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Biographical Notes

Arthur Montague Lascelles was the younger son of Indian-born Montague William Percy Lascelles and his wife, Florence Walker, of Dunedin, New Zealand. In November 1915, Pastor M. W. P. Lascelles visited the Timaru Baptist Church members. In effect, he founded the Timaru congregation in January 1916. He preached throughout 1916 and the first few months of 1917, and again in the latter months of 1918. On the first anniversary, the church chairman said that "the presence of Pastor and Mrs Lascelles among them had brought both pleasure and spiritual profit; they had proved a blessing to the whole church." Pastor Lascelles was also the YMCA commissioner, and in September 1916 he was one of the Timaru donors to the fund for YMCA hutments for New Zealand troops in France. Having been approached to take the position of Commissioner to the YMCA in France for twelve months, Pastor Lascelles accepted and left after a farewell in May 1917, paying his own expenses. His son, Arthur Lascelles, who at the time was at the Waitaki High School, went with him as his private secretary. Arthur had enlisted on his twentieth birthday, but had been rejected as medically unfit for the firing line. Arthur was drawn in the ballot in May 1917 but had left with his father about that time. Both Mr Lascelles and his son were anxious to do something for the Empire, and considered this their opportunity. They arrived in Liverpool on 3 July 1917 and proceeded to France. The ship by which Mr Lascelles returned to New Zealand in March 1918, was torpedoed with the loss of 900 lives. Miraculously he survived and returned to his ministry in Timaru. Meanwhile Arthur Montague Lascelles attested in France with the New Zealand Forces, under special condition without pay. He was seconded for duty as Field Secretary with the New Zealand Young Men’s Christian Association. Arthur returned to New Zealand by the transport Giessen, reaching Wellington in mid August 1919. He had spent two years engaged on YMCA work in England and France. In 1923 he travelled to San Francisco, and married Norma Georgina Erwin Pearson in 1925 at Louisville, Kentucky, USA. Norma died in 1939, maybe at the birth of her second child, a daughter. Arthur was back in New Zealand by 1938 and later married Emily Olive Lake. Mr Lascelles resigned as pastor of the Timaru Baptist Church in January 1919 and moved back to the North Island. Yet, in October 1919 he contributed to the Timaru War Memorial Fund. Arthur's older brother, Percy William Lascelles, was drawn in the ballott and enlisted.

Sources

Auckland War Memorial Museum Cenotaph Database [14 February 2020]; NZ BDM Indexes (Department of Internal Affairs) [14 January 2020]; Pyes Pa cremation record (Tauranga City Council) [15 January 2020]; ref. Timaru Herald, 6 November 1915, 29 January 1916, 12 September 1916, 20 January 1917, 26 March 1917, 4 April 1917, May 1917, 6 June 1917, 27 July 1917, June 1918, 26 July 1918, 7 & 25 July 1919, October 1919 (Papers Past) [15 January 2020]

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Researched and Written by

Teresa Scott, SC branch NZSG

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