Concordia

Concordia

Merchant Taylors’ School

Neil

Lawson Baker

Neil Lawson Baker

(1952-1957) began his career as a

dentist and dental surgeon, going on to specialise in oral

reconstruction. He has since become one of the country’s

leading sculptors, is Executive Chairman of the National

Open Art Competition and also runs a not-for-profit

registered arts charity, The Chichester Art Trust

home I used to deliver the local post

around Watford for my father’s estate

agency business. They paid me two old

pennies (2d) per letter delivered, it saved

them 1/2d and so I earned my pocket

money. I was taught the value of money

from a young age and it kept me very

fit, adding a few miles to the ten I had

already pedalled.

At school I loved sport but never

hugely excelled, although I played rugby

and squash fairly well and captained

the tennis team. I was passionate about

jazz, and later when a student at Guy’s

Hospital, ran The Lawson Turner Big

Band, a 12-piece mainstream jazz band

in which I played saxophone. Dick

Wilcox, then at the BBC library, wrote

our scores and whilst at school, together

with Terry Brady and some other

boys, Dick organised a lunchtime jazz

concert with Humphrey Lyttleton and

George Melly in the Great Hall. Can you

imagine the furore after that coup? It

had all been arranged in secret and took

the school by storm.

Hugh Elder, our Head Master,

summoned me to his office in 1956 to

tell me, with my parents present, that the

chances of my going to university were

virtually zero as I was not academically

suited. He was almost right. I failed

Physics at A Level but managed to

persuade Guy’s Hospital to take me as

a first year student, where I re-sat the

Physics exams, and ended up a few years

later with an honours degree in Dental

Surgery. That was when I became Neil

Lawson-Baker BDS LDS RCS (Eng) and

lived off the King’s Road, Chelsea. It was

‘the Swinging 60s’.

I made the big decision to carry

on studying rather than immediately

going into an NHS practice despite

the resistance I encountered, this time

from Fred Warner the Sub Dean at

Guy’s who once again advised against

further academia. I accepted a place at

St George’s and five years later had an

honours degree in Medicine MB BS and

won the London University Brodie Prize

in clinical surgery.

During my time as a student and later

on the staff at St George’s Hyde Park

Corner (now the Lanesborough Hotel),

I had some amazing experiences. I was

privileged to have a clinic next to the

pioneers of pacemaking in heart surgery.

Aubrey Leatham taught me cardiology. I

assisted in the development and the first

use of laparoscopy with Patrick Steptoe,

who invented it, during the months that

I was doing an elective and delivering

babies at Oldham General. I observed

heart operations when both Michael De

Bakey and Denton Cooley separately

visited St George’s from the USA and

I well remember watching Lord Brock

at Guy’s with Donald Ross in 1957

packing the chest with ice before the

invention of the bypass. Those were

pioneering days.

hristened Neil Anthony Lawson

Baker, I was known at school as Neil

Baker. My two brothers Stewart and

Colin also had the name, Lawson, but

none of us used it while at Merchant

Taylors’. The three of us were born

in 1938, 1943 and 1947 and from 1952

onwards we all thoroughly enjoyed our

life at school and our time in Hilles. My

uncle, the late Raymond Lawson, had

also been in Hilles in the early 1930s

and my brother Stewart was a very

successful school cricket captain for

some years.

I joined the school in Upper 4B, I was

definitely a B streamer! I well remember

certain masters; R.B. Hawkey who was

in the English Squash team and ran the

Naval Section; ‘Prick’ Thorning whose

form I was in twice in the Science Lower

6th and then Science 6B; Hodgetts our

House Master; Cliff Lummis who used to

scream at us and throw lumps of chalk;

Rags Stokes who taught me Chemistry

so brilliantly; John Steane, erudite and

Pickwickian; Mr Beech in the woodwork

department; RSM Bell who ran the

Corps like a well drilled private army,

Jacques Brown in the gymnasium and

many others.

I biked to school every day with

friends from Watford past a huge

asbestos factory but I don’t think the

wind blew the toxic dust towards us,

thank God! It was about 5 miles each

way and on some days when I arrived

I was privileged to have a clinic next to the

pioneers of pacemaking in heart surgery.

Armed with a decent undergraduate

education from two of the great London

hospitals, I went on to house surgeons’

posts at Charing Cross in Ear, Nose

& Throat, Plastic Surgery and then

Radiotherapy, before progressing to

Registrar in Oral Surgery at St George’s,

before taking on the same role at The Royal

Marsden and The Royal Dental Hospitals.

That step was leading towards being a

Consultant in Oral Surgery, but I had been

fortunate to meet a colleague who was

the President of the Student Union at the

Royal, one Michael Furness, and our careers

were to come together and take a different

path. He had a similar training and we had

met at King’s in the Strand doing our 2nd

MB. We decided to practice dentistry in the

evenings at No 6 Lower Sloane Street to

fund our medical studentship. He and two

other students then joined me in a flat in

Sloane Square. My dear mother had given

me £2500 to buy somewhere to live when

my father tragically died in Guy’s Hospital

on the very day I qualified. It was a tough

time. We ran an emergency dental service

at night linked to all the London casualty

departments who had no such cover and

took home £10 per treatment usually from

patients who had been in extreme pain.

Our flat at No 12 Eaton Mansions

became well known for its dinner parties

where we even entertained the hospital

consultants and one night even invited

dancers from The Eve Club to do a cabaret

for them. After that dinner I walked one of

the consultants, Terry Blennerhassett, back

home across Belgravia to No 31 Wilton

Place, where he also practised. He too had

both qualifications. I had already done

a locum consultancy for him at Charing

Cross and I think I must have impressed

him because out of the blue he offered me

the opportunity to buy his dental practice

because he had decided to retire early.

It was a golden opportunity to run my

own private clinic, actually a very serious

business involving huge overheads, and

at that time of course all on borrowed

money. But I would be able to do all the

dentistry and oral surgery I wanted to, to

the very best degree of excellence, with no

restrictions fromNHS bureaucracy and

committees - this was right up my street

and I invited Michael Furness to join me

there as a professional partner.

I managed to raise the money to buy

the practice for the princely sum of

£15,000 - exactly the sum I had managed

to sell my flat for. I guess 31 Wilton

Place is now probably worth more like

£15 million but I have long since sold,

after 38 years in practice, and changed

career which I did when I was just 70.

The practice is still there of course and

is one of the oldest dental practices

in London having started out at No 1

Hanover Square in 1842 and moved to

Belgravia in 1954.

Summer

2015

Margaret Thatcher and Neil in her office