Life

Baker is said to have been the son of an eminent attorney of London, and is credited, probably with just cause, with having been educated in Oxford. A disparaging estimate of his character and his powers is furnished in the List of Dramatic Authors with some Account of their Lives, attributed to John Mottley

John Mottley

John Mottley was an English writer, known as a dramatist, biographer, and compiler of jokes.-Life:He was the son of Colonel Thomas Mottley, a Jacobite adherent of James II in his exile, who entered the service of Louis XIV, and was killed at the battle of Turin in 1706; his mother was Dionisia,...

 (the compiler of Joe Miller's Jests), which appears at the close of Thomas Whincop

Thomas Whincop

-Life:He is identified as the son of Thomas Whincop, D.D., rector of St Mary Abchurch. On that basis he was educated at Merchant Taylor's School and Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. He lost considerable sums in the South Sea bubble during 1721, and died at Totteridge, where he was buried on 1...

's tragedy of Scanderbeg. According to this rather prejudiced authority, Baker 'was under disgrace' with his father, 'who allowed him a very scanty income,' and was compelled to retire into Worcestershire

Worcestershire

Worcestershire is a non-metropolitan county, established in antiquity, located in the West Midlands region of England. For Eurostat purposes it is a NUTS 3 region and is one of three counties that comprise the "Herefordshire, Worcestershire and Warwickshire" NUTS 2 region...

, where he is reported to have 'died of that loathsome disorder, the morbus pediculosus.' His namesake, David Erskine Baker

David Erskine Baker

-Life:David Erskine Baker was the son of Henry Baker, F.R.S., and his wife, the youngest daughter of Daniel Defoe. Baker was born in the parish of St Dunstan-in-the-West in the City of London, on 30 January 1730, and named after his godfather, David Erskine, 9th Earl of Buchan...

, in the Biographia Dramatica, undertakes at some length his defence. He states that a character named Maiden, introduced in Tunbridge Walks, the best-known comedy of Thomas Baker, was intended by the author for himself. The character sprang into favour, and was imitated in the Fribbles and Beau Mizens of subsequent comedy.

Works

The plays of Baker, all of them comedies, consist of:

• 'Humour of the Age,' 1701, played the same year at Drury Lane, with Robert Wilks
  Robert Wilks
  Robert Wilks was a British actor and theatrical manager who was one of the leading managers of Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in its heyday of the 1710s...
  
  , Susanna Verbruggen
  Susanna Verbruggen
  Susanna Verbruggen , aka Susanna Mountfort, was an English actress working in London. Her first recorded stage appearance may have been as early as 1681 in D'Urfey's Sir Barnaby Whig...
  
  , and Anne Oldfield
  Anne Oldfield
  Anne Oldfield , English actress, was born in London, the daughter of a soldier.She worked for a time as apprentice to a seamstress, until she attracted George Farquhar's attention by reciting some lines from a play in his hearing...
  
   in the principal parts.
• 'Tunbridge Walks, or the Yeoman of Kent,' 1703, played 27 January of the same year at Drury Lane; revived at the same theatre in 1738 and 1764, and at Covent Garden in 1748, and given, in three acts, under the title of Tunbridge Wells, at the Haymarket, as late as 13 August 1782, by Palmer, Pursons, and Mrs. Inchbald.
• 'An Act at Oxford,' 1704. This piece, one scene in which is in the theatre at Oxford, disclosing the doctors, the undergraduates, and the ladies, in their proper places, commences with the two opening lines of the 'Iliad,' delivered in Greek by Bloom, a gentleman commoner. Its performance was prohibited, it is supposed through university influence, and it saw the footlights in an altered version, called 'Hampstead Heath,' Drury Lane, 30 Oct. 1705. Under this title it was reprinted in 1706.
• The 'Fine Lady's Airs,' no date (1709), played at Drury Lane 14 December 1708, and revived 20 April 1747.

A reference to some of these plays and to the author occurs in the preface to the 'Modern Prophets, or New Wit for a Husband,' a comedy by Thomas Durfey, London, no date (1709). In this Durfey speaks not very intelligibly of Baker as one of 'a couple of bloody male criticks,' from whose 'barbarous assassinating attempts' he has escaped. Durfey condemns the plotless and trifling quality of 'Tunbridge Walks,' accuses Baker, in reference to two other comedies, of having 'brought Oxford upon Hampstead Heath,' and declares that the 'Fine Ladies Airs' (sic) was 'deservedly hist' (hissed). Baker's plays are indeed 'plotless.' They are fairly written, however, and are up to the not very exalted level of comedies of the period. Baker is credited with the authorship of the 'Female Tatler' (London, 1709), which Lowndes, who omits all mention of Baker under his name, describes as a 'scurrilous periodical paper.' After 1709 all reference to Baker ceases.