Harvey Humphrey Baker

Background

He was born on April 11, 1869, the son of James Baker, a merchant from Cape Cod, and Harriet M. (Humphrey) Baker, whose father owned a farm in Brookline, Massachussets.

Education

He prepared for college at the Roxbury Latin School; graduated from Harvard in 1891, with membership in Phi Beta Kappa, and from the Harvard Law School in 1894, receiving the degree of Master of Arts at the same time.

Career

He began immediately the practise of law, and soon became a member of the firm known later as Hayes, Williams, Baker & Hersey, keeping this connection until his death. In the town meetings and other affairs of Brookline he took an active part, serving as clerk of the police court for a year and as a special justice from 1895 to 1906. When the Boston juvenile court was established in 1906, Governor Curtis Guild selected him to be the first judge. The appointment did not escape criticism. Baker's life had been free from financial care, sheltered from temptations and even from much contact with such problems as confront the boys and girls who would come into the court. He was not even married. How could he be expected to understand the wayward children of the city? On his own side, when he accepted the appointment, after visiting many of the existing juvenile courts and institutions for delinquent children in the country, it was not only with a modest sense of duty but also in a spirit of adventure. In the nine years that remained before his early death he established the Boston juvenile court in a position of leadership in the country; and for himself he found increasing satisfaction in the work, which demanded the full exercise of every faculty. His success as judge of the juvenile court was due to the simplicity and sincerity of his character; to the quality of his intelligence and knowledge; and to his unsparing use of mind and time and energy on the problems which came before him.

He liked to think of the court as a dispensary and of the officials as physicians, concerned not to treat symptoms, represented by the offense which brings the child into court, but to study the child's conduct as a whole, and give a prescription that will cure whatever is wrong in the situation. In finding the right prescription and in seeking to understand his cases, he developed a high degree of cooperation between the juvenile court and the various social agencies of the city. But with the best use of existing facilities he was increasingly oppressed with the conviction that "juvenile courts and all other agencies are dealing with children without sufficient knowledge of what is really the matter. "In his review of the first five years of the court (cited below) he urged the creation of a "clinic for the intensive study of baffling cases. " When after his death his friends and associates established a memorial of him and his work it took the appropriate form of an endowment for such a clinic, organized in April 1917, and named the Judge Baker Foundation.

Achievements

• Harvey Humphrey Baker is remembered as man who urged the creation of a clinic for the intensive study of baffling cases.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Procedure of the Boston juvenile court.

    (The Making of the Modern Law: Legal Treatises, 1800-1926 ...)

Personality

Though his intimate friends knew him as the best of story-tellers, the joyous companion of country walks, to the casual acquaintance his premature grayness, a pronounced stoop, and the habitual seriousness of his expression gave an impression of reserve and austerity. Fairness, patience, tact, ability to see many conflicting points of view, firmness when necessary, were characteristic of his dealings.

References

• Harvey Humphrey Baker: Upbuilder of the Juvenile Court (Classic Reprint)