Born at Dunedin, New Zealand in 1868, the son of Captain William Baldwin, Indian Army, retired. He was educated at Dunedin High School and in Germany. After working in a solicitor's office and a bank at Dunedin he entered the Otago Medical School at the age of twenty. To complete his training he entered St George's Hospital Medical School, London on 1 October 1889, qualified in 1893 and served as house physician and house surgeon at St George's. He held a resident appointment at the Hospital for Sick Children, Great Ormond Street, and he took the Fellowship at the end of 1894. Baldwin settled at Melbourne, Australia in 1898, buying the practice of Stephen John Burke, MRCS 1856, in north Melbourne, whose second daughter, Ida M Burke, he married in 1899. He was for some years on the staff of St Vincent's Hospital, Melbourne. Burke later practised in other parts of Victoria. In 1915 he gave up his practice at Warrnambool and volunteered for service as medical officer to a troop-ship sailing for the war in Europe, but was not accepted on account of his age. For some years he practised at Richmond and as a consultant in electrotherapy at Collins Street, Melbourne, but was adversely affected by the financial depression of the 1930's and went back to general practice at 183 Burke Road, Glen Iris, Melbourne, SE. During the second world war he served as area medical officer for south-east Melbourne in the Royal Australian Air Force. Burke died on 8 July 1942, aged 74, after a year's ill-health. He was survived by his wife, their son and three daughters. His son Godfrey Joseph Burke Baldwin, MB BS Melbourne 1932, served in the RAAF Medical Service in New Guinea during the second world war and then resumed his practice at Sale, Gippsland, Victoria.