death he had to enter hospital for the amputation of his other leg, and he died from diabetes on 13 July 1971 at the age of 78, survived by his wife, son and daughter (Dr A C Alabaster MB ChB).