BAGGALLAY, Richard (1816-1888), of 10 Old Square, Lincoln’s Inn , City of London and Clapham, Surrey

It was said of Baggallay, a barrister, that he ‘was not the greatest of parliamentary successes’ and was ‘far more at home’ on the bench than in the House.1Liverpool Mercury, 14 Nov. 1888. However, he displayed sufficient ability in his brief first stint in Parliament in the late 1860s for the Conservative leadership to single him out as a future law officer.

Baggallay’s family had long possessed ‘high commercial standing as warehousemen’ in the City of London. They had a longstanding connection with the Merchant Taylors’ Company, which admitted Baggallay as a member in 1839.2F. Boase, Modern English biography, supplement (1912), i. 221-2. His mathematical talents were evident at Cambridge, where he was 14th wrangler, and also held a college scholarship and fellowship. After leaving university, Baggallay embarked on a legal career that was no less impressive. He began as a ‘conveyancer and equity draftsman’, and ‘the combination of wealthy City connection and fair university distinction brought many clients to his doors’.3The Times, 14 Nov. 1888. He took silk in 1861.

The Standard, one of the leading Conservative newspapers, described Baggallay as ‘a most eloquent man’ when he stood for Hereford at the 1865 general election.4The Standard, 26 June 1865. Although he had no apparent prior connection with the city, Baggallay topped the poll after declaring his opposition to the ballot, while favouring an ‘equitable’ settlement of the church rates issue.5The Times, 16 June 1865. Despite speaking against Baines’s borough franchise bill during his election campaign, Dod’s parliamentary companion listed Baggallay as a supporter of extending the franchise ‘to those whose position and intelligence afford a sufficient guarantee for its proper exercise’.6Dod’s Parliamentary Companion (1865), 139. This was a suitably vague formulation of the type adopted by many Conservative candidates to avoid being seen as opposed to reform, while leaving sufficient room for them to object to Liberal proposals.

It came as no surprise, then, that Baggallay divided against the Liberal government’s 1866 reform bill, and was in the majority that defeated Russell’s ministry on Dunkellin’s amendment for a rateable rather than rental franchise, 18 June 1866. Although he had been elected less than a year earlier, Baggallay was considered as having the necessary qualifications for legal office by the incoming Derby ministry. Discussing the credentials of one potential Irish solicitor-general, Disraeli asked Derby, 12 July 1866, ‘would he be better than Baggallay, who if R[olt] went to Ireland, would probably be your solicitor [general]?’7Benjamin Disraeli letters, eds. M. G. Wiebe et al (2013), ix. 103. However, Baggallay was passed over on this occasion. In the divisions on the 1867 representation of the people bill, Baggallay, like the bulk of Conservatives, opposed enfranchising compounders, and expanding the representation of the largest towns at the expense of the small boroughs.

Having made his maiden speech against the poor persons’ burial (Ireland) bill, 17 Apr. 1866, Baggallay only made one other recorded speech in his first spell in Parliament. His other intervention, 5 Apr. 1867, was on the case of John Toomer, who had been convicted of detaining and repeatedly raping his children’s governess Miss Partridge, but while the judge had found the defendant guilty he also implied that the prosecutrix had encouraged him. Baggallay warned that to pardon Toomer, as some MPs wanted, would brand the victim as a ‘harlot and a perjurer’, which was not ‘fair or just’. The sentence must stand unless evidence was brought forward that the witnesses had perjured themselves, as Toomer’s defenders maintained. The best way of ascertaining the truth, declared Baggallay, would be for a separate, but new trial for perjury to test the truth and honesty of Toomer and the other witnesses.

Baggallay put his legal knowledge to good use serving on the select committee on the 1868 married women’s property bill. At this time, the common law did not acknowledge women as having an independent legal existence separate from their husbands regarding property. This was mitigated in theory by the courts of equity which allowed wives to retain property separate from their husband’s control through trustees. In practice, however, the committee found that the equity courts did not push their ‘decisions to their legitimate conclusion’, and rarely awarded the wife the whole sum to which she was entitled, often granting a portion to the husband or his creditors.8PP 1867-68 (441), vii. 339, 341-2 (at 342). Although the inquiry was incomplete, the committee recommended that a change in the law was ‘necessary’, particularly as such measures had proved effective in America and Canada.9Ibid., 344. In the same session Baggallay served on an investigation into the royal gun factories. The report found that the Enfield-based government arms manufactory made improper estimates to undercut commercial competitors.10PP 1867-8 (459), vi. 824, 826.

Baggallay opposed Gladstone’s Irish church resolutions, 3 Apr. 1868. Speaking at a county meeting in Herefordshire that September, he repudiated the idea that the Church in Ireland had ceased to be useful.11The Times, 18 Sept. 1868. In the same month he was returned unopposed at the by-election necessitated by his appointment as solicitor-general, but was defeated at the general election in November, and again at the Hereford by-election in March 1869.12McCalmont’s parliamentary poll book, eds. J. Vincent and M. Stenton (8th edn., 1972), 138.

Baggallay returned to the Commons in October 1870 as MP for Mid-Surrey. Appointed as solicitor and then attorney-general in Disraeli’s second ministry, his political career terminated on becoming a judge in the court of appeal in 1875. Knighted shortly after, Baggallay sat as an appellate judge until retiring in 1885. The Times observed that he was a ‘most courteous, kindly, and careful judge, whose amiability and fine sense of justice made him generally beloved by his learned brethren and by those who practised before him’.13The Times, 14 Nov. 1888. Having long suffered from ‘weakness of the heart’, Baggallay died in 1888, leaving a personal estate proved under £64,609.14Ibid; National Probate Calendar, 18 Dec. 1888. His eldest son, Henry was an engineer, while a younger son, Ernest (1850-1931), served as Conservative MP for Brixton, 1885-7.