Harry Baker, 1876-1958
‘Death and the lady’, the only song in the Penguin Book of English Folk Songs that was collected in Kent, came from “Mr. Baker of Maidstone”. The song was included in the Journal of the English Folk Dance and Song Society Vol 5 No 1 (1946), with the following note from the collector Francis Collinson:
Mr. Baker of Maidstone, who is in his seventies, has worked all his life as an engineer at Thomas Tillings’. He is a little uncertain in his singing, and I had to ask him to repeat the tune of “Death and the Lady” a number of times before I was certain of having it down correctly.
It only became apparent in the 1990s, when Collinson’s English song MSS became more readily accessible, that he had in fact collected songs from both Mr and Mrs Baker.
Harry Baker was born on 12th December 1876 and baptised 14th January 1877 at St Lawrence, Mereworth. His father William was a labourer, originally from East Malling, his mother was Eliza née Honey, from Mereworth. In 1881 the family was living at New Pound, Mereworth; Harry was the second youngest of the four children in the family home. By 1891 they had moved a couple of miles away, to Dukes Place, West Peckham. Harry, now 14, was described as “Houseboy domestic”. 10 years later they were to be found at Court Lodge, East Peckham; Harry’s occupation was given as Grocer’s assistant.
Shortly before Christmas 1903, on 19th December, Harry married Frances Harriett Bell, at St Lawrence, Mereworth. His occupation at the time was given as “Labourer”. By the time of the next census, in 1911, Harry was working as an Assurance agent for the Prudential and living at 108 Upper Fant Road, Maidstone, with Frances, and a 5 year old daughter, Hilda. They were at the same address in 1921, and the family now included a son, Harry, who had been born in 1912. Harry’s occupation was shown as “Hardener (Steel)”, but in the Employer column it states “Out Of Work”.
The 1939 Register shows that they had moved at some point literally just round the corner, to 5 Evelyn Road, Maidstone. As well as Frances, his daughter Hilda – now Hilda Stanley – was also living in the house. Harry was working as “Steel Hardener Heavy Worker”. His employer is not given, but presumably this was Thomas Tilling Ltd. – or, to be accurate, Tilling-Stevens, whose factory was less than a mile away in St Peter’s Street. That factory was designed by Wallis, Gilbert and Partners, the foremost factory architects of the inter-war period. It is now a Grade II listed building, “one of few surviving examples of a group of English factories built using the Kahn Daylight System, an adaptable, efficient and influential system of factory building, developed in America for the construction of automotive factories”[1]. To quote further from the same Historic England record:
Tilling-Stevens Ltd was formed in 1915 after WA Stevens, inventor of the petrol-electric motor, met Richard Tilling of Thomas Tilling Ltd, London’s oldest omnibus operator (established 1847). The men recognised the potential for petrol-electric transmission in motorised buses, and the companies went into partnership together, manufacturing their own vehicles. New premises were added to Stevens’ Maidstone works (known as the Victoria Works) in 1912, and following the formation of Tilling-Stevens Limited the works were enlarged again with the construction of the Wallis Gilbert and Partners factory in 1917 to accommodate production for war requirements.
The company manufactured buses and other commercial vehicles; during the Second World War their work would have been turned over to the war effort, and they produced searchlight lorries for the Army.
Harry Baker died in the second quarter of 1958.
Songs
Bold Fisherman (Roud 291)
Death and the Lady (Roud 1031)
[1] Historic England, Official list entry for Former Tilling-Stevens Factory, St Peter’s Street, Maidstone, Kent, ME16 0ST, https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1408072
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