Dr James Gunson Lawn, OBE

Following on from my previous post about the Lawns in Dalton in Furness, is the story of James Gunson Lawn b 4 January 1868 , the only surviving son of John Webster and Eleanor née Gunson Lawn.

James Gunson Lawn was by all accounts a brilliant young man, but he had his share of sadness in his private life which is glossed over in biographies of his professional life. His first wife, Mary Searle, who he married in 1892, was a young school teacher and daughter of an Iron Miner. Together they had four children before Mary died aged about 35, not long after their youngest was born¹:

• Marjorie, b 1893, in Whitehall, Cumberland
• ‘Jack’ John Gunson b 1894, Wandsworth, Surrey
• ‘Laurie’ Laurence b 1898 in Kimberley, South Africa, and
• Brian Gunson b 1905 in Johannesburg, South Africa.

During this time (1899-1902) there was a lot of conflict in South Africa; and James was under siege from the Boers in Kimberley. In letters to his parents, now held by Bristol University he gives an account of conditions, including diet and weapons used. He sent his family to Stellenbosch to avoid the fighting during the Second Boer War.

James Gunson Lawn’s career has been documented in the Database of Southern African Science. The following is an excerpt from their website:

James G. Lawn, mining engineer, educationist and company director, was the son of John Webster Lawn, a mine manager, and his wife Eleanor. After completing his schooling he worked under his father in the iron ore mines of northern England for six years before entering the Royal School of Mines, London, in 1888. Here he distinguished himself by winning the Tyndall Prize for physics and a Royal scholarship (1889), the Murchison prize for geology (1890), the Mining prize of the Department of Science and Art, and the Dela Beche mining medal (1891). Upon completing his studies he became a mine surveyor at the mines of the Barrow Hematite Steel Company in Barrow-in-Furness, Lancashire, in 1891. The next year he was appointed lecturer in mining by the Cumberland county council, and in 1893 became lecturer in mine surveying at the Royal School of Mines. He was an associate member of the Institution of Civil Engineers, and a Fellow of the Geological Society of London. In May 1896 Lawn came to South Africa as the country’s first professor of mining, to establish the Kimberley branch of the South African School of Mines. It opened in August that year, supervised by a local committee under Gardner F. Williams*, general manager of De Beers. At the age of 28 Lawn became its principal and sole teacher until John Orr* arrived the next year. The institution provided theoretical and practical training to students who had passed the two-year mining course at the South African College’s School of Mines in Cape Town. After a year’s training students proceeded to Johannesburg for their fourth and final year before graduating with a diploma in mining engineering. In July 1897 Lawn took his first five students to Johannesburg, where he was elected an honorary member of the South African Association of Engineers and Architects. In January the next year he addressed a special general meeting of the association in Johannesburg on “A South African School of Mines”, explaining the functioning of the institution and requesting support for the training programme in Johannesburg, which had not yet been developed. His address aroused much interest and was published in the association’s Proceedings (Vol. 4, pp. 112-134). Training at the Kimberley School of Mines was suspended late in 1899 owing to the outbreak of the Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902), and after the war, in 1903, the training was transferred to the Transvaal Technical Institute in Johannesburg. Lawn resigned from his post in 1902 to join the Johannesburg Consolidated Investment Company (JCI) as an assistant consulting engineer from the beginning of 1903 to the end of 1906. He returned to Britain in 1907 when he was appointed head of the Mining Department at the Camborne School of Mines in Cornwall, but came back to South Africa in July 1909 as principal and professor of mining at the Johannesburg branch of the Transvaal University College. This institution became the South African School of Mines and Technology in 1910, and later developed into the University of the Witwatersrand. Meanwhile Lawn resigned his post in August 1910 to rejoin JCI as consulting engineer. In 1913 he was a member of the Miners’ Phthysis Prevention Committee and wrote its Interim report… (Cape Town, 1913). During World War I (1914-1918), in May 1915, he was released from his duties for service in the explosives department of the British Ministry of Munitions, for which he was honoured as a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1920. Returning to JCI towards the end of 1919 he became its consulting engineer and joint managing director. From July 1924 to his retirement in February 1947 he represented the company in England as a director and consulting engineer, residing in Shamley Green, Surrey. He then returned to South Africa and settled at Eshowe, KwaZulu-Natal, where he took up plant collecting. Some 2000 specimens collected by him went to the Natal Herbarium. Lawn played an active role in scientific and educational matters during his career. Shortly after his first arrival in South Africa he published Mine accounts and mining book-keeping (London, 1897), a manual for students and mine managers. The seventh edition of this useful work appeared in 1911. He was an examiner in chemical technology, metallurgy, engineering, mine descriptions and economics of mining for the mining examinations of the University of the Cape of Good Hope at various times during 1897-1906, and served on the university’s council from 1897 to 1903. From 1900 to 1907 he was a member of the South African Philosophical Society. In 1902 he became a foundation member of the South African Association for the Advancement of Science and served on its council from 1902 to 1905. In 1903 he became a member of the Geological Society of South Africa, serving as its president in 1923. From 1911 to 1949 he was a member of the Witwatersrand Council of Education. In 1912 he represented the mining industry on South Africa’s first National Advisory Council on Technical Education. When the University of the Witwatersrand was established in 1922 he served on its first council, and in 1933 the university awarded him an honorary Doctor of Science degree in Engineering for his contributions to mining and mining education. He was president of the (British) Institution of Mining and Metallurgy in 1930-1931, and an associate of the Royal School of Mines. Reference: Compiled by C. Plug, S2A3 biographical Database of Southern Africa Science;click here to see the page.

