William Lawrence Balls, 1882-1960

Abstract

William Lawrence Balls, the only son of William and Emma Mary Lawrence, was born on 3 September 1882 at Garboldisham Mill in south Norfolk. His many generations of East Anglian forebears, some from the land —farmers, and millers, and others of the water—craftsmen, carpenters, and boatbuilders, contained an added French strain on his mother’s side and a Dutch one—Bols, Bull, on his father’s. His father was pushed into teaching by his father, at St John’s School, Lowestoft, and he married just after becoming Headmaster of Garboldisham School. After a year at Beccles he became Headmaster of the National School at Diss in Norfolk, and there spent the rest of his working life, retiring to his birthplace at Oulton Broad and dying at eighty-seven in 1939. His mother was Headmistress with him at Diss, but died in her thirties of septicaemia. His father was a craftsman; he built his own bone shaker bicycle, a billiard table and a motor boat. His mother regarded every living thing as a friend, from cat to toad. Her mother had been left a young widow with three children, but ran her own windmill and farm for decades, dying at ninety-five in 1922. As Balls himself said, his mother made a biologist of him and his father a craftsman. Marking out with square and compasses in his father’s workshop introduced him to geometry. Geometrical drawing led to Euclid and graph technique, whereby he was able to survive the worst of the limitations imposed on him by an unimaginative, algebra-grinding master at his school.