Sir William Lawrence, 3rd Baronet

Sir William Matthew Trevor Lawrence, 3rd Baronet JP FSA (17 September 1870 – 4 January 1934) was an English horticulturalist, hospital administrator and collector.

Lawrence was born on 17 September 1870, the son of Sir Trevor Lawrence and Elizabeth Matthew. He was educated at Shrewsbury School 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 (see Lawrence Baronets).

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.

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