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Lawrie Dring

British scouting leader (1931-2012)

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionMar 1, 2026
Entity authorityQ6504842
Source-derived summary

Lawrence 'Lawrie' Dring (4 July 1931 – 6 September 2012) was a British Scouter who was one of the founding members of the Baden-Powell Scouts' Association (BPSA) and of the World Federation of Independent Scouts (WFIS). He was President of the BPSA at the time of his death.

Dring was born on Dundee railway station, one of twin boys. At the time of his birth his mother was attempting to return to Leeds to ensure that the boys were born Yorkshiremen. Although born in Scotland, with a Scottish father and proud to call himself a Scot, his birth was registered in Leeds. His brother was killed as an adult in a car accident.

After leaving school, Dring worked for Fisons Chemicals, until joining Allied Colloids in 1973. He also ran his own company, Dring Associates, which dealt with the disposal of hazardous waste.

In 1947, Dring was a soldier in the British Army stationed in Wuppertal, Germany when a colleague asked him to become a Cub Scout leader. After returning from his national service he joined the Leeds District of The Boy Scout Association, serving on the executive until the adoption of The Chief Scouts' Advance Party Report.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Lawrie Dring” is british scouting leader (1931-2012). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Lawrie, Dring and British, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1931, 2012, 1973, 1947—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1931-07-04. For this dossier, Lawrie, Dring and British is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “british scouting leader (1931-2012)” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 1, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6504842. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1931, 2012, 1973 and 1947.

Critical limits

A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Lawrie Dring”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Lawrie Dring primary sources, Lawrie Dring archive and Lawrie research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Lawrie Dring” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.