Florence Baker

Florence, Lady Baker, or Florence Barbara Marie Finnian: or Florica Maria Sas; or Maria Freiin von Sas; (6 August 1841 – 11 March 1916) was a Transylvanian-born ethnic Hungarian British explorer. Born in Transylvania (then part of the Lands of the Hungarian Crown), she became an orphan when her parents and brother were murdered by the Romanian marauders led by Ioan Axente Sever.

She fled with the remnants of the Hungarian army to the Ottoman Empire, settling in Vidin. There, she was sold as a slave in 1859. Years later, Samuel Baker encountered her during a visit to the Vidin white slave auction. As an adolescent, she spoke Hungarian, German, Romanian, and Turkish. She was sold as a slave in Vidin, a town and fortified port on the River Danube in what was then the Ottoman Empire and is now in Bulgaria, in January 1859. According to certain accounts, she was destined to be owned by the Pasha of Vidin, but she had been spotted by Samuel Baker. He and Maharaja Duleep Singh were both on a hunting trip. It was said that Samuel Baker bribed the guards and Florence was allowed to escape into his ownership,

Africa

Samuel Baker took her to Africa where he was leading an expedition to find the source of the River Nile. They travelled up the Nile to Gondokoro in present-day South Sudan where Florence saved the expedition. There was a dispute between her husband's inflexibility and the staff's disloyalty. Florence was able to intercede and find some common agreement.

Arriving in England, they lived at Hedenham Hall in Norfolk.

They were married on 4 November 1865 at St James's Church, Piccadilly, when Florence’s name was given as Florence Barbara Marie Finnian and the name of her father as "Matthew Finnian, Gentleman decd."

When Samuel Baker was knighted she became Lady Baker. The details of how they met was meant to be kept secret but the story circulated and this resulted in Queen Victoria deciding to exclude Baker from court.

In 1869 Samuel was invited by Isma'il Pasha, the Turkish Viceroy of Egypt, to return to Africa to help eliminate or reduce the trade in slaves around Gondokoro. Samuel was made Governor General of the Equatorial Nile. Accepting the invitation, they returned to Africa where they attempted to gain the upper hand. Florence served as the medic and when they were defeated at Bunyoro she was there carrying rifles and brandy in addition to two umbrellas and a pistol. Florence would be required on such a journey. However, Florence would not go back to Africa and her husband would not travel without her. Sir Samuel Baker died in 1893.

Florence Baker died in Devon of a heart attack, and was buried with the remains of her husband in the family vault at Grimley, near Worcester.

Legacy The Bakers appear in a painting called "Samuel Baker (1821–93) and the Discovery of Lake Albert" by .

Together with Delia Akeley, Christina Dodwell, Mary Kingsley and Alexine Tinne, she was one of the five subjects chosen for a 1997 book on women explorers in Africa.

A memorial plaque commemorating her travels was unveiled by László Kövér, Speaker of the Hungarian National Assembly on 4 March 2019. He and Ephraim Kamuntu were there on the 155th anniversary of her trip to search for the source of the Nile. The memorial plaque is on the shore of the Nile, in the Murchison Falls National Park in Uganda and it was organised by the African-Hungarian Union and the Kenya's Hungarian embassy.