Bailey


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The bailey or bailiff, from the Old French bailli, was a free man of importance for the lord of the manor.  He was the supervisor of the peasants who worked on the land.  The term was also later used as a public administator of a district.  The word baillie is still the common form for a chief magistrate or sheriff in Scotland.

The Middle English baille, meaning "the outer wall of a castle" and giving us the Old Bailey in London, provides an alternative derivation. one who lived by this outer wall.  Bailey was and is also a place name in the Ribble valley in Lancashire.

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England.  Among the earliest records of the name were Henry Baily and William Baillie in Oxfordshire in 1273. Bailey and Bayley families can be traced to Shropshire, Wiltshire, Lincolnshire, and Hertfordshire in Elizabethan times.  Bailey later became the preferred spelling and, whilst being particularly prevalent in Hampshire, Oxfordshire, and Staffordshire in the 19th century, the name had by then spread widely across the whole country.

Scotland.  Thomas Bailli appeared in Scottish records in 1312.  His descendants were granted lands in Lamington and Jerviswood in Lanarkshire and they have also held the Dochfour estate in the Highlands.  A later Baillie family acquired Polkemmet in West Lothian in 1620 and the house stayed with the family until the 1950's.  William Baillie of Ayrshire was granted lands in county Cavan in Ireland in 1610 as a result of the Ulster plantations.  He gave his name to the town of Baillieborough.

The Scottish spelling has generally remained Baillie rather than Bailey.

America.  Thomas Bayley from Wiltshire was an early settler in Weymouth, Massachusetts, arriving there in the 1630's.  A descendant Deacon Timothy Bailey acquired an island off Maine in 1742 now known as Bailey's Island.  Nearby at Pemaquid Point was where John Bayley stepped ashore in 1635 with his two children the day before his ship, the Angel Gabriel, sank during a severe storm.           

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Nathan Bailey was the foremost English lexicographer before Samuel Johnson.
Sir Joseph Bailey was a pioneer of the iron industry in South Wales in the early 19th century.
Abe Bailey was a South African diamond tycoon, financier and politician.  He was said in the 1930's to be one of the wealthiest men in the world.
Sir Donald Bailey was the English civil engineer who invented the Bailey bridge (much used in World War Two).
Beetle Bailey, begun in 1950 by Mort Walker, is the oldest comic strip in America still being produced.
David Bailey was the celebrated English photographer of the 1960's.
Andrew Bailey devised Bailey's Irish cream liqueur in Dublin in 1974.
F Lee Bailey is a legendary defense attorney of many high profile trials in America.

Select Baileys Today
  • 111,000 in the UK (most numerous in Sussex)
  • 85,000 in America (most numerous in Texas)
  • 46,000 elsewhere (most numerous in Australia)

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