"...a man must be strangely devoid of reflection who does not ask himself at the close of a year—'How have I spent the year which is now ending?  Shall I live through the next year?  And, if so, how shall I deport myself, as I proceed with the pilgrimage I have to make through life?'"....

THOMAS COOPER, the illegitimate son of a working dyer, was born at Leicester on the 20th of March 1805.  After his father's death his mother began business as a dyer and fancy box-maker at Gainsborough, and Cooper was apprenticed to a shoemaker.  Living with his mother and half-sister Ann, he spent his free time on an astonishing - 'fanatical' by most standards - programme of self-education.  By the age of twenty Cooper could recite thousands of lines of poetry (including the first three books of Milton's "Paradise Lost"), and was conversant with a large number of historical and theological texts, as well as Latin, Greek, and French.

    In 1827 Cooper gave up cobbling to become a schoolmaster, and later, a Methodist preacher.  His affairs did not prosper, and after going to Lincoln, where he obtained work on a local newspaper, he went to London in 1839 where he became assistant to a second-hand bookseller.  In 1840 Cooper joined the staff of the Leicestershire Mercury, but his support of the Chartist movement obliged him to resign his position.  In 1841 he edited The Midland Counties Illuminator, a Chartist journal, and became a leading member of the Chartists.  For his part in promoting the riots in the English pottery towns in 1842, Cooper was imprisoned for two years in Stafford Gaol.  It was during this time that he wrote his epic poem, 'The Purgatory of Suicides', in ten books - over 900 Spenserian stanzas - which embodies the radical ideas of his time.  In his efforts to publish this work he came to the notice of Disraeli, Carlyle, Kingsley and Douglas Jerrold; it was with Jerrold's help that 'Purgatory' was published in 1845.

    Cooper's collection of short stories, 'Wise Saws and Modern Instances' (1845—later extended and republished as 'Short Stories') is generally regarded as his best piece of prose fiction, providing in places a vivid account of the miserable, impoverished lives of the Leicester stockingers of his age (e.g. The Minister of Mercy; Merrie England; Seth Thompson).   Two volumes on 'self-help'—a theme more generally associated with Cooper's contemporary,  Samuel Smiles—appeared in 1847/8; "Triumphs of Perseverance" and "Triumphs of Enterprise" [later (ca. 1880) extended and combined into a single volume] comprise a collection of "biographical sketches of the achievements of men famous in many fields of enterprise, and distinguished by the perseverance they exhibited" which, Cooper hoped, would "stimulate the youthful reader to attempt to follow in their footsteps".  Among Cooper's other titles is the historical novel 'Captain Cobler' (1850), and the novels 'Alderman Ralph' (1853) and 'The Family Feud' (1855).  The 'Bridge of History over the Gulf of Time' (1871) is a modestly sized and very readable book on Christian evidences in which Cooper, in a well-argued low-church manner, answers the question, "if Christianity be not true, where did it come from?"—and in the process never misses an opportunity to heap blame at the Vatican's doorway.  Cooper's autobiography, 'The Life of Thomas Cooper, written by Himself' (1872), is among the best memoirs of a Victorian artisan.  His life as a preacher is reflected strongly in his 'Thoughts at Four-Score' (1885), a collection of opinions (including Cooper's views on Darwin and 'the fallacies of evolution') and solid Victorian—at times Puritanical—moralising aimed principally at 'young working men'.

    Cooper has a further niche in English literature, being the model for the Chartist 'poet of the people', in Charles Kingsley's popular novel Alton Locke and the provider of much of Kingsley's background information on Chartism among working people.

   Cooper eventually turned to lecturing upon historical and educational subjects.  In 1856 he suddenly renounced the free-thinking doctrines which he had held for many years, and became a lecturer on Christian evidences.  In 1867 his friends raised an annuity of £100 per annum for him, and in the last year of his life he received, belatedly, a modest government grant.

