Thomas Lawrence was born on 25 May 1711 in Westminster, London, the second son of Captain Thomas Lawrence. He was educated first in Dublin, after his father was posted to Ireland in 1715. His mother died in 1724 and his father brought the family to live with his widowed sister in Southampton, who looked after the children. Lawrence continued his education at school in Southampton. In October 1727 he was admitted a commoner to Trinity College, Oxford. He graduated BA in 1730, MA in 1733, and then chose medicine as his profession. He moved to London and attended the anatomical lectures of the physician Frank Nicholls and the practice at St Thomas' Hospital. He graduated BM in 1736, and MD at Oxford in 1740.
Lawrence became anatomy reader in the University of Oxford upon Nicholls' resignation. He remained in this office for several years although he resided in London where he also delivered lectures in anatomy. He took the house previously occupied by Nicholls, in Lincoln's Inn Field. Lawrence became a candidate of the Royal College of Physicians in 1743, and a fellow the following year. He was also Goulstonian Lecturer at the College in 1744. In the same year he married Frances Chauncey, daughter of a physician at Derby, and moved to Essex Street, off the Strand. He was a censor at the College five times between 1746 and 1759, and became registrar in 1747, a position he held for almost 20 years until 1766. In 1748 he delivered the Harveian Oration.
In 1750 Lawrence stopped lecturing, in the face of the overwhelming success of the lectures of the Scottish surgeon William Hunter, and instead devoted himself entirely to general practice. In 1751 he delivered the Royal College of Physicians' Croonian Lectures, and was appointed Lumleian Lecturer in 1755. The following year he published Hydrops: Disputatio Medica, which took the form of an imaginary conversation between the great physicians Baldwin Hamey, Sir George Ent, and William Harvey. Lawrence was named an elect of the College in 1759, and was made consiliarius (adviser to the president) in 1760, 1761, and 1763. He wrote a biography of Harvey, which was prefixed to the College's publication on the works of Harvey, Guilielmi Harveii Opera Omnia a Collegio Medicorum (1766). Lawrence was awarded £100 for his services.
Lawrence became president of the College in 1767. He was elected upon the resignation of Sir William Browne, after the famous siege of the College. A group of licentiates had forced their way into a Comitia meeting in June 1767, in an attempt to obtain a dispensation from the College, causing Browne to dissolve the Comitia. The licentiates were protesting against the College policy that only graduates from Oxford and Cambridge could become fellows. Ultimately it was not until 1834 that the fellowship was thrown open to graduates of other universities, although in 1771 Lawrence did accept four such candidates for fellowship. Lawrence was made president in September 1767, and was re-elected every year for the following seven years.
Despite his elevated position within the College, he never really attained great success as a physician. It has been said of him that he was
`an elegant scholar, a good anatomist, and a sound practitioner; but in his endeavour to attain to eminence it was his misfortune to fail' (Munk's Roll, p.151).
His failure has been put down to personal traits, namely a vacant countenance and a convulsive tic. He was an intimate friend of the lexicographer Samuel Johnson, a fellow sufferer of the latter affliction, who considered him `"one of the best men whom I have known"' (ibid, p.152). Johnson had a very high opinion of his friend, which was a testimony to the latter's prowess as a scholar. Lawrence often submitted his Latin for Johnson's correction, and it is believed that Johnson did the same to him. Johnson was also one of Lawrence's patients. Much about their relationship is discernible through Johnson's letters to Lawrence.
Lawrence's wife died in 1780 and he never really recovered from the bereavement. He and his wife had had six sons and three daughters. Soon after his wife's death he lost his hearing. In 1780 he had privately printed his biography of his friend and patron Frank Nicholls. In 1782 Lawrence was struck with paralysis. He resigned from his position as elect at the Royal College of Physicians, and retired with his family to Canterbury. In 1783 he began to suffer from angina pectoris. He died on 6 June 1783, at the age of 72. He was buried in the church of St Margaret, Canterbury. His two surviving children erected a memorial tablet in Canterbury Cathedral.
Publications:
Oratio Harvaeana (London, 1748)
Hydrops: Disputatio Medica (London, 1756)
Praelectiones Medicae Duodecim de Calvariae et Capitis Morbis (Croonian Lectures) (London, 1757)
De Natura Musculorum Praelectiones Tres in Theatro Collegii Medicorum Londinensium Habitae (London, 1759)
Guilielmi Harveii Opera Omnia a Collegio Medicorum, Mark Akenside (ed.) (London, 1766) collected edition of Harvey's works, with prefixed biography by Thomas Lawrence
Franci Nichollsii, MD, Vita, cum Conjecturis Eiusdem de Natura et Usu Partium Humani Corporis Similarium (London, 1780)
