Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

The fine Ashantee 1873-74 medal awarded to Captain A. W. Baker, known as “Baker of the Bobbies”, who distinguished himself as Commissioner of Armed Police, Cape Coast Castle and Inspector-Commandant of Police in Trinidad

Ashantee 1873-74, 1 clasp, Coomassie (Capt: Baker, Commr. Of Police, Cape Coast Castle, 73-74) very fine and a rare award to a Special Service Officer £800-£1,000

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, Medals from an Africa Collection.

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Dix Noonan Webb, December 2003 and September 2006.

Arthur Wybrow Baker was the son of the Reverend John Durand Baker of Bishop’s Tawton, Barnstaple, and the brother of Lieutenant-General Sir Thomas Durand Baker, K.C.B. (whose medals were sold in these rooms in March 2005). Baker was educated at Rugby, originally commissioned into the 66th Regiment in July 1862, and was advanced to lieutenant in August 1865. Sometime thereafter, having obtained a captaincy, he resigned his commission and travelled to Africa, where, as the following letter to Downing Street from Major-General Wolseley reveals, he volunteered his services to the British cause in 1873:

‘I cannot over state the importance of having this post [Inspector-General of Police] filled at the present moment by an able organizer, and by a man full of energy and of great physical health and strength. No one but a military man would be fit for it, as the efficiency of this police force will depend largely upon the manner in which strict discipline is maintained in it. The management of bodies of armed men is an art that few possess intuitively, and is one that can only be acquired by military service.

I have therefore selected Captain A. W. Baker, late of the 66th Regiment, who, having left the army, is one of the many similarly circumstanced who have recently come to the coast at their own expense to join the force under my command.

He is no relation of mine and I never heard of him until quite recently, but I have selected him for what I consider to be his especial fitness for the post of Inspector-General of Police.

The force at present numbers 438 men, but its efficiency is by no means what it ought to be. It has been hurriedly collected and time has not admitted its organization and the selection of men enlisted being properly attended to: much remains to be done before it can really be a thoroughly efficient force.

Captain Baker assumed command of it today [16 December 1873] as explained to your Lordship in my despatch previously alluded to ...’

As evidenced by Wolesley’s subsequent despatch regarding the Coomassie operations, dated 7 February 1874, Baker quickly knocked his police force into shape:

‘The police duties in connection with the recent military operations have been most effectively performed by Captain Baker, Inspector-General of Police. He has rendered the force under my command most valuable service and his zeal and energy mark him out as peculiarly suited for the post he occupies ...’

After his success in Africa, Baker went on to be employed as part of the Police Service in Trinidad. He was appointed Inspector Commandant of Police in 1877, Inspector Commandant & Inspector of Weights & Measures in 1881, and as Inspector of Prisons in 1904. The following is given in The Years of Revolt, Trinidad 1881-1888 by Fr. A. de Verteuil, with regards to this period of his career:

‘Baker, the Chief of Police, Arthur Wybrow Baker was a man’s man. At this period he was over forty, but still a fine figure of a man, over six feet tall and broad in proportion, with dark black hair and moustache and striking eyes. He was a “broth of a boy” as the Irish say, with a loving wife and children. Keen on athletic sports, and well mannered on top of that, he was the clean type of man that everyone in that Victorian age could look up to. Even the French creoles who hated the English officials admired him; “With the exception of Captain Baker”, one wrote, “there is not a single one (of the English officials) that any man with the slightest pretension to respectability would introduce to his family or his club.” As a macho man he appealed to the lower class blacks who could measure his worth even on the purely physical level.

As Inspector Commandant - Chief of Police - Baker had been an immediate success. A man of integrity and energy, of coolness in action and firmness in decision, possessing a close sense of identification with most of his men, he won their respect and the respect of all. Even “the very rowdies whom he kept down with a strong hand, admired him for his courage and fearlessness in tackling them”. As head of the Voluntary Fire Brigade, he graced their social functions, with his wife and was in the forefront to put out the frequent fires. When Carter’s Races (on 1st August, Emancipation Day) fell into decline, Captain Baker instituted athletic sports which afforded lots of sport to the police, soldiers and the general public for many years.

Before his arrival in Trinidad, he had spent three years in the 66th Regiment in India, and was in command of the Houssas on the West Coast of Africa; and by 1884 he had been in command of the police in Trinidad for eight years. After he had been some years in Trinidad, he relaxed the reins a little and let his subordinate officers have more of a free hand. This was regrettable, as some of them at the very least, lacked sound judgement, and gave the police and Baker a bad name. As a man of colonial experience, he fitted in well with the circle of British officials in Trinidad and particularly with the commander of troops at the St. James Barracks. And so - “He was a man, take him for all in all”.

But marred, fatally marred by the stamp of one defect. As a typical British official of the time, he looked down on all non-English mortals, and this in an age of growing Trinidad nationalism. In three years in India he had not acquired a word of Hindustani. So he bravely bore alone “the white man’s burden” to the end for better - or perhaps worse. A strong man, in more ways than one, his impact on Trinidad went beyond the police to politics.’

Sold with a photographic imaged of recipient in uniform, and copied research.