James married for the second time to Mary Beatrice Good around July – September 1908 in Bromley, Kent. Mary, born in 1874 in Stamford Hill, London, was the daughter of a Rope Manufacturer. In 1881, Mary, age seven is living with her father, siblings and an aunt, her father was widowed. By the time of the next census, Mary aged about 17, had left home. She is possibly the Mary Good recorded  en route to Natal in 1902, so perhaps met the Lawn family in South Africa.

Majorie, Jack, Brian and Laurie with possibly Mary née Good², James Gunson’s second wife c1911. Photograph taken in Cornwall. [HLR]

The daughter of James Gunson and Mary née Good,  Genifer Coniston Lawn was born 7 Sept 1912 in Johannesburg. Mary died a couple of weeks later on 24 September from complications following the birth. A note I have remarks “As her mother died when she was born she was sent back to England aged six weeks to live with an aunt until her father remarried six years later”

This next photograph appears to be taken several years after the one above, yet still does not include the youngest daughter Genifer. The photograph was taken in Dalton in Furness.[HLR]

James married his third wife, Grace Thomas in Nottingham in 1918. Grace, born in 14 Dec 1872, was 45, and there were no children of this marriage. They were living at 52 Temple Fortune Hill, Hendon, Barnett, London the following year.

52 Temple Fortune Hill – image by richendasc 

James, Grace and daughter Genifer lived in Surrey for some time; in the 1939 register they can be found at Long Acre, Shamley Green, Wonersh, Guildford, Surrey, with James Gunson Lawn listed as ‘Mining Engineer and Director of Companies’. A few years earlier a report in New Zealand newspaper showed his work was held in wide regard throughout the British Empire:

Professor J. G. Lawn, chairman of the Johannesburg Consolidated Investment Co., Johannesburg, speaking at the annual meeting of the company, said: “The most notable event of the year, and, indeed, the most important event that has ever happened in the history of the gold industry of South Africa, was the increase in the price of gold which occurred towards the end of December last, owing to South Africa being forced to abandon the old gold standard.  Special reference was made to the Rand mines, but Professor Lawn’s remarks on them will be read no doubt with interest by those having confidence in mining development and possibilities in New Zealand.

18th December 1933, Evening Post.

 

The couple returned to South Africa in the late 1940s, and it was there that James Gunson Lawn died on 21 Oct 1952. Grace died three months after James Gunson in Eshowe, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, on 22 January 1953.

His book Mine accounts and mining book-keeping: A manual for the use of students, managers of metalliferous mines and collieries, and others interested in mining, first published in 1901 is still available as second-hand copies and digital versions on-line.

This image of James Gunson Lawn is in the National Portrait Gallery Collection and has been shared by richendasc on 08 Jun 2016 (Ancestry.com)

James Gunson’s children, like their father, were educated and well-travelled; they attended boarding school and university in England. Marjorie never married, Jack studied medicine and became a medical practitioner, as did Laurie and Brian.  Brian also had an interest in translating medieval manuscripts and was a published author: ‘Notes on a seventeenth century almanack originally belonging to Richard Corbett Esq of Elton Herefordshire’ published in Woolhope Club Transactions 1939 and ‘Auctores britannici medii aevi V’. 1979 ( edited) Oxford University Press were part of his legacy. When Ross and Helen Lawn visited the UK they visited Brian Lawn in 1992 and his daughter Shirley. When Brian died in 2001 his books and manuscripts were left to the Bodelian Library, Oxford. Genifer was working as a secretary prior to WWII, then enlisted and served as a WREN from 1941-1944.

Ross Lawn with Brian Lawn on their visit to London in 1992 [HLR]

¹ Presumably Mary (née Searle) Lawn died sometime between 1906 and 1908 in South Africa; so far I have yet to identify a death or burial record; most South African records are not searchable on-line.

² These photographs are unnamed and undated, however the approximate age of the children is a guide to their date. Compared to the earlier photo (see previous post) of the John Webster Lawn family, the woman appears to have a different nose and eyebrows. Very little is known about James’ wives, except for marriage records, and the probate files for his second and third wife which also gives their dates of death.

 

Acknowledgement: Thanks to my cousin Peter Walker for providing the impetus for researching both James Gunson Lawn and his father John Webster Lawn (albiet several months from the original suggestion!) and special thanks for providing newspaper transcripts.

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