Charles was the second son of William Lawrence and Mary-Ann Vaughan. He was 18 when Deborah Bates was expecting their child and it was said that it was his mother who prevented him from marrying Deborah. The baby, Albert, lived with Deborah whilst Charles became a lodger with the Knight family and an apprentice in the their boot and shoe factory on Manton Road, Rushden.

In time Charles worked his way up to become a partner in the business which then became known as ‘Knight and Lawrence’. When he was 22 he married Elizabeth Osborne and by the time he was 30 they were living in a detached house in North Street and it was there that his son, Albert, was sent when first his mother and then his grandmother died. Knight and Lawrence was a successful company and Charles, who was fond of travel and had a reputation as a ladies man, was able to ‘slip away to the smoother, easier, more seductive life of warmer climates, notably the Mediterranean’. (The Vanished World, p.7)

Sometime in the early 1900’s he acquired enough money to buy a piece of land in Essex Road and build himself a villa-type house, with an orchard garden, which he named Menton after his favourite Mediterranean resort. In 1906 the Knight family reported that Lawrence was retiring from the business. In reality it seems his philandering became too much for the reputation of the firm and that the Knights came to a financial arrangement with Charles, giving him an allowance of £200/year on condition he left the country. One of the partners was sent to ‘escort’ Lawrence onto a ship bound for South Africa and from there he sailed to Australia where he spent several years establishing a business before his wife joined him in 1914. The couple settled in Melbourne, remaining there for the rest of their lives. Charles Lawrence died in 1942.