Dr. Emanuel Cooper: A Norwich ‘Oddity’

Emanuel Cooper was an obstetrician but first and foremost he was an eye specialist. Born in 1803 in Birkby, Huddersfield in Yorkshire and was baptised in its 11^th century St Peter’s Church.

He went on to study in Yorkshire and eventually was awarded his LSA (Licentiate Society of Apothecaries, London) in 1828 before setting up a practice in Norwich by early 1830s. White’s 1836 Directory lists his occupation as Surgeon and his address at that time was Red Well [now Redwell] Street. According to Piggot’s 1839 Directory, Cooper had purchased and moved into his Tombland home, a house (long since demolished) which stood adjacent to the Erpingham Gate which leads from Tombland into the Cathedral Close. This house was described as having had columns at the front entrance.

Dr Cooper was certainly regarded in Norwich as a generous man, but also one who was quite eccentric. Ralph Hale Mottram, the son and grandson of the principal bankers at Gurney’s Bank, Norwich, described him thus:

“Dr Emanuel Cooper was, even in remote, isolated, provincial Norwich, full of unusual people, a ‘character’ only redeemed from being an ‘oddity’ by a very high professional reputation ….. Of Yorkshire extraction and mildly Quaker persuasion he had ……. the reputation of being the foremost accoucheur (obstetrician, gynaecologist) in the Norwich district…..”

In 1862, and seemingly totally in character, Dr Cooper accepted the position of Honorary Assistant to what had been named the 1st Norfolk Mounted Rifle Volunteer Corps when it was first formed during the previous year. At the time of his appointment, in September 1862, the Corp. became known as the 1st Norfolk Light Horse. Nothing more is known about Cooper’s involvement with the military, or his responsibilities as an ‘Honorary Assistant’; and we can only speculate what part he may have played, if any, during the following ‘showpiece’ which took place on Mousehold Heath in March of the following year:

Around 1865-86 Anna Julia Pearson (1838-1913), born in 1841 at Wreningham, South Norfolk, became Emanuel Cooper’s mistress; she at least twenty years younger than he. Little is known about Anna’s life and she never married Cooper. There were two children born to Anna but there is no evidence that Cooper fathered them and they were born before she moved into 36 Victoria Street, Norwich; a house that Cooper owned but never lived in himself.

The children were named Charles Arthur (1862 – April 1904), and Ada Nemesis (1864-1956) and were probably not born in Norwich at all. Later legal documents refer to both children as “strangers in blood” to Dr Cooper. Why Anna Julia Pearson came to Norwich and who fathered her two children are not known, neither is whether “Pearson” was her maiden or married name. To his credit, Cooper supported Anna and her children fairly comfortably and left her economically secure for life. The fact that she gave her daughter the middle name of “Nemesis” may indicate that she had not felt nearly so secure at the time of Ada’s birth.

It is said that Cooper formally adopted both children as his own, and in a Will dating from August 1866, when his daughter was only two years old, bequeathed her a fortune. R.H. Mottram, In his biography of John and Ada Galsworthy titled “For Some We Loved” he described Mrs Anna Pearson as ‘a very stately figure, full-bosomed and full-skirted, a fine woman … of yeoman stock’.

Then there was the letter written to Helen Flood by a relative in June 1933 (Norfolk Record Office MC 630/29 784X2) offers a few more glimpses of what was seen as ‘the Coopers’:

“When a boy, P often saw Dr Cooper walking across Tombland with his wife. May I say it without any offence, a Darby & Joan* – he with his black coat and white hair, and her with a crinoline dress. I do not remember her wearing any other. There was a personalus about them which impressed your memory and it would be well if the present-day young folks would follow their example.”

(*Darby & Joan is a proverbial phrase for a married couple living a placid, harmonious life together and are seldom seen apart.)

James Gindin mentions in his book, ‘John Galsworthy’s Life and Art'( © James Gindin 1987) the following:

“A prominent obstetrician in Norwich during the 1860s and 1870s, Dr Cooper was fond of making elaborate wills. He first mentions Ada [his adopted daughter]  in a will dated 24 August 1866, describing her as less than two years’ old and living with her brother, Arthur Charles, two years older than she, and her mother at 36 Victoria Street in Norwich, a house Dr Cooper owned but did not live in. Little is known about the life of Anna Julia Pearson (1838-1913), Ada’s mother. She never married Dr Cooper and there is no evidence that he fathered her children or knew her at all before 1865 or 1866…….

