Pierre Henri Joseph Baume
Epithet: Benefactor, eccentric and recluse (1797-1875)
Record type: Biographies
Biography: From ‘New Manx Worthies’ (2006):
Baume gained an entry in the first edition of the Dictionary of National Biography but it was not until 1996, with the discovery of his extensive papers and journals in the Isle of Man that the full story of his life began to merge. His parents ran a wig-making shop in Marseilles and were both inclined to anti-clericalism and adultery. Pierre Henri Joseph was the first of eight children, six of whom survived childhood.
When he was still young his father moved to Naples where Baume was placed in a military college. An encounter with the mathematician John Lewis Guillemard (1765-1844, Fellow of the Royal Society), resulted in his visiting London in 1816 where he was to earn a living teaching French and Italian. Through Lord Pembroke he secured the post of secretary to Prince Castelcicala, the Neapolitan ambassador in Paris, with whom he remained until February 1820 when he became secretary, in Naples, to the future Francis I. However, the discovery by the court of Naples that Baumes' father was a member of the anti-monarchist Carbonari led to his dismissal in 1821. By then Baume had amassed considerable wealth, and on his return to Paris he sought to add to it by involving himself in various shady business ventures, several of which took him to London. From the time of his employment with Castelcicala he had been involved in selling confidential diplomatic documents to the French secret police, and his dealings in stocks, bonds and property now brought him under further police surveillance. He lived a double life, publicly mixing with the social elite in London and Paris, whilst privately trading on insider information. Feelings of paranoia eventually overpowered him, however, his troubles compounded by stormy relations with his 'barbaric' family, illicit sexual liaisons, and efforts to climb socially. In 1824 he retreated to the estate of his 'spiritual adviser' the Due de Rohan, one of the most powerful men in the Catholic hierarchy in France.
For the next few years Baume lived on the Duke's estate and became increasingly pious. This phase of his life culminated in a pilgrim age to Rome and an audience with Pope Leo XII in March 1827. That July he moved to London and once again took advantage of the social opportunities afforded by the Guillemard family. He became increasingly involved with London's radical underworld. His evident wealth, distinctive gaunt appearance (often described as 'Jew-like'), consider able knowledge, ready speech, linguistic talents, and ability to devise striking placards and proclamations rendered him a notable character. In 1829 he opened the Universalist or 'Optimist' Chapel in Finsbury Square, one of the first infidel meeting centres in London, and launched The Optimist (of which only one number was ever to appear). At this time Baume was actively involved in the republican, socialist, atheist, democratic ferment of pre-Reform Bill London, and was probably a better known public figure than at any other time in his life.
In the summer of 1831 Baume took a lease on several acres of land in Islington to establish his 'Experimental Gardens', a quasi-socialist scheme of cottages and allotments. But the project began to disintegrate in December 1832 when his sister Charlotte, who had come from Paris to live with him, died in childbirth. Allegations of incest and murder, and subsequent rumours about Baume's involvement in the madness and death of the radical Spencean poet George Petrie (in 1835-36), led to his being labelled 'The Islington Monster'. In May 1837, after a claim for damages by one of the tenants of the Experimental Gardens, Baume was confined in the Fleet Prison for a year. During his imprisonment he played a leading part in organising Robert Owen’s visit to France, but the scandals surrounding his personal life, his unfulfilled promises of support for radical causes, and his paranoid behaviour increasingly alienated him from the radical leadership. For a while he was involved in amateur theatricals in Birmingham, and on at least one occasion he presided at the annual dinner of the National Swimming Society.
In the 1840s Baume re-entered the Guillemard circle and tried to carve a place for himself in respectable society. He was elected to the Corps of the Gentlemen at Arms and to the British and Foreign Institute, and sought (unsuccessfully) to marry Guillemards' niece, Mary Ann Gilbert, who was the daughter of the MP and former President of the Royal Society, Davies Gilbert. During this period of his life he bought a property at Lower Edmonton, London, to supplement the rent he received from the 84-acre Friern Barnet estate he acquired in 1832 (in connection with which he also obtained British citizenship). In 1846 he purchased a further estate at Chalfont St Giles in Buckinghamshire, mainly to facilitate spying on the nearby community established by the Chartist, Feargus O'Connor. Within a decade he had also acquired a property on Judd Street in London, where he set up an 'Office of Information and Complaint' for the investigation of rightful inheritances. In 1856 he bought his first property in the Isle of Man, 5 South Quay in Douglas.
