Ronald Ellis Lawson was born in 1925. He was apprenticed to Walter Easterby at Tadcaster, in Yorkshire. He rode his first winner on Rio Tinto in the Wakefield Maiden Plate at Pontefract on May 9, 1942. They won two more races there within the space of six weeks.
Having ridden seven winners by the end of the war, he endured two winnerless seasons before making a bright start to 1948 when winning on Lord Fitzwilliam’s Liberty Light at Lincoln’s opening of season meeting in March, later winning on that same horse at Haydock in July. He rode as a freelance after completing his apprenticeship in 1949 but found winners hard to come by without the benefit of a claim.
He had one winner from just three mounts in 1950, that being Chateau Sorciere at Brighton. He relinquished his British jockey’s licence at the end of 1951 and rode for the next three years in Ireland where he again achieved a fair measure of success, particularly in 1952 when his winners included the Gallinule Stakes on Windy Torrent. He also finished third on Windy Torrent in that year’s Irish 2,000 Guineas and rode him in the Irish Derby, finishing seventh.
Ron returned to Britain in 1955, settled in Oxfordshire and rode on the Flat until 1966, mostly for Compton-based trainers such as Ken Cundell, Atty Corbett and George Beeby, but never rode more than two winners in a year.
His final success, on the Beeby-trained Intriguing in the Mountain Ash Maiden Plate for two-year-olds at Chepstow on May 23, 1961, was gained in the stewards’ room, after Snowy Fawdon’s mount King Card had passed the post three-quarters of a length in front of Intriguing, only to be disqualified for boring and placed second.
His British winners were:
1. Rio Tinto, Pontefract, May 9, 1942
2. Rio Tinto, Pontefract, May 25, 1942
3. Rio Tinto, Pontefract, June 20, 1942
4. Janet, Pontefract, September 19, 1942
5. Melianthus, Stockton, June 28, 1943
6. Calliope, Pontefract, October 16, 1943
7. Clever Lad, Pontefract, April 28, 1945
8. Liberty Light, Lincoln, March 18, 1948
9. Liberty Light, Haydock Park, July 1948
10. Gros Bleu, Folkestone, July 20, 1948
11. Chateau Sorciere, Brighton, August 9, 1950
12. Happy Glow, Worcester, July 9, 1955
13. Mend-a-Tear, Brighton, September 21, 1955
14. Catherine, Worcester, April 21, 1956
15. Concrete (dead-heat), Birmingham, May 21, 1956
16. Blue Orchid, Worcester, June 29, 1957
17. Musical March, Warwick, July 4, 1958
18. Wild Cat, Bath, August 13, 1959
19. Wild Cat, Folkestone, August 24, 1959
20. Intriguing, Chepstow, May 23, 1961