Harry John Lawson

Harry John Lawson, recorded in Grace's Guide as Henry John Lawson (1852 to 1925), was an English cyclist, bicycle designer and company promoter who became one of the best known and most controversial figures of the early British motor industry. Born in the City of London, he followed his father as a mechanical model maker, worked in the Brighton bicycle trade and designed several bicycles in the 1870s, one of them described as the first authentic chain-driven rear-wheel safety bicycle actually made. In the 1890s he bought up motor patents, including British rights to De Dion-Bouton, Bollée and Daimler designs, in an attempt to control the industry through a succession of promotional companies such as the British Motor Syndicate and the Great Horseless Carriage Company. With Frederick Simms he founded the Motor Car Club, lobbied against the Red Flag Act and organised the Emancipation Run from London to Brighton on 14 November 1896. Many of his patents proved weak and his companies collapsed; he was jailed for fraud in 1905 and again in 1918, and he died at Harrow in 1925, reputedly almost penniless.