    Thomas Cooper died at Lincoln on the 15th of July 1892.  Hard-working and intellectually gifted, with a reputation for honesty and generosity, Cooper was also capable of being pedantic and was a man who disliked being challenged.  In his "Memoirs of a Social Atom", W. E. Adams describes him thus—"Thomas Cooper had the 'defect of his qualities.'  I have given one example of his irritability.  Many others were known to his friends....Warm in his friendships, he was bitter in his animosities.....But Thomas Cooper had other qualities that redeemed his defects.  Innumerable instances of his kindness and generosity are recorded.  It is a loving trait in his character that he never forgot or neglected any old friend whom he knew to be living in any of the towns he visited during his later peregrinations."

 
Other artisan memoires—See also G. J. Holyoake's "Sixty Years of an Agitator's Life", Samuel Bamford's two-part autobiography, "Early Days" and "Passages in the Life of a Radical" (to which a biographical supplement, Reminiscences, was added in 1864), Hugh Miller's "My Schools and Schoolmasters," and "Memoirs of a Social Atom" by the printer turned newspaper editor, W. E. Adams.

"THE MINSTREL'S SONG" Words and melody by Thomas Cooper, arranged in four parts with piano accompaniment by Sophia Dobson Collet. (2 pages, .pdf, 400KB. To download, right click, and then 'save target as'.)

"THE WOODMAN'S SONG" Words and melody by Thomas Cooper, arranged in four parts with piano accompaniment by Sophia Dobson Collet. (2 pages, .pdf, 450KB. To download, right click, and then 'save target as'.)

____________________

THE TIMES
 Saturday, July 16, 1892.

OBITUARY.
_______

THOMAS COOPER.

    Mr. Thomas Cooper, the well-known Chartist leader Christian lecturer, died at Lincoln yesterday afternoon, in the 88th year of his age.  On Thursday he was seized with a slight attack of illness, which in his enfeebled state left him entirely prostrate, and he passed peacefully away.  The career of this well known Chartist leader and religious and political controversialist furnishes another example of the triumphs which may be achieved by indomitable resolution and perseverance in the humblest spheres.  By his father's side, Thomas Cooper was descended from Yorkshire Quakers.  He was born as Leicester in March, 1805.  Before he was 12 months old, his father, who was a travelling dyer, removed his family to Exeter.  It is said that young Cooper learned to read almost without instruction, and that at the age of three he was set to teach a youth of seven his letters.  Mrs. Cooper, being left a widow when her son was only four years old, quitted Exeter for her native Lincolnshire, and settled down at Gainsborough, where the next 25 years of Thomas Cooper's life were passed.  One of the first friends he made was Thomas Miller, the poet, who was learning the trade of basket-making when the youths became acquainted.  In 1813 Cooper was sent to the Bluecoat School.  From 1816 to 1820 he was at a private school, where he greatly extended his reading in history, poetry, and other subjects.  Necessity compelled him to learn a craft for his livelihood, and at the age of 15 he was apprenticed to a shoemaker.  Whilst pursuing his trade he gave up every moment of spare time to his books, rising every morning at 3 or 4 o'clock in order to study.  By the time he was 23 he had taught himself the Greek, Latin, Hebrew, and French languages, together with mathematics and a knowledge of English history and literature.  His general reading was at the most, extensive and varied character, and by way of recreation the omnivorous student would commit such masterpieces as Hamlet to memory.  But circumstances at this time were very adverse for Cooper, and in describing the period long afterwards he said, "I not unfrequently swooned away and fell along the floor when I tried to take my cup of oatmeal gruel at the end of the day's labour.  Next morning, of course, I was not able to rise at an early hour; and then the next day's study had to be stinted.  I needed better food than we could afford to buy, and often had to contend with the sense of faintness, while I still plodded on with my double task of mind and body."  A serious illness ensued, during which he was once given up for dead.

