Author: Bailey, Mary
Biography:
BAILEY, Mary Elizabeth formerly Walker (b 1792: ancestry.co.uk)
She was the third eldest of seven children of Edward Walker (1744-1821) of Overhall, Gestingthorpe, Essex, and his wife Margaretta Jones, daughter of the Rev. William Jones of Nayland, Suffolk (ODNB). They had married on 4 Sept. 1781 and Mary was baptised on 16 Mar. 1792. She wrote on religious matters, and profits from her Musae Sacrae were intended for the missions of the Moravian Brethren. She married the Rev. William Bailey (1806-79), a graduate of Trinity College Dublin (BA 1829, LLD 1841) and former curate of Killileagh, County Down, Ireland, on 2 Oct. 1832 in Gestingthorpe. They were living in London in 1833 when her husband produced The New Evangelical Church of England Champion from Jan. to Apr. and Mary contributed to reviews. In 1843 he was convicted of forging a promissory note in favour of his sister and sentenced to transportation to Van Diemen's land. Mary and their son followed him to Australia in 1844. There she contributed verse, including translations from classical and modern languages, and other writings to periodicals and they operated schools. Mary died after a long illness on 28 Aug. 1873 and was buried in the Sydney necropolis. William Bailey remarried and died in Aug. 1879. (ADB [for Willian Bailey]; RPW; ancestry.co.uk 20 Mar 2018, 6 Jan. 2025; Belfast News-letter 9 Oct. 1832; Katie Hansord, Colonial Australian Women Poets [2021]) SR