John Lawrence

In the City of Westminster you find memorials at every turn, and one of them is the John Lawrence statue. This piece of public art honours John Laird Mair Lawrence, first Baron Lawrence, born in Richmond, Yorkshire, in 1811. He died in London in 1879. The statue commemorates both his Indian career and his later work in education.

Lawrence went to India around 1829 and started as a magistrate and tax collector in Delhi. After the First Sikh War of the mid-1840s he became commissioner of the newly annexed Jullundur district. There he subdued hill chiefs, set up courts and police posts, and worked against female infanticide and suttee, the self-immolation of widows. After the Second Sikh War he joined the Punjab Board of Administration. In that role he helped abolish internal duties and bring in a uniform currency and postal system. He encouraged the building of roads and canals. His strictness with money cut the privileges of local chiefs and set him against his own brother Henry, also a colonial administrator. During the Indian Rebellion of 1857 he held the sepoy battalions in the Punjab. He also negotiated a treaty with the Afghan ruler Dost Mohammad Khan. In 1864 he returned as Viceroy and Governor General of India, serving until 1869.

Back in England from 1869, he gained the title Baron Lawrence of the Punjab and of Grateley, Hampshire. Education then claimed him: he became the first chairman of the London School Board, representing Chelsea. He held the chair from December 1870 until December 1873. Look around Westminster and you will find him among the monuments that tell of Britain's nineteenth-century global reach.