Arthur was the third son of John Charles Lanyon and Jane Stacy Bennett. Their first son John Charles died as a baby and it was soon apparent that the second son Sydney Howard Lanyon had a variety of health problems.
Sydney suffered with severe eczema. After Wellington College he attended Cambridge University where he suffered from appendicitis and failed his degree. He was rejected by the army before the first world war and committed suicide on 24th Oct 1914 by jumping off Westminster Bridge in front of his nephew Noel Hindley. His body was eventually found at Rotherhithe on 4th Nov 1914.
He left his estate to his brother Arthur who was the reluctant heir to the family business.
Arthur’s other siblings were: Alice who married Walter Paton Hindley. Jane who never married or worked and died age 88 in 1949. Vivian who worked as a colonial agent and married his nurse, Eliza Crowe. They never had any children. Mabel who married James Buckley, a venereologist and had four children. Arthur’s youngest brother, Alfred Leonard Lanyon died in infancy.
Arthur left Harrow in Dec 1883 at the age of 17 to join the family business JC Lanyon & Sons. On 22 Apr 1899 he married Catherine Septima Lamotte at St John the Evangelist, Croydon. (Catherine was descended from Huguenot refugees).
Their son John Arthur Lanyon was born in 1900 and their daughter Joan was born three years later.
John with his father Arthur and formal portrait aged about 5.
John and Joan with their mother Catherine Septima Lamotte.
The early photos were taken at Sanderstead, Surrey, the family home. At age 11 John was a pupil at Farnborough school. In 1918 he was briefly in the Royal Artillery and then he went on to read chemistry at New College Oxford.
Joan didn’t attend school. She was mildly epileptic and her mother disapproved of school so a governess, Cath Blakeney was hired.
Joan became a senior commander in the ATS during the second world war however during peacetime she didn’t work. She travelled extensively, played polo and never married. Joan died aged 92 in 1995.
In 1927 John married Nancy Eleanor Mitchell and worked as a research chemist at ICI.
John and Nancy had five children.
The Lanyons 