Author Dawson Bertrand Edward Dawson Viscount

e a Knight of Grace in the Venerable Order of Saint John in 1916,[4] Knight Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order (GCVO) in the 1918 New Year Honours,[5] and Knight Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George (KCMG) in 1919.[6] Dawson later published a report in 1920 whilst he was Chairman of the Consultive Council on Medical and Allied Services on the Future Provision of Medical and Allied Services. The report was very influential in debates about the National Health Service when it was set up in 1948. In the New Year Honours of 1920, he was elevated to the peerage[7] as Baron Dawson of Penn and became an active member of the House of Lords. In April 1926 he was promoted to Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath (KCB),[8] in the King's Birthday Honours of 1929 he was appointed to the Privy Council.[9] On the night of the 20 January 1936, King George was dying from bronchitis and his end was hastened by Lord Dawson, who gave him a lethal injection of cocaine and morphine. Dawson's public stance on euthanasia was expressed later that year when he opposed a move in the Lords to legalise it because it "belongs to the wisdom and conscience of the medical profession and not to the realm of law." Fifty years after George's death, the contents of Dawson's diary were made public for the first time, in which he clearly acknowledged what he had done in bringing about the early death of the King and his motivation for doing so.[10] In the 1936 Birthday Honours he was promoted to Viscount Dawson of Penn[11][12] and remained in the Medical Households of King Edward VIII[13] and King George VI and treated numerous members of the Royal Family and foreign monarchs including Queen Maud of Norway and King Leopold III of Belgium. Lord Dawson later died in 1945 and, without male heirs, his titles became extinct.