George Baker (judge)

George Gillespie Baker was educated at Glasgow Academy; Strathallan School, Perthshire and Brasenose College, Oxford (Hon. Scholarship; Senator Hulme Scholar), where he later became an Honorary Fellow. He received a Call to the bar by the Middle Temple in 1932 and would in later life become Treasurer of the Inn in 1976.[1] At the beginning of the Second World War Baker joined the army and after a brief spell in the Queen's Own Royal West Kent Regiment he was commissioned in The Cameronians (Scottish Rifles) in 1940.[1]

Baker served as Deputy Assistant Adjutant General at the War Office 1941-1942, Assistant Adjutant General with the Allied Force Headquarters 1942-44, Colonel 'A' 15th Army Group, 1945 and Assistant Adjutant General on the British War Crimes Executive at the Nuremberg Trials in 1945-1946.[1] In 1945 he unsuccessfully contested the Southall (UK Parliament constituency) in the 1945 United Kingdom general election as a Conservative candidate.[1]

After the war Baker resumed his career at the Bar, mostly on the then Oxford Circuit.[1] He was Recorder in turn of Bridgnorth (1946-1951), Smethwick (1951-1952) and Wolverhampton (1952-1961).[1] Appointed a Queen's Counsel in 1952, Deputy Chairman of the Shropshire Quarter Sessions from 1954 until 1971 and Leader of the Oxford Circuit for seven years until his promotion to a High Court Judge in 1961.[1] Baker's deep personal integrity was founded on his staunch Presbyterian faith.

• Appointed an Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, 1945.[1]
• Appointed a Knight Bachelor in 1961.[1]
• Appointed a Privy Counsellor of the Privy Council of the United Kingdom in 1971.[1]
• Honorary Member Canadian Bar Association.[1]
• Freedom of the City of London, 1981.[1]

• Obituary, The Times, 14 June 1984.