Exactly when Baume first came to the Isle of Man is unknown. In June 1834 he almost arrived when returning from Ireland, where he had been acting as one of the executors to the Cork estate of the socialist William Thompson. But on that occasion the ship had turned back to Dublin for repairs. He probably journeyed to Douglas early in the 1850s when he was residing principally in Manchester; he was still living there when he purchased 5 South Quay. However, by May 1859, when he purchased Knocksharry Farm in German for £420 from Robert Moor (sic) a, Peel advocate, he was spending as much time on the Island as off it. His journals for the 1860s were increasingly filled with Manx matters.
Baume may have been attracted to the Island because of its profile in publishing temperance and health Journals. Since the 1830s he had been preoccupied with dietary expedients: at one point he preached the virtues of living off Jerusalem artichokes; at another he lived manly on dried peas, and towards the end of his life he proudly extolled a concoction of raw cabbage and local snails. He was also a staunch supporter of the United Kingdom Temperance Alliance. But his main reason or taking up abode on the Island was his belief (gained from the Manchester MP and mill-owner, Joseph Brotherton) that the Manx laws on mortmain would protect his wealth from outside claims after his death not without cause, he also worried that he might be deemed mentally unstable and incarcerated, and hence lose his fortune to unscrupulous lawyers and scroungers.
Although Baume purchased several properties on the Island - including the remote west coast farm, Doarlish Cashen - he rarely lived in them. As in London, he rented them out whilst moving restlessly between cheap lodgings or sponging off acquaintances. In the early 1860 she appears to have based himself at Crane’s Lodging House, 2 North Quay; at some point he occupied a 'strange and dreadful den lose to Arch House, South Quay, and before his death he was lodging at the home of a poor woman in Union Mills. Seemingly scarred by his early life, he was incapable of trusting anyone. Those naive enough to join in his utopian educational and cooperative schemes or those, such as Samuel Harris compelled to act as his legal advisors, were soon worn out by his paranoid obsessions and affected legalisms. In the end, his reputation as a miser and eccentric was virtually all left to posterity. A life of relentless scheming had come to naught. Not only did his estate (valued at over £50,000) prove almost impossible to straighten out, but for over a quarter of a century after his death his Manx trustees were embroiled in public scandals and political disputes over the proper application of the funds. They did, however; in 1904, award to the Manx Music Festival £50 per annum to fund the Baume Scholarship at the Royal Academy of Music, London, and until it was wound down in the 1980s the Baume Trust distributed most of its funds to small charities on the Island for the poor, blind and deaf.
Although Baume never married and had no legitimate heirs, he sired several illegitimate children. Two were born to one mistress, Cornelie Loigerots (1799-1824) in Paris, and at least two more to another, Sophie Mantelli (1816 -40) in London. Informally, he adopted the illegitimate son of his sister Charlotte. This child, born in May 1830 and publicly christened in 1834 by the socialist Robert Owen as 'Julian Hibbert', arrived in Douglas after. Baume's death, and on the basis of his striking resemblance to Baume acquired a portion of the estate.
Baume declared that ‘burial in holy ground was obnoxious and heathen', and he remained throughout his life firmly attached to the secularism he adopted in the late 1820s. He was buried, however, in St George's Churchyard in Douglas, where his trustees erected a granite monument in his memory. A cast of his head, taken shortly after his death is housed in the Manx Museum where his hoard of private papers is now to be found.
Biography written by Roger Cooter.
(With thanks to Culture Vannin as publishers of the book: Kelly, Dollin (general editor), ‘New Manx Worthies’, Manx Heritage Foundation/Culture Vannin, 2006, pp.3-5.)
Culture Vannin
#NMW
Nationality: French
Gender: Male
Date of birth: 17 October 1797
Date of death: 27 October 1875
Name Variant: Baume, P.H.J.