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After another week of uproar in the NSW Legislative Assembly,
on October 15, 1861, the Reverend John West was moved to write one of
his most famous Sydney Morning Herald editorials.
"From the Equator to the Poles," he wrote, "there is now no
part of civilised society where disgusted laughter has not been
excited by our legislative men. The Germans, French and Spanish
papers copy the proceedings of our assembly for the instruction and
amusement of their readers."
However the year before, the House's very worst-behaved member
Frederick Cooper, had been quietly got
rid of. By offering him a commissioner's job on the newly-opened
southern goldfields, Premier John Robertson hoped to see the last of
the notorious member of Braidwood. He had hoped in vain. For during
that October when the Rev. John West was putting pen to paper, the
conduct of Commissioner Cooper came again before the House for his
conduct - it had been reported that he had paraded through the
Crackenback diggings stark naked.
The outrageous Frederick Augustus Cooper was born on the 8th.
of August 1834. He was the 9th. child of 14 children born to Sarah (nee May) and Robert
Cooper of Juniper Hall. The young man had already made a
name for himself by being the first undergraduate at Sydney
University to be expelled for "acts of ruffianism". His noisy abuse
and constant heckling of the party leaders was one good reason why
premier Robertson packed him off to Kilandra, only 13 months after
first taking his seat. The member for Braidwood was no sooner safely
out of way, or so it was thought, when what became known as the
Crackenback Episode occurred.
Following the great exodus of NSW diggers to Ballarat and
Bendigo in the 1850's, the Kiandra and Crackenback diggings were the
first of the new Snowy Mountain fields to lure the goldseekers back
again. The experts predicted the rush would not last, however they
were wrong. They were still there in the summer of 1860-61 when
sub-commissioner Cooper paid his celebrated visit to Crackenback
early in the new year.
As a gang of drunks poured out of Rawson's grog-shop one
evening, they linked arms and went roaring down main street led by
the commissioner who had also begun to remove his cloths. Before long
the procession came to a tree-stump that instantly reminded Cooper of
his good old electioneering days. He climbed drunkenly on to the
stump to make a speech.
"Haven't I always looked after you?" the nude figure demanded.
"When I was your member didn't I always see to it that you had jobs
and meat and barrel-loads of cheap beer?".
"You have treated us to plenty of beer, not to mention seven
baskets of champagne," he was interrupted by the voice of storekeeper
Rawson. "When are you going to pay for it?". The drunk paused, looked
around uncertainly and finally managed to focus his gaze on the
speaker.
"Damn you, you swine, would you dun me? I'll pay you all right.
I'll pay you right out and off this field for good. I'll have you
lagged for sly-grog selling."
Parliament would hear more about that occasion in due course.
Meanwhile Cooper had returned to his headquarters at Kiandra where
the population had swollen to more than 4000 diggers, with 60 shops
and 4 hotels. Crime was becoming one disagreeable feature of the
goldfields. For instance, Darky Gardiner and his mate Johnny Gilbert
were two new arrivals from Victoria. They lived by "hocussing" their
victims, spiking their drinks, then following then out into the night
and robbing them. A local vigilante miner's protection group
succeeded in running the hocussers out of town, only to find in the
young commissioner from Sydney an even greater threat to the welfare
of the community.
The man took no time in taking over the miners' own voluntary
organisation, throwing out those he did not like. and fashioning it
into his own private police force, equipped with badges and a kind of
uniform. They became known as the "Donegal Mob". How the mob operated
became illustrated in the case of miner Sam Hawkins, a man who had
dared to criticise the commissioner for exceeding his authority.
In cutting their own water race, Hawkins and partners had,
wittingly or not, diverted the water from another claim. A situation
ordinarily resolved by the commissioner, ordering the first party to
re-route the race. Cooper was out to get trouble-maker Hawkins
though. The Donegal Mob turned up and destroyed the race some days
later, and when Hawkins went to the commissioner to complain he was
beaten insensible. A flood of letters to Sydney from Hawkins and
others resulted in an inquiry by Chief Goldfields Commissioner James
Griffin that ended with Cooper being hastily transferred to
Araluen.
In fact, he was very lucky that his many dirty deeds at Kiandra didn't become the subject of a full scale parliamentary investigation, with possible criminal proceedings. Having learnt his lesson, he decided to return to his studies for the Bar instead. Admitted as a barrister in NSW in August 1864, he went on to practise in Queensland, New Zealand and Victoria. Melbourne is where he met and married Margaret Dalton Watson, the daughter of Bendigo mining millionaire, John Boyd Watson, where he finally settled down and leave all memory of the past behind. Frederick Cooper died in Melbourne on the 11th. of November 1908, and is buried in Boroondara Cemetery, Kew.
Living in Melbourne, and with the Boroondara Cemetery at Kew
being only 40 minutes from home, I decided to go looking for the last
resting place of Frederick Cooper. Without the excellent hand-drawn
map given to me by the office administrator at the cemetery, I doubt
I would have found it, being tucked away in one of the oldest
sections of the cemetery.
The grave is a double plot, sharing the site is Frederick's second child, Georgina Watson Lake (Born 21st. June 1885; Died March 1964). Georgina married Frederick William Lake on the 12th. of February 1907. The inscription on the granite slab is:
The grave surprisingly, considering Fred's social standing in
life, is quite austere. Apart from Georgina's memorial, the only
inscription on the grave is "COOPER" on the foot stone, which is now
extremely hard to see. I suspect that the second plot was originally
reserved for F. A. Cooper's wife, Margaret Dalton Watson (Born 5th.
of July 1858), but Margaret died in Italy, whilst on holiday, on the
20th. of August 1924. I'm not sure whether she was brought back to be
interned in Australia.
A final twist to this story is that the cemetery's records indicate that Fred is buried on the left hand side of the plot (#6004) and his daughter on the right hand side (#6005). There seems to be some damage to the top covering of the left-hand plot, and Georgina's memorial stone was placed over it as protection.
