| Description | Business correspondence mostly addressed to Slade Baker, a solicitor of Bewdley which provides detailed information about the work of a provincial law firm of the first half of the nineteenth century. The business relates to land and property, administration of clients estates, payment of annuities, purchase of stocks and shares, probate and testamentary cases, court cases and other legal disputes. There is also information about legal documents drawn up by the firm in the course of its business, copies of some of which are included in the archive. The clients of the firm are largely from Worcestershire and the neighbouring counties and include the Childe family of Kinlet, Shropshire. The collection also includes correspondence to and from Wilson Aylesbury Roberts, MP, 1780-1821. |
| Administrative History | Slade Baker (fl 1815-1840), was a solicitor, of Bewdley, Worcestershire. He was married and had a son, also called Slade. It appears that he may have worked for a family firm as the archive includes earlier legal correspondence addressed to W. Baker and Samuel Baker, both of Bewdley, attorneys. Other correspondence in the archive for the 1840s and 1850s is addressed to W. N. Marcy who, in the 1868 Post Office Directory for Worcestershire, is listed as William Nichols Marcy, a solicitor in High Street, Bewdley and Clerk of the Peace and Town Magistrates' Clerk. It is possible that he took over the firm from Baker. Slade Baker is still listed in the same directory, as a private resident in Bewdley, and at that date was a Justice of the Peace.
Source: Information extracted from items in the collection |