Mrs W.E. Baker
(1812-1897)
29 July 1862

Volume 8, page 337, sitting number 10,968

[Identified as Mrs W.E. Baker in the daybooks, this is the wife of William Erskine Baker, later Sir William Erskine Baker. Her husband is the preceding entry in the Silvy daybooks.]

Born in or about 1812, Frances Gertrude Duncan was the third daughter of Major-General Alexander Duncan.

On 29 June 1837 at Kurnaul [today Karnal] in the Presidency of Bengal she married William Erskine Baker. Their marriage produced no children. 

William Erskine Baker had gone to India in 1828 as a lieutenant in the Bengal Engineers. At the time of his marriage, he was in charge of the Junma Canals. In 1843 he was appointed Superintendent of the Canals and Forests in Sindh. Following the First Anglo-Sikh War, he transferred to the Public Works Department and was later consulting engineer on railways and an authority on irrigation to the Government of India. He became Military Secretary to the India Office in 1859 and became a member of the Council of India in 1861. He was appointed KCB in 1870 and retired in 1875.

Sir William Baker and Lady Baker appear on the 1881 census living at Sussex House, Holdenhurst, Hampshire. 

General Sir William Erskine Baker died on 16 December 1881. 

Lady Frances Gertrude Baker died, aged 85, on 12 June 1897 at Drinkstone House, Woolpit, Suffolk. She left an estate valued at £6501.