Bertrand Dawson, 1st Viscount Dawson of Penn

Bertrand Edward Dawson, 1st Viscount Dawson of Penn GCVO KCB KCMG PC FRCP (9 March 1864–7 March 1945) was a doctor to the British Royal Family.

Early years

Dawson was born in Croydon. He joined St Paul's School in London in 1877 and University College, London in 1879.

Career

After graduation he worked as a physician for several years and married Minnie Yarrow (a daughter of the future Sir Alfred Yarrow, 1st Baronet) in 1900 and they had three children:
* Honourable Sybil Frances Dawson (1904–1977), married the future David Eccles, 1st Viscount Eccles and had issue.
* Honourable Ursula Margaret Dawson (1907–1999), married Sir Ian Frank Bowater (a future Lord Mayor of London) and had issue.
* Honourable Rosemary Monica Dawson (born 1913), married Sir John Wrightson, 3rd Baronet.

Dawson then joined the Royal Household as a physician-extraordinary to King Edward VII and was promoted to a physician-in-ordinary under King George V in 1914. Following the outbreak of World War I he was given the rank of Colonel in November 1914. [LondonGazette|issue=28992|supp=yes|startpage=10192|date=1 December 1914|accessdate=2008-02-28] He served on the Western Front in France from 1915 to 1919 [LondonGazette|issue=31466|supp=yes|startpage=9240|date=18 July 1919|accessdate=2008-02-28] rising to the rank of Major-General [LondonGazette|issue=30546|supp=yes|startpage=2577|date=26 February 1918|accessdate=2008-02-28] (he had served as a Royal Army Medical Corps officer in the Territorial Force for many years), noticing the poor physical fitness of British troops and conducted research into trench fever. He was made a Knight of Grace in the Venerable Order of Saint John in 1916, [LondonGazette|issue=29831|startpage=11248|date=21 November 1916|accessdate=2008-02-28] Knight Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order (GCVO) in the 1918 New Year Honours, [LondonGazette|issue=30451|supp=yes|startpage=84|date=28 December 1917|accessdate=2008-02-28] and Knight Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George (KCMG) in 1919. [LondonGazette|issue=31597|supp=yes|startpage=12651|date=10 October 1919|accessdate=2008-02-28] Dawson later published a report in 1920 whilst he was Chairman of the Consultive Council on Medical and Allied Services on the Future Provision of Medical and Allied Services. The report was very influential in debates about the National Health Service when it was set up in 1948. In the New Year Honours of 1920, he was elevated to the peerage [LondonGazette|issue=31712|supp=yes|startpage=1|date=30 December 1919|accessdate=2007-11-19] as Baron Dawson of Penn and became an active member of the House of Lords. In April 1926 he was promoted to Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath (KCB), [LondonGazette|issue=33151|startpage=2613|date=16 April 1926|accessdate=2008-02-28] in the King's Birthday Honours of 1929 he was appointed to the Privy Council. [LondonGazette|issue=33501|supp=yes|startpage=3665|date=31 May 1929|accessdate=2008-02-28]

Euthanasia

On the night of the 20 January 1936, King George suffered a series of attacks of bronchitis and his end was hastened by Lord Dawson, who gave him a lethal injection of cocaine and morphine.

:"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 the 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 and 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."

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." The manner of King George's death would have been considered high treason if known at the time. Fifty years after his own death in 1945 the contents of his diary were made public for the first time, in which he clearly acknowledged what he had done in bringing about the early death of the King and his motivation for doing so. [ The British Medical Journal, May 1994,308:1445 [http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/308/6941/1445] ]

Further career

In the 1936 Birthday Honours he was promoted to Viscount Dawson of Penn [LondonGazette|issue=34296|supp=yes|startpage=3995|date=19 June 1936|accessdate=2008-02-28] [LondonGazette|issue=34337|startpage=7023|date=3 November 1936|accessdate=2008-02-28] and remained in the Medical Households of King Edward VIII [LondonGazette|issue=34306|supp=yes|startpage=4668|date=20 July 1936|accessdate=2008-02-28] and King George VI and treated numerous members of the Royal Family and foreign monarchs including Queen Maud of Norway and King Leopold III of Belgium. Lord Dawson later died in 1945 and, without male heirs, his titles became extinct.

Footnotes

References

* Biography, "Oxford Dictionary of National Biography"
* [http://www.sochealth.co.uk/history/Dawson.htm Interim report on the Future Provision of Medical and Allied Services] (there never was a final report)
* Obituary, "The Times", 8 March 1945
* [http://thepeerage.com/p8061.htm#i80608 Darryl Lundy]
* [http://www.opclub.com/page.aspx?id=8366#Bertrand%20Edward%20Dawson St Paul's School]