Baker, Rev Harriet (Hatty)

Baker, Rev Harriet (Hatty), 5 Headland Park, North Hill, Plymouth

Hatty Baker in her preaching gown

Courtesy of http://www.horstedkeynes.com/martindalearticle.html

 

Harriet (Hatty) Annie Baker[1] (1863–1947) was born in Hackney on 26 January 1863, the daughter of John and Marianne Baker. John was first a warehouse-keeper, then a wine merchant, and made enough money for the family to retire to Kemp Town, Brighton in the 1870s and to support his widow and daughters Harriet and Marianne after his death. Although the Western Morning News stated when Baker was appointed as co-pastor in Plymouth that she ‘was descended on her father’s side from a Devonshire family’, this has not been substantiated.[2]

In 1891 both Harriet and Marianne were listed as daily governesses, living with their mother, younger brother John and three resident servants at The Nook, Marine Square, Kemp Town. During the 1890s John left home to work for Wallis and Co, a big draper’s business in Holborn, London, and in 1899 Marianne married and moved away. Hatty and her mother moved on to 12 Gladstone Terrace, where they were living in 1901.

In 1901, in addition to a resident cook, the Bakers also employed a companion for Mrs Baker. This was probably because Hatty was by then busy as a Congregational minister. Her mother certainly had been a non-conformist,[3] and it seems likely that she had brought up her children in a similar faith. Hatty conducted ‘large and successful Bible classes’ in Brighton[4] and began to preach. Her sermons were well regarded: ‘thoughtful, carefully prepared, and left much that is practical and applicable to the conduct of life in the minds of her hearers’, according to Christina Bremner, who heard her.[5] She had studied theology, Greek and Hebrew and was ordained as a minister during the 1890s.[6]

Baker’s ministry led her to apply in 1907 for the post of minister at the Congregational Hall at Horsted Keynes, founded for worship by Louisa Martindale under the Sussex Congregational Union and Missionary Society.[7] One of Martindale’s conditions was that there should be ‘equality of the sexes in the leading of worship and management of the hall’. Here Baker shared the duties of pastor with students from the congregational colleges in London.

Baker’s experience as a practising minister in a community with equality between the sexes led her to write Women in the Ministry, which was published in 1911.[8] These views also led her to join the movement for women’s suffrage. She wrote to Votes for Women arguing that, ‘You have, and all honour to you, fought your way into the medical fraternity, you are qualifying for the law, and why should the ministry alone be closed to you?’[9] In 1910 she was instrumental in founding the non-conformist Free Church League for Women’s Suffrage. She was the League’s first Hon. Secretary and later a member of its Executive Committee and Vice President.[10] She also joined the Hyde Park Demonstration held by the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) in July, wearing her cap and gown.[11]

She was not exclusively a supporter of the WSPU, however. In the summer of 1911 she undertook a tour of Plymouth, West Devon and Cornwall advocating women’s suffrage on behalf of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (NUWSS).[12]  This culminated in a public meeting in Plymouth organised by the Three Towns and District Branch of the NUWSS, at which she made a speech about the new National Insurance Bill in which, she said, ‘woman was ignored in clause after clause, and she felt more keenly than ever her voteless condition.’[13]

One of Baker’s companions on the tour in Cornwall was a Three Towns NUWSS branch member, Maud Slater (q.v.), who happened to be a member of the Sherwell Congregational Church in Plymouth. It is likely that it was this connection that led to the invitation to Baker to return to Plymouth and the neighbourhood and to preach in the Plymouth Congregational and Unitarian Churches early in 1912.[14] The Western Daily Mercury described her in action: ‘Miss Baker is a lady who arrests attention. Dressed in a Geneva gown, surmounted by a conspicuous white collar, she possesses a commanding presence …’[15]

The NUWSS branch took the opportunity of Baker’s visit to the churches to engage her in suffrage activities too. With Maud Slater and Dr Mabel Ramsay (q.v.) she went to lobby Plymouth MPs Waldorf Astor and Shirley Benn to ask them to support the Conciliation Bill, and about their tactics in relation to this Bill and the Reform Bill.[16] Baker addressed an NUWSS meeting on ‘Women in the Ministry’, referring to the recent correspondence in the Western Daily Mercury on the question of women priests.[17] She also took the opportunity to attend a meeting of the Plymouth branch of the Free Church Suffrage Union, at which Mrs Phillips (q.v.) was elected President and Maud Slater secretary.[18] In November 1912 Baker was in Exeter, where she preached at the Friernhay Congregational Church and addressed the Women Co-operators and the NUWSS on the White Slave Trade.[19]

