Her mother, Charlotte Augusta (born Bailey), died within three months of Lawrence's birth.

Her father, Philip Henry Lawrence (1822–1895), was a solicitor who in the following year married Margaret Davies.

[1] These connections continued thorough the decades with sisters Madeline (Lena) and Lucy Martineau boarding at Roedean in the school's early years at Wimbledon.

Penelope had been to schools in England and France and now went with her family to Germany where she learned about the Froebel approach to education.

[4] Meanwhile her father's finances were failing, the new house was mortgaged, and the money was not available to send her sisters to Newnham.

Dorothy, Millient and their mother had already been running a school for four years and they had outgrown the family home.

The idea was successful and the school moved to Sussex Square and called itself Wimbledon House.

[4] In 1903 her youngest half sister Theresa Lawrence founded a school for the daughters of executives involved in gold mining in South Africa.

[4] In 1924 the three founding sisters retired[4] and Penelope had decided who should replace them and she head hunted Emmeline Mary Tanner to take place.