    In 1828 Cooper abandoned his trade of shoemaking had opened a school, to which the children of poor parents flocked eagerly.  A year later, after mental struggles and much spiritual wrestling, he joined the Wesleyan Methodist body and became local preacher.  In 1834 her married the sister of a revivalist preacher in Lincoln and established a school in that city.  Here he had much to do with the foundation and prosperity of the Lincoln Mechanics' Institute and the Lincoln Choral Society.  He also acted as correspondent for the Lincoln, Rutland, and Stamford Mercury.  It was at this time that he conceived the idea of his ambitions poem on "The Purgatory of Suicides."  Cooper was a strong Radical in politics, and he wrote warmly in support of Sir Edward Lytton Bulwer, who was then in great favour with the Liberal electors of Lincoln.  After a brief residence at Stamford, whither he moved upon leaving Lincoln, Cooper went to London in 1839, where he passed through many vicissitudes in endeavouring to launch himself upon a journalistic and literary career.  For a brief period he resided at Greenwich, where he edited the Kentish Mercury.  In 1840 he moved to Leicester, his birthplace, became associated with the Leicestershire Mercury, joined the Chartists, and conducted the Chartist organ, the Midland Counties Illuminator.  Cooper soon became recognized as the leader of the Chartists, and was nominated as a Parliamentary candidate both for the the town and county, but was not returned.  Among the converts to Chartist views, whom Cooper made by his eloquent appeals, was a youth of 15, named Anthony John Mundella, whose later career is sufficiently well known.

    Cooper lived to see that Chartism was but the fly on the wheel during this great period of political agitation.  Free trade became the one overwhelming cry of the nation, though there were many sanguine spirits who thought that an enlargement of the franchise, with the accompanying political demands embodied in the People's Charter, would take precedence of Corn Law Repeal.  Cooper was one of these, and clung enthusiastically to the case when others wavered or altogether abandoned it.  Being elected delegate from Leicester to the Chartist Convention at Manchester in August, 1842, be went thither by way of the Staffordshire Potteries.  He addressed a number of large gatherings of working mean, and on August 15 took the chair at a great meeting held on the Crown Bank at Hanley.  The fiat had already gone forth in various parts of the country that all labour should cease until the people's Charter became the law of the land, and in some places riots had occurred.  The Hanley meeting passed off peaceably, and Cooper, personally, strongly appealed for the observance of law and order.  But a riot had taken place at Longton, and the noisy spirits of Hanley endeavoured to promote a riot there also.  Cooper, who was widely known, was advised by his friends to leave the town, and he did so.  But he had scarcely got away when the spirit of turbulence triumphed, and Hanley was the scene of riot and excess.  At Burslem Cooper was arrested, and was released for lack of evidence.  On reaching Manchester the city appeared to be almost in a state of siege.  All the manufactories were closed, and cavalry and artillery were parading the streets.  The convention was held on the 17th, and Cooper and other chartists recommended armed resistance to the law.  An address was afterwards printed and sent out for distribution by the executive.  The police arrested some of the leaders, but Cooper got away to Leicester.  Here several out-door demonstrations were held, but they were dispersed by the county police.  Cooper was arrested on a warrant held by the constable of Hanley, and conveyed back to the Potteries.  He was committed to Stafford Goal on the charge of aiding in the riot at Hanley, and while awaiting his trial he composed several of the simple tales which will be found in "Wise Saws and Modern Instances," published in 1845.  The assizes began on October 11, 1852, began Lord Chief Justice Tindal.  Cooper was charged with the crime of arson, but as it was conclusively shown that he was in Burslem and not in Hanley at all at the time when the offence was committed, the jury returned a verdict of "Not Guilty."  Two days later he was again arraigned, this time on the charges of conspiracy and sedition.  The trial was postponed, however, and after five weeks Cooper was liberated.  On arriving at Leicester he was made the hero of demonstrations throughout, the town.

