Geoffry Lawrence Parsons
Geoffry Lawrence Parsons (1874-1956)
Nephew of Charles Algernon Parsons
1956 Obituary [1]
We have learned with regret of the death, in his eighty-second year, of the Hon. Geoffry Lawrence Parsons, which occurred at Birr Castle on May 13th.
He was the younger son of the fourth Earl of Rosse and was born on May 24, 1874, and was educated at Winchester, from where he proceeded to Balliol College, Oxford, to read mathematical moderations and natural science.
After graduating in 1896 he became a premium apprentice with Sir W. G. Armstrong Whitworth and Co., Ltd., at Elswick, for the next three years.
There followed an appointment as assistant manager at the Elswick ordnance works and later he became an assistant manager with C. A. Parsons and Co., Ltd., of Newcastle upon Tyne.
In 1911 he was appointed a director of the Parsons Marine Steam Turbine Company, Ltd., and in 1936, a few years after the death of his uncle, he became chairman of the company, a position which he continued to hold until September, 1955. He resigned from the board of the company some two months later.
One of his particular interests while chairman was the education and training of apprentices and he endowed a fund to provide an award for the apprentice gaining the highest merit. He was an associate member of the Institution of Civil Engineers and a member of the Institution of Naval Architects, and had been a justice of the peace for the County of Southampton since 1919.
In 1951 he was elected Prime Warden of the Worshipful Company of Shipwrights and he edited the volume containing the scientific papers and addresses of the Honourable Sir Charles A. Parsons, which was published in 1934.