Explorer Who Bought a Wife

Samuel Baker, the Victorian explorer who discovered Lake Albert and the Murchison Falls on the Nile, made a most unusual purchase: he bought himself a wife. She was a Hungarian girl whom Baker, a widower, rescued from Turkish slavery at a slave auction. They spent six years in Africa together, and married on their return to England. Baker's tales of his wife's courage made her a popular heroine at home, but although Baker was knighted, Queen Victoria refused to receive his wife because if their earlier liaison.