A short biography of Eve Saville MBE
During the 1920s, when few women attended university, Eve Saville went to Bedford College, London to read English. After a period spent tutoring, she first demonstrated her commitment to social welfare when she joined the Fabian Society, working as a secretary. In 1955, she became the general secretary for the ISTD, where she remained for the rest of her career.
Eve Saville was instrumental, alongside such notables as Drs. Edward Glover, Hermann Mannheim and Emanuel Miller, in establishing the Scientific Group for the Study of Delinquency, which later became the British Society of Criminology. Her reputation was sealed as someone who maintained consistently high standards and this was evident in her involvement with the production and publication of the British Journal of Criminology.
Eve Saville was known amongst her colleagues for her eccentricities, for example, she once journeyed across the former Soviet Union to Vladivostok and was found on board a German ship off the Norwegian coast at the outbreak of the Second World War.
She was awarded an MBE in the 1968 New Years Honours List.
Even in old age, she declined the notion of retirement, preferring to continue her work. Though private in her political views, throughout her life she maintained her belief in penological optimism against penal expansionism.
She died at the age of 78 in 1986.
Click here to view her obituary in the British Journal of Criminology.