He was born at Brigg, the second son of nineteen children (fourteen of whom survived to adulthood) of Sir William Chambers Bagshawe, a physician, and his wife Helen, daughter of Nathaniel Ridgard, of Gainsborough, Lincolnshire.

He and his wife were close personal friends of Helen, a Catholic convert who had been taking opium, and confined in a Carlton Gardens house owned by her father Sir John Gladstone, 1st Baronet.

Shortly, however, Thomas Gladstone and his brother William contested the claims made that Helen was under some form of restraint.

[7] The application via the Commissioners did not proceed; but Helen left the house to stay with Catholic friends in Bath about a week later.

[1] In the wake of the Prison Ministers Act 1863 he was active in supporting the visiting rights of Catholic priests in Glamorgan jails in particular.

[11] In 1864 Bagshawe argued against a decision of the Board of Guardians in Swansea, where his wife and family had been making workhouse visits, to restrict entry to accredited ministers of religion; he obtained an amendment.

The arrangement lasted until 1842, when Lucas began to take an aggressive line towards the Review in The Tablet, his own publication.