Robert John Bagshaw (1803-1878)
Robert John Bagshaw, M.P., of Banksea House, Dovercourt, Essex
He was the son of the Member of Parliament for Harwich. He was an East India merchant in Calcutta before returning to England where he was a Magistrate and Deputy Lieutenant for Essex. He was Provincial Grand Master of the Freemasons of Essex and succeeded his father as the Whig Member of Parliament for Harwich. He was a member of the Reform Club. In 1842, he married Georgina Baker, the youngest and most popular of the three daughters of Richard Baker of Barham House who had been, "an extremely handsome girl with blue eyes and dark hair and a fine tall figure". She was worth £30,000 and had numerous offers of marriage from Englishmen and Frenchmen alike, but went on "refusing suitor after suitor, till ripe middle age" (possibly as she was in love with one of the Burtons - brother of her sister's husbands) when she finally married Robert Bagshaw, by which time she was too old to have children.
