Photo: Rochdale Observer
Caroline Dutton has written in to say that he was her husband’s great-Uncle. Mrs. Dutton has sent in an obituary from the Rochdale Observer 13/04/1918 which reads:
The Rev. Henry Heaton Lawson, chaplain to the Forces, is officially reported to have been killed. He was the son of Mr. and Mrs. W.H. Lawson of West House, The Greave, Rochdale, and in his thirtieth year. Educated at the Rochdale Higher Grade and Secondary Schools he matriculated for the Manchester University and graduated at Manchester, taking his B.A. degree in 1910 and M.A. in 1911. His first appointment was to Woodhouse Secondary School, near Sheffield, which he left for Rutherford College, Newcastle-on-Tyne, where he resigned in order to enter the church.
After a course at the Ripon Theological College Mr. Lawson was ordained in 1914 at Ripon, and appointed curate at St. Andrew's Church, Stourton, Hunlet, near Leeds, where he lived both before and after his marriage with Miss Hettie Earnshaw, the eldest daughter of Mr. Jas. Earnshaw, Sandfield, Hacup, (sic) in Augst 1916. There is one child of the marriage, a daughter eight months old.
At the close of 1916, to join the Army, he voluntarily resigned his curacy and enlisted in the Inns of Court Battalion (O.T.C.) at Berkhampstead, Herts. Subsequently he received a commission as a chaplain, and in July last went abroad in charge of the 2nd Northamptons and the 8th Sherwoods. At the end of last year he had his first leave, and had he lived he would have been again for home on the 15th Inst.
Mr. Lawson was killed instantaneously on March 24th by a shell whilst returning after a day's work with his battalion and amongst the wounded. He was buried on the following morning in a French cemetery outside a ruined village. Writing of Mr. Lawson, the senior chaplain of his division says: "It is not too much to say that in him we have lost one of our keenest and best men, who was liked and respected by all who knew him".
Rochdale Secondary School's toll.
A correspondent writes: The death in action of the Rev. H.H. Lawson, M.A., chaplain to the Forces, brings up to nine the number of 'old boys' of the Rochdale Secondary School who have laid down their lives for the cause of freedom and of righteous dealing as between nations. When one considers that, from a single school, the toll taken by the war includes such lives of promise and achievement as those of Alfred Clarke, Norman Grey, Tom Holt, Wilfred Holt, Elmer Howarth, Ernest Jackson, Willie Standring, and now Harry Lawson, one if well-nigh overwhelmed by the sense of the irreparable losses which the nation has sustained during the last 3½ years. Harry Lawson exhibited the best qualities of a man, a gentleman and a scholar. Brave to endure and fearless in denouncing wrong, he was yet truly gentle and ever ready to give deference to the wisdom and experience of others. He had found time to write a book on the study of English, and had practically completed a work on elementary Latin. The old students' association of the Rochdale Secondary School and Pupil Teachers' Centre (the Alumni Club) owed much to him, for he was not only one of its founders but also the first and highly valued secretary."
Harry Heaton Lawson is remembered in Newcastle on NUT070 and NUT126 page 21
