R. G. (Robert George) Baker

R. G. Baker, identified in library records as Robert George Baker (1788–1878), was an English churchman and writer whose published works place him in Fulham in the mid-19th century. His book A Letter to the Parishioners of Fulham was issued in 1849 and signed "The Rev. R. G. Baker, M.A., Vicar," showing him as the parish vicar at a time of severe local cholera outbreak.

His writing has a practical, humane quality. In A Letter to the Parishioners of Fulham, Baker addresses disease, drainage, housing, and the living conditions of poorer residents, treating these not as abstract political questions but as moral responsibilities of a parish community. Another surviving work, The Spiritual Improvement of the Census (1851), shows the other side of his voice: reflective, sermon-based, and concerned with the religious meaning of social change.

Only a small amount of easily verifiable biographical detail is available from the sources consulted, so much of his life remains indistinct. Even so, the works that survive give a clear impression of a Victorian vicar deeply engaged with the everyday welfare of his parishioners, and they preserve a vivid local record of Fulham during a period of rapid growth and public-health anxiety.