Baker, George, Sir, 1st Baronet (1723 -1809)

Sir George Baker was the only son of the Reverend George Baker, Archdeacon of Totnes, and his second wife, Mary, daughter of Stephen Weston D.D., Bishop of Exeter. He was educated at Eton and King's College, Cambridge, where he was admitted in 1741, and took his B.A. in 1746, and his M.A. in 1749. He became a Fellow of King’s College in 1745, took his M.D. in 1756, and became a Fellow of the College of Physicians in 1757, of which he was several times President. At first he practiced at Stamford in Lincolnshire, but afterwards moving to London he became Physician in Ordinary to George III and Queen Charlotte, and was created a baronet 19 September 1776. Sir George made an important contribution to medical knowledge by his discovery that Devonshire colic and the colica pictonum were forms of lead poisoning. He married Jane, daughter of Roger Morris, of Netherby, on 28 June 1768, and they had an only son and heir, Sir Frederick Francis Baker, 2nd Bart. The fourth baronet changed his name to Rhodes in 1878, having inherited the estate of George Ambrose Rhodes, but died unmarried, when his younger brother, who had taken the additional name of Wilbraham,