Baker was back in Plymouth in 1913, leading a National Week of Prayer Meeting involving suffrage workers at the Sherwell Congregational Church and hosting (with her mother) a drawing room meeting.[20] In the spring of 1914 the Plymouth Conference of Congregational Churches invited her to become their co-pastor.[21] She was to preach every alternate Sunday with a male pastor preaching on the other Sundays. Her first Sunday address was on ‘Women and the Church’ and she emphasised that ‘Few Suffragists seemed to realise all that was involved in her deliberate exclusion from the priesthood, the ministry and the other offices of the church.’[22]

In September 1914 Baker addressed a Plymouth Conference meeting presided over by Mrs Waldorf Astor, where she reflected on the penalties ‘of mind and body’ that war might bring to women. That autumn the Plymouth Branch of the Free Church League were alerted that the Plymouth Watch Committee had supported a move to re-introduce the Contagious Diseases Acts for the control of prostitution in areas where there were large numbers of troops. In the view of local suffrage activists all the reasons that had led to the repeal of the Acts in 1886 still held good, and the branch prepared to mobilise public support in opposition to any such move. Fortunately the move was squashed by the Prime Minister and the Town Council, and further action was not necessary. The Free Church League branch wrote to thank the Prime Minister for his action, and to warn him that if this position changed – they did not entirely, of course, trust the word of the man who had worked so hard to deny them the vote – they would be ready to take action.[23]

As the war continued the demand for women clerks with office skills increased. Baker became a partner with Maud Slater in her college where shorthand, typewriting and book-keeping were taught and they advertised a ‘Clerks’ Emergency Course’, citing the ‘unprecedented demand in commercial employment’. [24] They expanded and moved from 107 Tavistock Road to 5 Headland Park, North Hill, and then to 3 Bedford Park Villas.[25]

After the war Baker continued her ministry in the Plymouth Congregational Conference. She and Maud Slater moved out to Pendeen, 4 Horncray, Plympton, where they were both living, designated as ‘retired’ in 1939. She died in Plympton in December 1947, aged 84.

 

 

Entry created by Anne Corry and Julia Neville, January 2019


[1] Family and census information from www.ancestry.com

[2]  Western Morning News, 23 Apr 1914.

[3] Marianne Offer’s birth (pre compulsory birth registration) is listed in the compilation of non-conformist and non-parochial registers.

[4] C.S. Bremner, Daily Chronicle, 24 Feb 1909.

[5] Op. cit.

[6]  None of the biographical notes about Baker date her ordination. The Western Morning News, which interviewed her on her appointment in Plymouth in 1914, states ‘about 20 years ago’. Western Morning News, 24 Apr 1914.

[7] Martindale Hall, available at http://www.horstedkeynes.com/martindalearticle.html  Accessed 30 Jan 2019.

[8] Hatty Baker, Women in the Ministry, London, C.W. Daniel, 1911.

[9] Votes for Women, 12 Aug 1910, 752.

[10]Votes for Women, 28 Oct 1910, 62; Free Church Suffrage Times, 1 Jun 1913, 15; 1 Feb 1915, 15.

[11] Votes for Women, 22 Jul 1910, 704.

[12] Common Cause, 7 Sep 1911, 377.

[13] Western Morning News, 6 Sep 1911.

[14] According to the Western Daily Mercury, 13 Jan 1912, in addition to the Sherwell church, Baker preached at the Treville Street Unitarian Church and Norley Congregational Church (at which her topic was ‘The Motherhood of God’.)

[15] Western Daily Mercury, 8 Jan 1912.

[16] Letter from Slater describing the deputation in the Western Daily Mercury, 11 January 1912.

[17] Western Daily Mercury, 11 Jan 1912.

[18] Western Daily Mercury, 15 Jan 1912. It appears that the branch had been in existence since the previous summer as Baker describes this event to Votes for Women as a ‘half-yearly meeting’. (Votes for Women, 18 Jan 1912.)

[19] Western Times, 2 Nov 1912; Common Cause, 29 Nov 1912, 592.

[20] Free Church Suffrage Times, 1 Dec 1913, 91.

[21] Western Morning News, 24 Apr 1914.

[22] Western Morning News, 5 May 1914.

[23] Free Church Suffrage Times, 1 Nov 1914, 122,

[24] Western Morning News, 14 Sep 1914; 20 Sep 1915.

[25] Western Morning News, 31 Aug 1918; 1 Sep 1921.

 

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