[William Lawrence]. American chorus-instructor, born in London, on the 4th of February 1844. He belonged to a music-loving family, and received his first instruction as a choir-boy, but, being of an extremely nervous temperament, his music-lessons had to be abandoned. He, however, continued to practice on the school organ alone, and it was during this period he believes he thought out the rudimentary principles of his afterward-developed system of child-training. In 1866 he became one of the board of managers of the London Tonic-Sol-Fa College, and in 1870 he went to New York City, where he served five years as organist in various churches, and in traveling for two years with the Richings-Bernard Old Folks Company. During a visit to Chicago he was appointed leader of the Apollo Club. He formed a class of two hundred children in Milwaukee, and other large classes in Chicago, with which he had marvelous success, his work receiving the highest commendation from Theodore Thomas, Christine Nillson and many others. The Board of Education of Chicago issued a request to the school teachers to select the best singers over nine years old from among their scholars, for the purpose of being trained by Mr. Tomlins for a children’s choir at the World’s Columbian Exposition. A class of twelve hundred was formed, which was trained for three years, and gave twenty rehearsals and concerts at the World’s Fair. After the close of the Fair Mr. Tomlins’s work was among the children taken care of by the “Social Settlements,” six classes in three divisions being formed, besides another class of six hundred which met in Handel Hall, and was called the Central Class. Tuition at all of these was free. Mr. Tomlins’s first requisite was complete relaxation of all the muscles of the body. To accomplish this, slow exercises to music were given. He appealed to the heels as well as to the heart and the head. New songs were written for Mr. Tomlins’s classes by Whittier, Holmes, Julia Ward Howe, Whitman, Gilder, Stedman, Richard H. Stoddard, Celia Thaxter and Margaret Deland, and composed by Joseph Barnby, Dr. Parry, Dr. McKenzie, Dr. Stanford, George Henschel, Randegger, Tours, Foote, Chadwick, Nevin, and Myles Birkett Foster. In his work he had the assistance of Miss Elizabeth Nash. Through all this work Mr. Tomlins attended to his duties as leader of the Apollo Club, going once a week to Milwaukee to conduct children’s classes. He was the author of Children’s Souvenir Song Book (1893), and The Child’s Garland of Song (1895), with illustrations by Ella Ricketts.
