George Aylwen

Sir George Aylwen, 1st Baronet
631st Lord Mayor of London
In office
9 November 1948 – 9 November 1949
Preceded by Sir Frederick Wells
Succeeded by Sir Frederick Rowland
Personal details
Born 1880
Died 1967
Profession Financier

Sir George Aylwen, 1st Baronet (1880–1967) was a British financier and the 631st Lord Mayor of London from 1948–1949.[1]

Career

In 1896, Aylwen began work as a clerk at stockbrokers J & A Scrimgeour,[2] where he was a senior partner in 1948, the year he became Lord Mayor.[3]

He was treasurer of St Bartholomew's Hospital from 1937. Girling Ball – dean of the hospital from 1930 to 1945 – recorded in his diary in 1939 that Aylen treated the clinical staff like children.[4] Aylwen was initially concerned about plans for the development of a National Health Service in the 1940s, worried that it would impede the freedom of the voluntary hospitals and, though he came to support the plans, he used his position as chair of the Voluntary Hospitals Committee for London to ask for existing hospital boards to be kept on.[5]

Lord Mayor of London

After a term as one of the two sheriffs of the City of London in 1946–7,[6] he was elected Lord Mayor of London on 29 September 1948,[7] to succeed Sir Frederick Wells, and took office on 9 November.[8] Less than a week later, he was the second person to be officially notified of the birth of Charles, Prince of Wales on 14 November, after the Home Secretary, James Chuter Ede, who had to be officially notified himself as the centuries-old tradition that the Home Secretary be present in person for a royal birth was abolished.[9]

In 1949 at the Savoy Hotel he toasted Danny Kaye with "I'd like to see every meeting of ministers preceded by a little turn of Danny Kaye. That might even have an effect on [then Foreign Minister] Mr. Vyshinsky of the Soviet Union". The toast and Kaye's response, beginning "I think emotions are the same the world over", were covered in the papers in both the UK and the US, a fact ridiculed by Life magazine.[10][11]

At the Lord Mayor's Show on 9 November 1949, when he was being taken to the swearing-in of his successor, Sir Frederick Rowland, the two horses leading his coach bolted into the crowd, hospitalizing around a dozen people. He completed the journey in Sir Frederick's coach instead.[12]

Honours

Aylwen became a knight bachelor of the United Kingdom in the 1942 New Year Honours.[13] He was made a hereditary (to male heirs only) baronet "of Saint Bartholomew's in the City of London" on 25 November 1949.[14] The new baronetcy became extinct upon his death in 1967.[1]

Personal life

He had one daughter, Marjorie, born 1906, and two grandchildren, Michael, born 1936, and David, born 1939.[1]

In 1963, he and his wife, Lady Aylwen, employed Archibald Hall (alias Roy Fontaine) as their butler after he impersonated his own employer when Lady Aylwen called to take references.[15][16] Hall claimed to have stolen jewellery from the Aylwens' guests and to have been seduced by Lady Aylwen.[17] Hall was convicted of four murders in the 1970s, including that of MP Walter Scott-Elliot, and died in prison in 2002.[18]

References

  1. 1 2 3 Debrett's Peerage, Baronetage, Knightage, and Companionage. Kelly's Directories. 1973. p. 1282.
  2. ↑ Kynaston, David (28 February 2015). The City Of London Volume 2: Golden Years 1890-1914. Random House. pp. 308–309. ISBN 978-1-4481-1230-2.
  3. ↑ "London's Next Lord Mayor is in Sydney". The Evening Advocate. 12 March 1948. Retrieved 24 January 2018.
  4. ↑ Waddington, Keir (2003). Medical Education at St. Bartholomew's Hospital, 1123-1995. Boydell & Brewer. p. 267. ISBN 978-0-85115-919-5.
  5. ↑ Waddington, pp. 288–291.
  6. ↑ "New London Sheriffs". The Times. 25 June 1946. p. 3.
  7. ↑ "London's Lord Mayor Elected". The New York Times. 30 September 1948. p. 4. Retrieved 24 January 2018.
  8. ↑ "Lord Mayor's Show Has Recruiting Theme; London Students' Pranks Result in Arrest". The New York Times. 10 November 1949. Retrieved 24 January 2018.
  9. ↑ "Elizabeth Has Son, 2D in Royal Line; Both 'Doing Well'". The New York Times. 15 November 1948. p. 1. Retrieved 24 January 2018.
  10. ↑ "Douglas and British Honor Danny Kaye". The New York Times. 1 June 1949. p. 43. Retrieved 24 January 2018.
  11. ↑ Gottfried, Martin (7 June 2002). Nobody's Fool: The Lives of Danny Kaye. Simon and Schuster. pp. 151–152. ISBN 978-0-7432-4476-3.
  12. ↑ "London Mayoralty Show Most Colorful Since War". The New York Times. 10 November 1949. p. 21. Retrieved 24 January 2018.
  13. ↑ "Supplement to the London Gazette of Tuesday, the 30th of December, 1941". The London Gazette (35399). 1 January 1941. Retrieved 24 January 2018.
  14. ↑ "Whitehall, December 2, 1949". The London Gazette (38774). 2 December 1949. p. 5719. Retrieved 23 January 2018.
  15. ↑ "Archibald Hall - Con Man". Watford Observer. Retrieved 23 January 2018.
  16. ↑ Lucas, Norman; Davies, Philip (1979). The Monster Butler. A. Barker. p. 50. ISBN 978-0-213-16702-8.
  17. ↑ Hall, Roy Archibald (4 July 2011). The Wicked Mr Hall - The Memoirs or a Real-Life Murderer. John Blake Publishing. pp. 66–68. ISBN 978-1-84358-771-2.
  18. ↑ "'Mad Butler' dies in prison". BBC News. 31 October 2002. Retrieved 23 January 2018.
Civic offices
Preceded by
Sir Frederick Wells, 1st Baronet
Lord Mayor of London
1995–1996		 Succeeded by
Sir Frederick Rowland, 1st Baronet
Peerage of the United Kingdom
New creation Baronet
(of St Bartholomew's in the City of London)
1949–1967		 Extinct
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