Captain Robert Clyde Lawrance

A cabinet card portrait of Captain Robert Clyde Lawrance.

Born on 21 October 1870 at Colombo in Ceylon [modern day Sri Lanka] Robert Clyde Lawrance was the eldest son of Robert Bisset Lawrance, a planter with an estate called Balmoral in Ceylon, and Annie née McLeod.

In April 1900 he was promoted from 2nd Lieutenant in the 3rd battalion of the Seaforth Highlanders (Ross-shire Buffs, the Duke of Albany’s) to the rank of Captain in the 2nd Dragoon Guards.

On 22 April 1902 at St Michael’s in Chester Square, Belgravia, he married Marguerite Elizabeth Batley, ‘youngest daughter of the late William Batley and Mrs Baldiston of Beygholt, Croydon’ (Croydon Chronicle and East Surrey Advertiser, 3 May 1902). Their marriage produced nine children, although only four of these were born alive.

The couple appear on the 1911 census living at Stokeley House at Stokenham near Kingsbridge in Devon with their four young children, a governess and four servants. It is surprising to find them living in the same house, since in 1909 Mrs Lawrance had sued for a judicial separation, stating that her husband ‘is a man who is addicted to drinking to excess, has treated your petitioner with greatest unkindness and cruelty, has frequently abused her and used threats towards her and has on diverse occasions struck and otherwise assaulted her.’ Her petition cataloguing the violence she had suffered makes for particularly grim reading.

Robert Clyde Lawrence died, aged 81, on 12 November 1951 at The Golden House, Minsted, near Lyndhurst in Hampshire, leaving an estate valued at £34,433.

Photographed by Morgan of Aberdeen.