Family of 'Eleanor Rigby' will go to burial

Published on Saturday 5 January 2008 19:28

A MINISTER who launched an appeal to stop a real-life Eleanor Rigby from being buried alone is celebrating victory after several of her relatives came forward.

Olive Archer, 83, who bore no children and never married, will be buried later this month with as many as five of her family present.

Her lonely death, of a stroke five days before Christmas, drew comparisons with Eleanor Rigby, the subject of a Beatles song about a woman who was "buried along with her name. Nobody came".

Miss Archer, a former beauty, spent the last five years of her life at Kington St Michael care home near Chippenham, Wiltshire, where she had no visitors.

The Rev Akasha Lonsdale, was so dismayed at the prospect of being the sole witness at the funeral on January 14 in Swindon, Wiltshire, she launched an appeal in her local newspaper on New Year's Eve.

Lonsdale, an interfaith minister, said she was "absolutely delighted" that relatives and old friends had come forward.

"Several of her relatives have contacted me and will be coming to the funeral," she said. "Olive has been compared to Eleanor Rigby and that is an image that really stuck in my mind.

"The response to the campaign has been touching. I hope it can raise awareness of the plight of elderly people. There is a bigger question to be considered here in terms of social services provisions for the old."

Lonsdale's campaign gathered momentum when she found an old photograph of Archer at the home, when she had what she described as "film-star" looks.

Archer lived in the family home in Swindon, looking after her parents until they died.