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Lady Baker and the Source of the Nile

From a Bulgarian slave market to the toast of the Royal Geographic Society

Her parents had been killed in the 1848 uprising, and she had been raised from her childhood by a wealthy Armenian trader who intended to make a good profit when he sold this beautiful blonde teenager at auction. A witness sat before me; a face still young, but bronzed like an Arab by years of exposure to a burning sun; haggard and worn with toil and sickness, and shaded with cares, happily now past; the devoted companion of my pilgrimage, to whom I owed success and life – my wife.’ The couple did believe they had found the source of the Nile: this claim has not stood the test of time, but they should still be remembered for their discovery of Lake Nyanza and of the Murchison Falls, and for all they did to try to counteract the Arab slave trade in East Africa.

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