Rev Hatty (Harriet) Baker 1863-1947
She was one of Plymouth’s most famous women non-conformist ministers. The daughter of a merchant, she became a Congregational minister and in 1914 was invited to become co-pastor of the Plymouth Congregational and Unitarian Churches. She was, by this time, well-known in Plymouth for her activities in support of the NUWSS, having visited the town in 1911, 1912 and 1913. A university graduate (Greek, Hebrew and Theology), she was described by the Western Daily Mercury as ‘a lady who arrests attention. Dressed in a Geneva gown, surmounted by a conspicuous white collar, she possesses a commanding presence’. In Plymouth she formed part of the circle which included Dr Mabel Ramsay and Dr Rosa Bale amongst others, and it also included both Waldorf and Nancy Astor. During the war, with a focus on helping women to gain qualifications and skills to enable them to earn an independent living both in the wartime emergency and after, Miss Baker joined forced with Miss Maud Slater in the latter’s established Clarence School of Commerce while carrying on her pastoral duties. They continued to run the school into the 1920s, with Baker continuing her role with the Congregational Church in Plymouth, but by1939, she had retired from both and gone to live in Plympton, where she died (aged 84) in 1947. She provided Plymouth women with a model of a spiritually powerful woman who was also practical, and left a legacy that underlined that competence in office skills were well within women’s grasp, and that women could make an active contribution to commercial and professional life.