Of Yorkshire extraction and mildly Quaker persuasion he had, by the time of Ada’s birth, the reputation of being the foremost accoucheur in the Norwich district, in which so many remarkable names have been made in the medical world, from the times of Dr Caius and Sir Thomas Browne to the present day …. I can say only that the best known fact of his private life was that he employed his leisure in planning and seeing built a handsome, and I think stylistically correct, Mausoleum, midget in dimension, but in the classic taste, which is still the most conspicuous object in the Rosary Cemetery at Norwich today. Here, on Sunday afternoons, he used to sit, smoking a clay pipe and (possibly) reflecting on our future state …. Called to the bedsides of the titled, landed and what we nowadays feel to have been incredibly privileged classes, to preside over the entry into the world of future lords and ladies, members of Parliament and county hostesses, I fancy he began to think that he was no ordinary mortal. The proof is to be found in the long list of noble names set down to be executors of his Will, not one of whom ever acted in that capacity.”

Emanuel Cooper died, in January 1878 and his death notice stated:

“We regret having to report that the lengthened career of this successful surgeon terminated rather suddenly on Saturday evening at a few minutes to ten o’clock. He made the ‘eye’ his special study and was considered an authority on its treatment. He also took a great interest in the Norwich Blind Institution and devoted much of his time to it. He was the oldest practitioner in Norwich, and died at an advanced age. He will be buried on Tuesday at the Rosary, where under his direction, a mausoleum has been for some years erected.”

The one executor who did serve and who managed the family’s financial affairs was Ralph’s father, James Mottram. When Emanuel Cooper died, his elaborate fifteen page Will, (dated 22 April 1870) left £3,000 for “my adopted daughter Ada Nemesis Pearson Cooper”, and the same sum for “my adopted son”. He added the stipulation that no one was to be buried in his mausoleum except his adopted son, adopted daughter, “their mother Anna Julia Pearson”, and his servant, Maria Bayes (the latter two were also left considerable sums).

The mausoleum of Emanuel Cooper.
Photos: © Copyright Evelyn Simak

Name plate on the lead coffin containing the remains of Dr Emanuel Cooper in the Cooper Mausoleum. Photo: © Copyright Evelyn Simak

As for Dr Cooper’s mausoleum – it is the only such structure in the Rosary Cemetery in Norwich. The only remains it contains are those of Dr Cooper; a vault situated below the mausoleum does contain the remains of Anna Julia Pearson Cooper, Cooper’s wife, who died in 1913 in Newport, Essex, and of Charles Arthur Pearson Cooper, their son, who died in April 1904 in Kensington, London. The railings surrounding the mausoleum (and perhaps also the ironwork) were made by J Barnes whose foundry was based at Church Street, St Miles, Norwich.

Footnote:
Ada Nemesis Pearson Cooper (adopted daughter of Dr Emanual Cooper of Norwich) married the writer John Galsworthy; he based his novel, ‘Jolyon’ on their relationship. His more famous novel was  ‘The Forsyth Saga’ – a story about the vicissitudes of the leading members of a large commercial upper middle class English family – similar to his own – is believed by his biographers and people who knew him to have been based on his own life.

The firm of John Barnes was listed in the 1865 Kelly’s Post Office Directory as “iron and brass founder, Church Street, St Miles” but the foundry was to be known variously as Barnes Ironworks, Barnes and Pye as a partnership (between Jacob Pye [a son?] and John Youngs – dissolved on the latter’s death in 1929) and as a company (Barnes and Pye Ltd from 1962 until dissolved in 2006) and also as the St. Miles Foundary. Their products included joists, beams, columns, manhole covers, standpipes (examples still in Maddermarket and Dereham Road), sturdy fittings for the gates of churchyards and the like – and they supplied the ironwork for Edward Boardman’s new Royal Hotel in Prince of Wales Road, built by John Youngs & Son and completed in late 1897.

THE END

Sources:
https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/6085879
https://www.flickr.com/photos/researchandculturalcollections/8744376912
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-349-08530-9_4
https://www.literarynorfolk.co.uk/Norwich/ralph_hale_mottram.htm
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=YcevCwAAQBAJ&pg=PA71&lpg=PA71&dq=emanuel+cooper+obstetrician+norwich&source=bl&ots=UCJ5SMa0Oo&sig=ACfU3U3qXbc7VcTW7wghWbKzXyAfojtd0Q&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjH5vb_5cjlAhUPXMAKHXZDA6EQ6AEwAnoECAkQAQ#v=onepage&q=emanuel%20cooper%20obstetrician%20norwich&f=false

NOTICE: ‘Norfolk Tales, Myths & More!’ is a ‘non-commercial’ Site seeking only to be informative and educational on topics broadly related to the history and heritage of the County of Norfolk in the U.K. In pursuing this aim, we endeavour, where possible, to obtain permission to use an owner’s material. However, for various reasons, (i.e. identification of, and means of communicating with an owner), contact can sometimes be difficult or impossible to established. NTM&M never attempts to claim ownership of such material; ensuring at all times that any known and appropriate ‘credits’ and ‘links’ back to our sources are always given in our articles. No violation of any copyright or trademark material is intentional.