The life of William George Lemon (“WGL”) spanned Queen Victoria’s reign. His childhood background was modest, but he always lived and worked in and around London's grandest buildings, parks and palaces. He had the wit, intelligence and fortunate circumstances - and probably a fiercely driven mother also - to “raise himself up”. Ultimately, he achieved great prominence among London's governing intelligentsia and a legacy that his family can be proud of today.  

 

Always at the heart and center of things, WGL's home sat almost exactly on Greenwich's prime meridian while his work in Westminster and The City was a part, albeit a small part, of the most powerful Empire in history. In the spirit of the gentleman scientist, his free time was spent debating the latest ideas of science and metaphysics. He adopted ‘light’ (lux) as a motto and, like the flame of his classroom magic lantern projector, he burned with a brilliance that was all too brief in its time. 

 

With the rise of non-conformist opportunities in education, WGL began his career as a young evangelical scholar in the 'monitor' teacher tradition then became first headmaster to a London-based school for the sons (and orphans) of missionaries working in posts overseas. (Eltham College continues to thrive today). The young men he taught were themselves destined for careers converting and healing “the heathen” masses across Britain’s Empire. In 1855 he married Selina Kent, 10 years his senior and from a Baptist family in Oxfordshire.

 

In the 1860s, as Darwinism began to shake the fundamental truths of Christianity, WGL changed profession and became a barrister specializing in trusts and charities, as well as property conveyance. 'Property' law at this time also addressed the ownership of slaves and WGL's new role connected with Britain's support for the recently emancipated negroes in America, just as the US Civil war came to a weary close.

 

By the 1870s WGL had 5 teenage children to educate but still volunteered to help find the hundreds of new Sunday School teachers needed on the homefront to combat a growing tide of ‘Doubt’. By then he was a senior Congregationalist official, a Gladstonian Liberal 'guardian of the poor' when meeting at his newly built Town Hall in Catford and a conservative-leaning supporter of Empire. On the issue of Ireland's Home Rule, he joined a new political party - the Liberal Unionists. Ultimately, his political ambitions focused locally, and he was successfully elected as Lewisham's first councilor to the London County Council when it was created in 1889 to manage the hugely expanding metropolis.

 

WGL's Victorian world-view however was by no means closed, shallow or arrogant. His letters and speeches demonstrate a polymath’s command of diverse subjects. He was a Fellow of the Geology Society, President of West Kent’s natural history society, a chess enthusiast, and a Grand-rank Freemason. He keenly studied  Rosicrucian philosophical thought while also known as an authority on the evidences for the Biblical Creation and the phenomena of miracles as described in the Gospels. To this end WGL applied his legal talents for argument and examination, drawing upon the combined resources of Enlightenment thinking, modern science, and an emerging occult revival of magical esotericism. He died at 66 years of age. If only Fate had given him another 10 years....​​​