Lawrence Bishop

Born: 1872.

Died: 1961.

Lawrence Bishop, was born in Kentucky and had been a merchant and farmer, but in the 1910s he became a citrus grower in Titusville, Florida. He was related to Crowley through Crowley's Mother's grandfather. His wife Birdie and he had three children.

When Bishop came to Streatham around 1894, Crowley's family had put him up and they reciprocated when Emily Crowley visited them in Kentucky in 1904. When Crowley, destitute, left New Orleans in February of 1917 he counted on similar hospitality. It was hardly an imposition as Lawrence has plenty of money in the bank, and his orange and grapefruit plantation was so large that his nearest neighbor was ten miles away. Crowley arrived on 9 February 1917 and stayed in Titusville until 29 March.

Although the Bishops did their best to accommodate Crowley, the fundamentalist beliefs of his cousin, now fiftyish, sickened Crowley so that he recalled him as "spiritually stunted and corrupted in every way by savage superstition." His wife was no better. Although under thirty, she appeared a "wrinkled hag of sixty, with no idea of life beyond the gnawing fear of the hereafter." She and Crowley did not get along, she inspired the Simon Iff story "Suffer the Little Children," which Crowley considered one of his best.