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Author: Baker, Thomas

Biography:

BAKER, Thomas (1803-60: ancestry.co.uk)

His parents were John Baker and his wife Martha Bagnall; they were married in Burslem, Staffordshire, on 22 Jan. 1792. No record of his birth has been found but he was baptised as Thomas Baker on 19 June 1803 in Burslem; in later life he called himself Thomas Bagnall Baker. He matriculated at St. Edmund’s Hall, Oxford, on 15 Jan. 1827 but soon transferred to St. John’s College, Cambridge, where he was admitted on 2 July 1828. He became assistant curate at Wilsden, Yorkshire, in 1829 and was ordained a priest in 1830. He married Eliza Jones in Bunbury, Cheshire, on 21 June 1832 and served as curate at Great Budworth; a son and daughter were born there. In 1836 the family moved to London where six more children were born (several died in infancy) before Eliza’s death in Jan. 1844. He married Eliza Maria McCallum in All Soul’s Church, Marylebone, on 21 July 1845; they had two children but the second, a boy, died in early infancy. Baker served as minister of the Woburn Chapel in Tavistock Place until 1848 when, according to Palmer, he was removed from his post by the Bishop of London, Charles Blomfield. He became a lecturer at St. George the Martyr’s Church, Southwark, but the position paid only a small stipend and newspaper records show that in 1853 he was an insolvent debtor. Palmer stated that he spent time in a lunatic asylum but no conclusive evidence for this has been located. He died of pneumonia at 1 Heathcote St., London, on 14 June 1860. His wife, left without means of support, moved with one daughter to Froxfield Hospital, a sheltered housing complex for women in Wiltshire; in Nov. 1861 she appealed to the RLF for relief and was awarded £20. Thomas Baker also published numerous religious works; Eliza lists only these and not his book of verse on her application to the RLF. (ancestry.co.uk 11 Nov. 2022; Bibliotheca Staffordiensis; Alumni Oxonienses; ACAD, CCEd, London Evening Standard 23 July 1845, 2 Nov. 1853; RLF file 1567, Samuel Palmer, St. Pancras; Being Antiquarian, Topographical, and Biographical Memoranda [1870])

 

Books written (1):

Newcastle under Lyme/ London: for the author by J. Bayley/ T. Tegg, [1830]