Thomas Barwick Lloyd Baker

Thomas Barwick Lloyd Baker (14 November 1807 – 10 December 1886) was an English educationalist, social reformer, and ornithologist. Life Lloyd Baker was born in 1807, the only son of Thomas John Lloyd Baker (died 1841) of Hardwicke Court, Gloucestershire, and of Mary, daughter of William Sharp of Fulham, and niece of Granville Sharp. Like his father, Baker went to Eton and to Christ Church, Oxford, where he matriculated in 1826 but did not graduate. He entered at Lincoln's Inn in 1828, qualified as a magistrate for Gloucestershire in 1833, and soon afterwards became a visiting justice at the county prison of Gloucester. On succeeding his father at Hardwicke Court in 1841, he took an active part in the administration of other local public institutions, was one of the founders of the Social Science Congresses, started what is known as the Berkshire system for the suppression of vagrancy, was president of the chamber of commerce, and captain of the Gloucestershire squadron of the yeomanry cavalry. As a member of the old high church party, Baker contributed liberally to the restoration of Hardwicke, Uley, and other churches. He was deputy-lieutenant of Gloucestershire, and high sheriff in 1847–8. Baker's best known work was in connection with the establishment of the Hardwicke reformatory school. The Philanthropic Society and the Refuge for the Destitute had for years done much for the reformation of youthful criminals, and the Philanthropic Society had established a school in London; in 1848, on the advice of the Rev. Sydney Turner, then its superintendent, the Philanthropic Society's school was removed to the Farm school at Redhill, and reorganised on the lines of the French school at Mettray. Baker's attention had been drawn to the question by seeing boys in prison at Gloucester, and by a visit to the Philanthropic Society's school in London. In 1861, the whole question of the treatment of youthful offenders was considered at a conference at Birmingham, promoted by the town clerk, William Morgan, and Joseph Hubback of Liverpool. Among the results of this conference was the establishment of reformatory schools, by private philanthropists, in several places. With the help of George Henry Bengough (1829-1865), Baker opened a school at Hardwicke in March 1852, the first inmates being three young London thieves. The school was at first little more than a labourer's cottage on a small farm on Baker's estate; by 1854 there were seventeen inmates.