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He was involved with the fascist movement, was a Nazi speaker, and seems to have been known for his eccentricity and walrus moustache.
1895 Jun 2. Born Beacon Hill, Hampshire, England, to John Richard St. Barbe Baker and Charlotte Purrott
1901 census at The Firs, West End
1906-1910 Close School Canterbury
1910 Arrives in Vermont, USA
1911 census - he is not with his parents.
Working as a mining engineer prior to joining RAF according to RAF record. 2nd Lieutenant in the Royal Field Artillery and later as a Captain in the Royal Air Force. As a second lieutenant he had been buried alive during shelling. He remarked during his WW2 interrogations "I did not like the (Great) War, Sir, not one bit."
1915 May 12. RFA. The undermentioned Cadets and ex-Cadets of the Officers Training Corps to be Second Lieutenants (on probation). Thomas Guillaume St Barbe Baker
1917 Oct 18. MC Gazetted. 2nd Lt. Thomas Guillaume St. Barbe Baker, R.G.A., Spec. Res. The later citation was on citation LG 7 Mar 1918. For conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty. When the entrance to the signalers' dug-out was hit and the staircase destroyed, one of the occupants being severely wounded and the remainder rendered insensible from fumes, he descended with a party by a second entrance and got all the men away, though twice rendered unconscious by the shell fumes.
1918 Feb 16. Unfit GS 2 months, but fit HS. Recommended for 3 weeks leave.
1918 Mar 10 To 2 School of Aviation from Fighting (Super)
1918 May 23 Unfit GS, but fit HS
1918 Jul Acting Captain
1919 Mar 28. RAF The undermentioned are transferred to the unempld. list: — Lt. T. G. St. Barbe-Baker.
1919 May 22. Demobilised
1921 Jan 17. married Marta (Baum) Specht in Vienna according to Georg Gaugusch, Wereinmal war, vol. 1, page 117. Amalthea, 2011. ISBN: 978-3850027502. But I am not sure of the source of this statement. She is said to have been It is an Austrian tennis player and linguist but I cannot find anything about her. She died 1953 in London
1921 May 19. Joined ADRIC with service no 1978. Joined R Coy
1921 Nov 9 Admitted Stevens Hospital
1921 Nov 17. Discharged Stevens Hospital
1921 Nov 17. Suspended
1921 Dec 3. Posted to depot.
1922 Jan 28. Discharged on demobilisation of ADRIC
1923 Apr 24 Bankruptcy notice against him filed. In the High Court of Justice. To T. G. ST. BARBE BAKER, of 51, Lexhaan gardens, London, S.W. 5. TAKE notice, that a bankruptcy notice has been issued against you .in, this Court at the instance of Barney Barnato Austin, of 30, Maddox-street, London, W. 1, and the Court has ordered that the publication of this notice in the London Gazette and in the Daily Telegraph newspaper shall be deemed to be service of the bankruptcy notice upon you
Nor a marriage to Muriel Skinner. In fact he appears to have married Muriel Skinner in 1956. Their children, chose Birth Certs I have not seen, but when one looks at the GRO birth records for Geoffrey in 1946, one notes that he has been registed as both Baker and Skinner,.
1924 He was responsible for the advertising of the British Empire Exhibition.
Wikipedia says Thomas resided at Cat's Corner Tasburgh, Norfolk, and came to the attention of the authorities for his pro German or anti-semitic speeches that he made from the church pulpit there. Meetings were held at the Wigmore Hall, the Quaker Hall in Lambs Conduit Street Central London and a private house, 109 Shirland Road W9 [London] revealed Baker to be a potential fifth columnist, extreme in his views. Among others he was an associate of the influential Captain Peter Elwyn Wright (whose portrait hung in the Bier Keller in Munich), Commandant Charles Cole, Arnold Leese, John Beckett MP, Lord Redesdale, George Henry Lane-Fox Pitt-Rivers, Norah Elam, Commandant Mary Allen, Fay Taylour (the pioneering female racing driver) and Admiral Barry Domvile, who among others formed a core of ardent British national socialists, almost all but not exclusively from affluent backgrounds with strong establishment connections, and whose names all appear in the infamous red book ledger of membership of the Right Club that was seized from the ownership of Captain Archibald Maule Ramsay M.P. by the authorities in 1940 and has remained mostly shrouded in secrecy ever since.
1939 Register. He is a married Advertising Agent living at 17 Alexandra Road , Hampstead, London
1940 Jan/Mar Son born Norwich - John R St B Baker (mother Skinner)
During the Defence Regulation 18B fascist round-ups, Thomas went briefly on the run, shaving his distinctive walrus moustache but was soon caught and jailed for the duration of the War, being an unrepentant Nazi. During reviews by the internment committee, where internees had a chance to prove their loyalty and secure their release, and which many took advantage of, Baker always gave answers in the positive as to his ideology, which only convinced the advisory panel that it was best to keep him locked up. Unusually Baker was kept interned for a suspended period and he was amongst the last of the detainees to be released, (HO 45/25732 120508) whereas most internees, including Oswald Mosley, had been released by 1943.
1943 Sep 10. The British authorities were finding it difficult to know where to hold him.
Even fellow internees regarded Baker as extreme. In a letter to Charles Lockwood, a former 18B detainee from Lancashire, sent in October 1945, fellow fascist internee Samuel Darwin-Fox discussed the inhabitants of Kingdom House: ‘Schneider and his sisters are already installed as cooks, cleaners etc ... Mrs Baker hasn’t “seen the light” and has departed – taking the god-child with her!’ The ‘god-child’ was Baker’s son. He claimed that a birthmark on the baby's head was a swastika and that the boy was Hitler’s heir.
1945 Apr 21. Finally released from internment.
1946 Apr/Jun Son born in Lewisham, Geoffrey J M St B Baker, mother Skinner
1947 Apr/Jun Son born in Surrey, David F St B Skinner - mother Skinner
After the War, Baker settled for some time in Jersey and was visited by prominent fascists in the 1950s but took no real active part again in politics
1953 His estranged wife Marta died in London. Presumably he could not legally marry until she died
1956 Married Muriel Skinner (finally) Jan/Mar ref 7a 895 in Exeter
1966 Oct 6. Died at Brighton