Baker, Mrs Edith and Miss Edith

Baker, Mrs Edith and Miss Edith, Eryl Mor, Victoria Place, Budleigh Salterton

Edith Julia Baker[1] (1863–1950) was born Edith Lake on 4 July 1863 in Charlton, Kent. Her parents were William and Georgiana Lake, née Larkins. William was a captain in the Royal Navy. On 4 January 1888 Edith married Henry Goldney Baker in Christchurch, Canterbury, New Zealand. Henry had emigrated to Canterbury in 1885, initially as a sheep farmer. While in New Zealand he trained as a clergyman and was ordained in Canterbury in 1903.[2] They had three children, including Edith Isabel (1891–1980) who was born in Canterbury, New Zealand, on 21 Oct 1891.

Edith and Henry and their family returned from New Zealand to England in 1906 and Henry took a post as curate at Bovey Tracey. In 1909 he retired and the family decided  to settle in Budleigh Salterton, which had been Henry’s childhood home.[3] Henry did occasional duty in parishes in the neighbourhood, particularly in East Budleigh, where he is first noted as doing so in May 1910.[4] The Bakers first appear in the Exmouth Journal’s ‘Budleigh Salterton Directory’ in July 1910, living at The Lawn, West Terrace. Later that year they moved to Eryl Mor which was to become their long-term home.[5] 

At the time of the 1911 census Mrs Goldney Baker, as Edith was known, in order to distinguish her from other ‘Mrs Bakers’ in the town, became involved in charitable work such as fundraising for the new school buildings, the local branch of the Devonshire Association (where she joined the committee in 1912) and the work of the Cottage Hospital.[6]

Both Henry and Edith became interested in the work for women’s suffrage. Indeed it is Henry who is first mentioned in this connection. He chaired a meeting arranged by the Budleigh Salterton branch of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (NUWSS) to discuss the Bill before Parliament in 1912 dealing with the White Slave Trade.[7] In 1913, when the Land’s End to Hyde Park NUWSS pilgrimage was under way, he travelled to Ivybridge to chair the meeting held there. The account of the meeting says that Baker ‘having lived for thirty years in New Zealand, both before and after women got the vote, was able to tell his hearers from personal knowledge about the social reforms which had been effected by the women’s vote, especially that of having public houses closed on election day.’[8] Henry may have been encouraged in his pro-suffrage activity by Exmouth NUWSS members such as Joan Retallack, whom he would have met playing croquet, a favourite pastime, in Exmouth.[9]

The Budleigh Salterton NUWSS branch was formed in December 1911. Its first secretary retired in 1913 when she took on the role of secretary to the South West Federation, and Edith junior, Miss Baker, became secretary in her place. Edith is noted representing the branch at the Fete and Forest of Christmas Trees fund-raising event in Exeter in November 1913 and giving the annual report on the work of the branch in February 1914.[10] She also arranged an At Home for the branch in March 1914, at which her father presided and where Mrs Rackham, a Cambridge activist, spoke.[11] It is probable that she should be identified as the ‘Miss Baker’ who formed part of the South West Federation’s Active Service League in the summer of 1914 and toured with a caravan around areas of Cornwall and North Devon, stopping each evening in a different village to hold a meeting.[12] They were undeterred by receiving a letter as they set out stating that they were the ‘sisters of the devil’ and that their ‘home was in hell’.

Edith senior had herself joined the committee of the NUWSS branch in May 1914. After war broke out there are no further references to NUWSS  branch activity although in the spring of 1915 Camilla Ogle began to be listed in Common Cause as branch secretary, possibly implying that Edith junior was away on war service.[13] Edith senior joined the local Red Cross working party.[14] The Bakers’ elder son William, a regular soldier, was awarded the DSO in 1917.

Henry Baker died in 1931 but the two Ediths lived on at Eryl Mor. In 1939 they are both listed there on the Household Register, with Edith junior named as an Air Raid Precautions Warden. Edith senior died at 7 The Lawn in Budleigh Salterton on 14 February 1950, leaving more than £4400. Edith junior died, also at 7 The Lawn on 9 November 1980. She left over £73,000.


Entry created by Julia Neville, December 2018


[1] Census and family information from www.ancestry.co.uk

[2] Devon and Exeter Gazette, 29 May 1931, Death of Rev H. Goldney Baker.

[3] Devon and Exeter Gazette, 29 May 1931.

[4] Exmouth Journal, 28 May 1910.

[5] Exmouth Journal, 2 Jul 1910; 19 Nov 1910.

[6] Devon and Exeter Gazette, 11 Jan 1911; 18 Jul 1912; 20 Jan 1914.

[7] Devon and Exeter Gazette, 13 Dec 1912.

[8] Western Times, 2 Jul 1913.

[9] For example, Devon and Exeter Gazette, 30 Jul 1912, 29 Jul 1913.

[10] Western Times, 29 Nov 1913; Devon and Exeter Gazette, 7 Feb 1914.

[11] Devon and Exeter Gazette, 14 Mar 1914.

[12] Common Cause, 12 Jun 1914.

[13] Common Cause, 21 May 1915, 96.

[14] Red Cross Card available at: https://vad.redcross.org.uk/Card?fname=Edith&sname=baker&hosp=budleigh  Accessed 8 Dec 2018.

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