Names on the buses

818 Elaine Baird

Connections with Brighton and Hove : Elaine Violet Baird started her career with the County Borough of Brighton in 1954 as the first librarian in charge of the newly relocated Rottingdean Grange library. However she is best remembered as reference librarian for Brighton Corporation snd East Sussex County Council. Although based in Brighton at Church Street, her influence extended over the entire county of East Sussex. She was widely known and respected in the community and was a Fellow of the Library Association, acting as one of their examiners. Her professional interests lay mainly in Brighton Reference Library’s extensive local history and rare book collections, private press material and in historical bibliography. In the 1980s she collaborated on a book on Sussex smugglers, The Scarecrow’s Legion or Smuggling in the South East. She curated an exhibition at Brighton Museum on Caxton (‘26 Soldiers of Lead’) and delighted in showing visiting WI groups the library’s original Caxton, as well as alarming school groups with the book on witchcraft bound in human skin. On retirement she became a Worthing councillor. Phone to exaggeration, quirky and eccentric, but passionate about her job, she inspired great respect amongst her users, who remember her with affection. She had an encyclopaedic knowledge and love of the area and also had an interest in transport, serving on a highways committee. She died in 2008 aged 88.

818 Mercedes Streetdeck on Route 1 - carried name since December 2016. Route 1 branding removed in November 2020. Repainted into new standard livery June 2021.