page_title: Sir Wilfrid Lawson, 2nd Baronet, of Brayton
section_title: Memorials
hierarchical_section_title: Sir Wilfrid Lawson, 2nd Baronet, of Brayton / Memorials
caption_attribution_description: English: Copy of Photo Circa 1909
context_page_description: Sir Wilfrid Lawson, 2nd Baronet was an English temperance campaigner and radical, anti-imperialist Liberal Party politician who sat in the House of Commons variously between 1859 and 1906. He was recognised as the leading humourist in the House of Commons.
  Lawson was Member for Carlisle, 1859–65, 1868–85; Cockermouth, 1886–1900; Camborne, 1903–1906; and Cockermouth 1906. He was the son of Sir Wilfrid Lawson, 1st Baronet, of Brayton, who changed his name from Wybergh, and Caroline Graham, daughter of Sir James Graham. He was privately educated at home. He was a founder member of both the National Liberal Club and the Reform League, a prominent member of the Peace Society, and the Society for the Suppression of the Opium Trade. He was a director of the Maryport and Carlisle Railway and a Justice of the Peace for Cumberland. He was always an enthusiast in the cause of temperance and in 1879 he became president of the United Kingdom Alliance. He was, like his younger brother William, a forward thinking co-operator and agriculturalist.
context_section_description: On 21 April 1908, the Earl of Carlisle, unveiled a memorial, designed by Louis Frederick Roslyn, in the form of a drinking fountain surmounted by a bronze group of St. George and the dragon. The monument, financed by public subscription, stands in the town of Aspatria.  On the front of the fountain is a portrait of Lawson, inscribed with dates of birth and death. On the right hand side is a bronze panel representing Temperance, in which is portrayed a young girl offering a traveller a drink of water, drawn from an adjoining well. On the left hand side a third panel depicts Peace, on which appears a tribesman dressed in savage garb, clasping the hand of friendship held out by a warrior kneeling at the feet of a winged Angel, which crowned by a halo is rising in the background. The fourth panel bears the following inscription:   
  Remember
  Wilfrid Lawson
  2nd Baronet of Brayton & Isel
  In whose honour this fountain is erected by his many friends and admirers. Beloved for the integrity of his life and the height of his ideals. An example for all time for one who gave himself for others, believing in the brotherhood of man. A lover of truth and mercy, a brave and strenuous advocate of temperance, which sacred cause he championed in the House of Commons for forty years with gay wisdom and perseverance.
  On 6 June 1908, the Lawson family installed a stained glass window dedicated to the memory of their late patriarch, in the east end of Aspatria Church. The window is large and beautifully ornate, and symbolises the characters and scene of the last chapter of Revelations.
  On 20 July 1909, the members of the United Kingdom Alliance and other Temperance organisations erected a second memorial in the Victoria Embankment Gardens in London, close to Cleopatra's Needle. It was unveiled, amidst continuous interruptions by suffragettes, by the then prime minister, H. H. Asquith, who said:
  "Sir Wilfrid Lawson was one of the most remarkable and certainly one of the most attractive political characters of the times. He was an apostle not of lost but of gaining causes, content for most of his life to be in the minority, but watching year by year the minority slowly developing into the majority of the future. I doubt very much whether we shall ever see again in our time a combination in one and the same man of such fearlessness and courage, such a passionate love for freedom, such a single minded independence and self devotion, such an enduring and strenuous assiduity in pursuit of the cause once taken up, and never by him to be laid down; such a combination.".
  The bronze statue, designed by David McGill, is striking, life like and shows Lawson, in an attitude of debate. On the front of the pedestal on which it stands is the inscription: – "Sir Wilfrid Lawson, Bart., of Brayton, Cumberland; born September 4th, 1829: Member of Parliament for Carlisle, Cockermouth, Camborne, 1859 1906; president of the United Kingdom Temperance Alliance, 1879 1909." On one side of the pedestal are the words. "A true patriot, a wise and witty orator, a valiant and farseeing reformer, he spent a long life as the courageous champion of righteousness, peace, freedom and temperance." On the other side the inscription runs. "Erected by his friends and followers in grateful remembrance of his splendid leadership, and of his pure and unworldly life, July 20th, 1909."
caption: The Sir Wilfrid Lawson Memorial, Aspatria
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