Sir Walter Strickland, 9th Baronet

Walter William Strickland, de jure 9th Baronet (26 May 1851 – 9 August 1938) was an English translator and radical. He became known as the "Anarchist Baronet" because he wandered around the world for much of his life espousing radical causes. After receiving Czechoslovak citizenship in 1923, he renounced his British citizenship and later moved to Java.

Biography Strickland was born in Westminster while the family estate was at Hildenley Hall near Malton, North Yorkshire. He was educated at Edinburgh Academy and Trinity College, Cambridge. He was the eldest son of Sir Charles Strickland, 8th Baronet (1819–1909), the only child of his first marriage to Georgina, daughter of Sir William Milner, 4th Baronet, but never formally used the title he inherited upon his father's death.

He has been linked with the Voynich manuscript. He may have met Wilfrid Voynich during his first years in London, when Voynich was directly involved in the political activities of Russian refugees in London, under the leadership of Sergey Stepnyak-Kravchinsky, who founded the SFRF (Society of Friends of Russian Freedom) and the RFPF (Russian Free Press Fund).

In the early 1890s, Strickland went to live abroad. In 1911, he sold the family home, which became a convent. After 1912, he did not live in England. Strickland spent some time in Russia and in 1923 became a citizen of Czechoslovakia, formally renouncing his British citizenship and that he would not be using the title. (There is no mechanism for a baronet to renounce the title, although it is possible to cease using it during his lifetime.) Strickland died in Batavia, Netherlands on 9 August 1938.

Political beliefs

Strickland had libertarian, socialist (Bohemian) and atheist ideas. His anti-British and anti-imperialist activities were widely reported in the English-speaking press, particularly The Times and Daily Express, making him somewhat of a celebrity, while his wandering led him to be dubbed a "gypsy."