Harry Baillie

Though Harry Baillie was one of six participants associated with Northampton Institute in Islington at the 1908 London Olympics, he was its lone representative in the wrestling events.

Prominent in the amateur wrestling scene in the early 1900s, first with the Apollo Wrestling Club, Baillie won the amateur lightweight freestyle title in 1905. At the Olympics, Baillie advanced to the quarter-finals where he lost to eventual bronze medal winner Arthur Gingell of Easton Amateur Wrestling Club. He was also an active participant in boxing.

Born and baptised as Henry Pimblett, Baillie grew up in Poplar, London. Both of his parents were natives of London; his mother died when he was 16, and his father Henry Edward Pimblett, Snr. worked on the shipping docks. Though the family is listed under the surname Baillie in 1891, they are listed under the Pimblett surname in all other records, and it is unclear how they came to also be known under the former surname, which Henry also used throughout his athletic career in the 1900s. He later followed his father into the shipping industry as a clerk, and remained unmarried until his death in 1959.