Bertrand Dawson, 1st Viscount Dawson of Penn
Member of the House of Lords Lord Temporal | |
---|---|
In office 1 January 1920 – 7 March 1945 Hereditary peerage | |
Preceded by | Peerage created |
Succeeded by | Peerage extinct |
Personal details | |
Born | Croydon, England | 9 March 1864
Died | 7 March 1945 London, England | (aged 80)
Spouse |
Minnie Ethel Yarrow (m. 1900) |
Children | 3 |
Occupation | Physician |
Bertrand Edward Dawson, 1st Viscount Dawson of Penn,
Early life and education
Dawson was born in Croydon, the son of Henry Dawson, of Purley, an architect.[7]
He entered
Career
After graduation he was registered as a Member of the
He held the office of Physician-in-Ordinary to King
Report on the Future Provision of Medical and Allied Services
Dawson was commissioned whilst he was Chairman of the
Titles
In the
He held the office of President of the Royal Society of Medicine from 1928 to 1930 and President of the Royal College of Physicians from 1931 to 1938.[7]
Death of George V
On the night of 20 January 1936, King George V was close to death; his physicians issued a bulletin with the words "The King's life is moving peacefully towards its close."[19][20] Dawson's private diary, unearthed after his death and made public in 1986, reveals that the King's last words, a mumbled "God damn you!",[1] were addressed to his nurse, Catherine Black, when she gave him a sedative that night. Dawson, who supported the "gentle growth of euthanasia",[21] admitted in the diary that he ended the King's life with a lethal dose of morphine and cocaine:[1][22][23]
At about 11 o'clock it was evident that the last stage might endure for many hours, unknown to the Patient but little comporting with that dignity and serenity which he so richly merited and which demanded a brief final scene. Hours of waiting just for the mechanical end when all that is really life has departed only exhausts the onlookers & keeps them so strained that they cannot avail themselves of the solace of thought, communion or prayer. I therefore decided to determine the end and injected (myself) morphia gr.3/4 and shortly afterwards cocaine gr.1 into the distended jugular vein...In about 1/4 an hour - breathing quieter - appearance more placid - physical struggle gone.[23]
Dawson said that he acted to preserve the King's dignity, to prevent further strain on the family, and so that the King's death at 11:55 p.m. could be announced in the morning edition of The Times newspaper rather than "less appropriate ... evening journals".[1][22] To make doubly sure that this would happen Dawson telephoned his wife in London asking her to let The Times know when the announcement was imminent.[5]
When this appeared in The Daily Telegraph a reader wrote in recalling a clerihew in circulation during Dawson's life:[citation needed]
Lord Dawson of Penn
Killed many men.
That's why we sing
'God Save the King'.
Dawson's public stance on euthanasia was expressed later that year when he opposed a move in the Lords to legalise it because it "belongs to the wisdom and conscience of the medical profession and not to the realm of law". In 1986, the contents of Dawson's diary were made public for the first time, in which he clearly acknowledged what he had done—which was described by a medical reviewer in 1994 as an arrogant "convenience killing".[5] His actions have also been described as murder.[6]
Further career
In the 1936 Birthday Honours, on 30 October, he was advanced in the peerage as Viscount Dawson of Penn, in the County of Buckingham[24][25] and remained in the Medical Households of King Edward VIII[26] and his brother, King George VI. During the abdication crisis of 1936 Dawson was believed to have attempted to influence the retirement of prime minister Stanley Baldwin on health grounds, thereby to reduce pressure on the king to abdicate. The account of his close colleague William Evans attempts to clear Dawson of any suspicions in this regard:
Dawson was physician and friend to both parties in the feud that was then taking place between the King and the Prime Minister. That Dawson, although initially inclined to the view that Baldwin should retire, eventually pronounced on the Prime Minister's health from medical grounds exclusively, and uninfluenced by either political or moral considerations, was confirmed through his immediate acceptance of a young medical colleague's opinion that the Prime Minister's heart was healthy, which made Baldwin's retirement on the grounds of his unfitness from heart trouble no longer tenable, so that any attempt to dethrone the Prime Minister on that assumption must fail.[27]: p221
Family
Lord Dawson of Penn married Minnie Ethel Yarrow, daughter of Sir Alfred Fernandez Yarrow, 1st Baronet, of Homestead, on 18 December 1900. They had three daughters:
- The Honourable Sybil Frances Dawson (1904 – 2 June 1977), married on 1 October 1929 David Eccles, 1st Viscount Eccles, and had issue
- The Honourable Ursula Margaret Dawson (1907 – 16 November 1999), married on 10 December 1927 Sir Ian Frank Bowater, Lord Mayor of London, and had issue, including Charlotte Mary Bowater, mother of the actor Damian Lewis
- The Honourable Rosemary Monica Dawson (1913 – 13 June 1998), married on 30 November 1939 Sir John Wrightson, 3rd Baronet (19 June 1911 – 1983), and had four children, including Sir Charles Mark Garmondsway Wrightson, 4th Baronet (18 Feb 1951 – ).
