Author: COOPER, Thomas
Biography:
by
Ashfield, Andrew (AA), Jackson, Heather (HJ)
COOPER, Thomas (1805-92: ancestry.com)
Cooper was born in Leicester on 20 Mar. 1805. His parents, William Cooper and Anna Maria Jobson, had been married on 29 Aug. 1790 in her birthplace, Gainsborough in Lincolnshire. His father was a dyer of Quaker descent. He had had a daughter (Ann) by an earlier marriage baptised as an Independent; no baptismal record has as yet been found for Thomas. William Cooper died in Exeter, Devonshire, in 1809 and his widow returned to Gainsborough and worked as a dyer herself. She also made boxes to sell at market but the family was very poor. Thomas started at a free school and had access to books. With some better schooling and a punishing program of self-education, he taught himself Latin and memorized large quantities of literature in English. (His autobiography provides a detailed account of his reading.) His mother wanted him to become a scholar but he insisted on learning a trade. Though never formally apprenticed, he learnt to make shoes and made his livelihood that way until, between malnutrition and unrealistic hours of study, his health collapsed. After recovering, he started a school (1828-1834). He was also devout, although his religious allegiance shifted from the parish church to the Methodists. then to free-thought, and later (1859) to the Baptists. In 1833, during the Methodist phase, he produced his first volume of verse, encouraged by James Montgomery of Sheffield (q.v.), to whom it was dedicated. He moved to Lincoln, where he married Susanna Chaloner (1801-80) on 16 Feb. 1834; the couple had no children. In Lincoln, London, and Leicester, Cooper built a reputation as a prolific writer, preacher, lecturer, and champion of the working class. For his leading role in the radical Chartist movement he served a prison term (1843-5), and while in prison he wrote an epic poem, The Purgatory of Suicides (1845). Cooper applied twice to the RLF for aid and was awarded £50 each time, in 1867 and in 1880--just after the death of his wife--citing ill health from a strenuous schedule of lecturing on Christianity around the country with little profit since his audience consisted of working-class men who were themselves poor. He died at home in Lincoln on 15 July 1892. (ancestry.com 21 Sept. 2026; findmypast.com 21 Sept. 2026; ODNB 21 Sept. 2026; RLF #1717; The Life of Thomas Cooper [1872]) AA, HJ