George Laurence Gomme

Sir George Laurence Gomme (1853-1916) was a London public servant and antiquarian who spent his working life with the Metropolitan Board of Works and its successor, the London County Council, rising to statistical officer and then clerk to the council. Outside that career he was one of the central figures of Victorian and Edwardian folklore scholarship, a founder member of the Folklore Society in 1878 and later its honorary secretary, director and president. He wrote widely on custom, village institutions and tradition, including Primitive Folk Moots (1880) and Ethnology in Folklore (1892), and helped launch the Victoria County History and London's blue plaque scheme. He was knighted in 1911.