Sir William Lawrence, 3rd Baronet


Sir William Matthew Trevor Lawrence, 3rd Baronet JP FSA was an English horticulturalist, hospital administrator and collector.

Early life

Lawrence was born on 17 September 1870, the son of Sir Trevor Lawrence and Elizabeth Matthew. He was educated at Bradfield College and at New College, Oxford.
On 24 February 1908 he married Iris Eyre, daughter of Brigadier-general Eyre Macdonell Stewart Crabbe, CB, and by her had two sons and three daughters. His eldest daughter, Barbara, married Alfred Gordon Clark, a county court judge and crime writer as Cyril Hare, and his second daughter, Anne, was the mother of Rose Gray, of The River Cafe. On 22 December 1913 he succeeded to his father’s baronetcy.

Career

Lawrence had read chemistry at Oxford, and though he only achieved a 3rd class degree he went on to Heidelberg and then Berlin to do a doctorate. He then spent five years at Owens College, Manchester, as a demonstrator and then assistant lecturer in chemistry. But in 1902 he took up one of the new posts of junior inspector with the Board of Education and became a senior examiner in 1912.
However succeeding in 1913 to his father's title and estate at Burford, Dorking, freed him to live a public life, especially in the fields of horticulture, medical administration, and the collection of objects of fine art.
During the First World War he served for a time with the Prisoners of War information bureau. Later he was attached to the Admiralty war staff, and then to the Intelligence branch of the War Office.
Both Lawrence’s father and grandfather had been important figures in the medical world; his grandfather was a pioneering surgeon based chiefly at St. Bartholomew's Hospital and Serjeant-Surgeon to Queen Victoria, and his father chaired the Central Hospital Council and was treasurer of St Bartholomew’s Hospital. Lawrence himself was Almoner of the same hospital, and actually died there suddenly while on hospital business.
Lawrence was also a Justice of the Peace for Surrey.

Horticulture

Lawrence's chief interest, however, was horticulture, an interest he had inherited from his father and grandmother, both horticulturalists of note. He was, among other roles, President of the Alpine Garden Society, an officer of the Ordre du Merite Agricole, a winner of the Victoria Medal of Honour and Vice-President of the Iris Society. Lady Lawrence was also a keen gardener, also winning the Victoria Medal of Honour in her own right.
He was Treasurer of the Royal Horticultural Society at the time of the building of its new hall in Westminster; in 2000 this was renamed the Lawrence Hall after him.