Dawson died from bronchopneumonia in London on 7 March 1945, aged 80. As he had no male heirs, on his death his titles became extinct.[7]
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Footnotes
- ^ PMID 11645856
- S2CID 40426133– via HeinOnline.
- ^ Moore, Sheila (2000). The decriminalisation of suicide (phd thesis). London School of Economics and Political Science.
- ^ "When suicide was illegal". BBC News. 3 August 2011. Retrieved 1 May 2023.
- ^ British Medical Journal, May 1994,308:1445
- ^ a b King George V was murdered, not euthanised
- ^ doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/32751. (Subscription or UK public library membershiprequired.)
- ^ "Munks Roll Details for Bertrand Edward, Viscount Dawson of Penn Dawson". Munksroll.rcplondon.ac.uk. Retrieved 28 February 2017.
- ^ "No. 28992". The London Gazette (Supplement). 1 December 1914. p. 10192.[dead link]
- ^ "No. 31466". The London Gazette (Supplement). 18 July 1919. p. 9240.
- ^ "No. 30546". The London Gazette (Supplement). 26 February 1918. p. 2577.
- ^ "No. 29831". The London Gazette. 21 November 1916. p. 11248.
- ^ "No. 30451". The London Gazette (Supplement). 28 December 1917. p. 84.
- ^ "No. 31597". The London Gazette (Supplement). 10 October 1919. p. 12651.
- ^ "Interim Report on the Future Provision of Medical and Allied Services 1920 (Lord Dawson of Penn)". Socialist Health Association. 27 May 1920. Retrieved 21 December 2013.
- ^ "No. 31712". The London Gazette (Supplement). 30 December 1919. p. 1.
- ^ "No. 33151". The London Gazette. 16 April 1926. p. 2613.
- ^ "No. 33501". The London Gazette (Supplement). 31 May 1929. p. 3665.
- ^ The Times (London), 21 January 1936, p. 12, col. A
- ^ Rose, p. 402
- from the original on 8 October 2016, retrieved 18 September 2016
- ^ PMID 11644545(Subscription required)
- ^ ISBN 9780752483115.
- ^ "No. 34296". The London Gazette (Supplement). 19 June 1936. p. 3995.
- ^ "No. 34337". The London Gazette. 3 November 1936. p. 7023.
- ^ "No. 34306". The London Gazette (Supplement). 20 July 1936. p. 4668.
- ^ Evans W Journey to Harley Street David Rendel, London (1968)
- ^ Debrett's Peerage. 1936.
References
- Biography, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
- Interim report on the Future Provision of Medical and Allied Services (there never was a final report)
- Obituary, The Times, 8 March 1945
- St Paul's School
- L. G. Pine, The New Extinct Peerage 1884–1971: Containing Extinct, Abeyant, Dormant and Suspended Peerages With Genealogies and Arms (London, U.K.: Heraldry Today, 1972), pages 98 and 99.
- Charles Mosley, editor, Burke's Peerage, Baronetage & Knightage, 107th edition, 3 volumes (Wilmington, Delaware, U.S.A.: Burke's Peerage (Genealogical Books) Ltd, 2003), volume 1, page 456.
- Matthew H.C.G., editor, Dictionary of National Biography on CD-ROM (Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press, 1995).
- Bertrand Dawson archive collection, Wellcome Library finding aid.
- G. H. Brown, Obituary, The Roll of the Royal College of Physicians, volume 4, page 446.
External links
- Hesilrige, Arthur G. M. (1921). Debrett's Peerage and Titles of courtesy. London: Dean & Son. p. 268.
- Works by Vis Bertrand Edward Dawson Dawson at Project Gutenberg
- Works by or about Bertrand Dawson at Internet Archive