Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 4.djvu/126

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NOTES AND QUERIES.

FRANCIS JOSEPH BAIGENT.

MR. FRANCIS JOSEPH BAIGENT, the antiquary and artist, who died, in his 88th year, at Win- chester, his native city, on March 7, was one of the original supporters of ' N. & Q.,' and occa- sionally contributed to its early pages under his initials, as at 1 S. i. 404 (1850) and 2 S. i. 12 (1856). He was bom on June 14, 1830, and was a son of Mr. Richard Baigent, for fifty years the drawing - master at Winchester College, who died in 1881. From an early age he devoted himself zealously to the study of ancient buildings and mediaeval manu- scripts, and accumulated a vast store of sound knowledge about cathedrals and other churches, and about matters of liturgy and bygone customs. His chief books were those he edited for the Hampshire Record Society, including the volume comprising the Registers of Bishops John de San dale and Rigaud de Asserio, which his notes, and appendixes of illustrative documents, make an admirable text-book for students of mediaeval documents, as, indeed, he intended it to be. Two separately issued illustrated monographs may also be mentioned : ' The Abbey of Blessed Mary at Waverley ' and a ' History of Wyke Church, near Winchester.'

For some years before he died his eyesight failed, and he could do little reading or writing ; but he had a retentive memory to the end, and was very willing to impart information- upon obscure points of archaeology. " Well, Mr. Baigent will be able to tell us," had become a common saying in Winchester. Alas that it can be said no more !

H. C.

W. B. H. sends the following excerpts from The Times of March 10 and 20 :

" A correspondent writes : ' The announce- ment on March 14 of the death, at the age of 87, of Mr. F. J. Baigent, of Winchester, recalls an interesting part of the first trial of the great Tichborne case in 1871, which stirred public opinion at the time to an extraordinary degree. Mr. Baigent was one of the principal witnesses in support of the claimant's case. He was the historian of the family, and, as Lord Brampton (Mr. Hawkins, Q.C.) says in his Memoirs, " knew more of the Tichbornes than they did of them- selves," and had been an old friend of the real Roger Tichborne. A small, spare, studious- looking man, he was cross-examined by Mr. Hawkins for ten days, and in the opinion of many competent critics that cross-examination was not only one of the most masterly ever heard in a court of justice, but did as much as anything else to destroy the claimant's case.' "

" Another correspondent writes : ' Mr. Baigent had, perhaps, the most profound knowledge of any one in Hampshire of the history and historical records of the county. His house in Winchester was full of manuscripts and transcripts of ancient documents. It is to be regretted that what would have been his magnum opus on the history of Winchester, planned more than thirty years ago, was never given to the world.' "

RICHARD BISSELL PROSSER.

MANY of our .readers will regret to learn that the familiar initials R. B. P. will not appear many more times in ' .N. & Q,,' Richard Bissell Prosser,. who used them, having died on March 25 last. The eldest son of Richard Prosser of Birmingham, engineer and inventor (1804-54), he was born at that place on AUK- 25, 1838. In 1850 he entered what was then called the Office of the Commis- sioners of Patents, and is now known as the Patent- Office, from which he retired in 1888, after having, held the position of Chief Examiner for some years.

Mr. Prosser wrote ' Birmingham Inventors and Inventions : a Contribution to the Industrial History of Birmingham,' 1881, and a number of biographies, chiefly of inventors and engineers, for the ' Dictionary of National Biography ' ; he also- contributed to the ' Oxford English Dictionary.' For a time he edited and largely wrote a series of notes and queries relating to St. Pancras, which appeared in The St. Pancras Guardian, and were subsequently issued in book-form. But literary work by no means engrossed all his activities, for he had also been a member of the School Board for London, and of the old St. Pancras Vestry.

During his last illness he had, we are informed, the whole of the February number of ' N. & Q.'' read to him, and was pleased to find that a note and a query of his were included, as well as several replies to a query he had inserted about Blackiuooil and the Chaldee Manuscript.

THE Editor desires to thank those contributors- who so kindly forwarded copies of the number for April, 1917. The need for additional copies is- still very great : only a few days ago the lack of a- copy prevented us from making up a set, with. the consequent monetary loss of an order for back stock.

The Editor will be also greatly obliged if any friends can supply him with particulars of the welfare and address of our valued contributor MR. R. H. THORNTON.

to

J. F. BUXTON and J. B. WAINEWRIGHT. Forwarded.

J. W. FAWCETT (Inventor's Epitaph). The ' Diet. Nat. Biog.' devotes nearly seven columns to Willir.m Sturgeon.

MR. P. H. LING writes : " I wish to express my grateful thanks to those who have in dif- ferent ways supplied me with the source of quotation 5, ante, pp. 50, 90."

H. S. B. (Life of Madame de Steel). A volume was devoted to her by Bella Duffy in the " Eminent Women Series " (1887) ; and Mr. Murray published in 1881 A. Stevens's ' Study of her Life and Times,' 2 vols.

G. H. D. (" While the light lasts I shall re- member "). The lines to which you refer are from Swinburne's ' Erotion ' (in ' Poems and Ballads '), and run thus :

I shall remember while the light lives yet,

And in the night-time I shall not forget.