HENRY

See also:

• HENRY BAKER (1698-1774)
• BAKER, SIR BENJAMIN (1840-1907)
• BAKER, SIR RICHARD (1568-1644/5)
• BAKER, SIR SAMUEL WHITE (1821-1893)
• BAKER, THOMAS (1656-1740)
• BAKER, VALENTINE [BAKER PASHA] (1827-1887)

BAKER (1698-1774)  , English naturalist, was born in London on the 8th ofMay 1698 . After serving an apprentice-ship with a bookseller, he devised a system of instructing the deaf and dumb, by the practice of which he made a considerable fortune . It brought him to the notice of Daniel Defoe, whose youngest daughter Sophia he married in 1729 . A year before, under the name of Henry Stonecastle, he was associated with Defoe in starting the Universal Spectator and Weekly Journal . In 1740 he was elected fellow of the Society of Antiquaries and of the Royal Society . He contributed many memoirs to the Transactions of the latter society, and in 1744 received the Copley gold medal for microscopical observations on the crystallization of saline particles . He was one of the founders of the Society of Arts in 1754, and for some time acted as its secretary . He died in London on the 25th of .November 1774 . Among his publications were The Microscope made Easy (1743), Employment for the Microscope (1753), and several volumes of verse, original and translated, including The Universe, a Poem intended to restrain the Pride of Man (1727) . His name is perpetuated by the Bakerian lecture of the Royal Society, for the foundation of which he left by will the sum of £loo .