Henry Ridgard Bagshawe

Life

He was born at Brigg, the second son of nineteen children (fourteen of whom survived to adulthood) of Sir William Chambers Bagshawe, a physician, and his wife Helen, daughter of Nathaniel Ridgard, of Gainsborough, Lincolnshire. His father was originally surnamed "Darling", but inherited the Bagshawe family's landed property from a distant cousin- and assumed that name- because his maternal grandmother was of that family and the male line had died out. His elder brother William John, who inherited The Oakes, Sheffield, died in 1851. Bagshawe was educated at Oakham School, and at Richmond School under James Tate. He matriculated at Trinity College, Cambridge in 1817, graduating B.A. in 1821, M.A. in 1824.

In 1824 Bagshawe entered the Middle Temple, and he was called to the bar there the following year. He took silk in 1854. He built up a substantial chancery practice. In 1857 he took on Charles Russell as pupil.

Bagshawe was received into the Roman Catholic Church at St Patrick's Church, Soho Square in 1834, by the Rev. Edward Norris. When Nicholas Wiseman was in London at the Sardinian Chapel in 1835–6, he stayed with Bagshawe.

In 1846, Bagshawe appeared before the Commissioners in Lunacy, on behalf of Helen Gladstone (1814–1880), younger sister of William Ewart Gladstone. He and his wife were close personal friends of Helen, a Catholic convert who had been taking opium, and confined in a Carlton Gardens house owned by her father Sir John Gladstone, 1st Baronet. Bagshawe's initial request, for an application to visit to be passed to the Lord Chancellor, was accepted by Lord Ashley. Shortly, however, Thomas Gladstone and his brother William contested the claims made that Helen was under some form of restraint. The application via the Commissioners did not proceed; but Helen left the house to stay with Catholic friends in Bath about a week later.