    Divisions now assailed the Chartist party.  The cause was practically ruined by the time when Cooper's second trial came on at the Stafford Assizes, March 20, 1843.  Sir Thomas Erskine was the Judge, and the chief counsel against the prisoner was the scholarly Sergeant Talfourd, M.P.  Cooper conducted his own defence, and delivered a powerful speech.  But there were certain stubborn facts in the way of an acquittal, and the prisoner was found guilty of conspiracy and sedition, and sentenced to two years' imprisonment in Stafford Goal.  While in prison Cooper began the composition of "The Purgatory of Suicides," an epic poem in ten books, written in the Spencerian stanza.  This "Mind History," as the author described it, dealt with great social and religions questions of the past and present, making the spirits of suicides the actors or speakers.

    Now, for some time, Cooper had been gravitating towards atheistical opinions.  He had been treated by his Methodist friends in a manner which did not seem to him to savour of Christianity; his wife was ill and bed-ridden; and his own imprisonment reacted upon his sensitive nature.  After his release from goal in 1845 he studied the translation of Strauss begun by Charles Hennell and finished by George Eliot.  He became, as he himself said, "fast bound in the net of Strauss," nor was he thoroughly able to break its meshes for 12 years.  Cooper applied to Tom Ducombe, the eccentric member for Finsbury, to find him a publisher for his poem, and Duncombe gave him this characteristic note to Mr. Disraeli:—

    "My dear Disraeli,— I send you Mr. Cooper, a Chartist, red hot from Stafford Goal. But don't be frightened. He won't bite you. He has written a poem and a romance; and thinks he can cut out a 'Coningsby' and 'Sybil'! Help him if you can, and oblige yours, T. S. DUNCOMBE."

    Disraeli received Cooper very kindly and gave him notes to Moxon and Colburn, but these and other publishers would do nothing; "poetry was an absolute drug in the market.''  Douglas Jerrold and Charles Dickens subsequently read "The Purgatory of Suicides," of which they formed a high opinion, and Jerrold secured a publisher for it.  The work appeared in 1845, and the first edition of 500 copies was sold off before Christmas.  It was succeeded by another poem, "The Baron's Yule Feast," dedicated to the Countess of Blessington.  Carlyle wrote to the author concerning his "Purgatory of Suicides":—"I have looked into your poem, and find indisputable traces of genius in it—a dark, Titanic energy struggling there, for which we hope there will be clearer daylight by and by."  Carlyle not only helped Cooper with advice, but by substantial acts of kindness.  In 1846, while in the Lake District, Cooper had an interview with the venerable poet Wordsworth, who engaged him in a long conversation upon poets and poetry, and the events of the day.  When they parted, Wordsworth said with emphasis, "The people are sure to have the franchise as knowledge increases; but you will not get all you seek at once, and you must never seek it again by physical force; it will only make you the longer about it."

    In 1847 Cooper published his "Triumphs of Perseverance" and "Triumphs of Enterprise."  In the same year he joined Mazinni's new society, "The People's International League," which held its London meetings at the residence at the residence of the secretary, W. J. Linton, the engraver, in Hatton-garden.  From the Chartist meetings and disturbances of 1848, however, he kept entirely aloof; and he was in complete disagreement with Feargus O'Connor over his land scheme.  Cooper now became an active political and historical lecturer in London and in all parts of Great Britain and Ireland.  His first novel, "Alderman Ralph," was published in 1853, and another following in the succeeding year.  Towards the close of 1855 Cooper's opinions on religious questions underwent a change.  He had never lectured as an infidel, but he had certainly given utterances of sceptical opinions.  He now renounced these opinions, declared himself to be firmly convinced of the existence of a Divine Moral Governor, of the universe, and for many years lectured upon the Evidences of Christianity.  In September, 1856, he began a course of Sunday evening lectures and discussions with the London sceptics, and continued them until the end of May, 1858. In the latter year Mr. Cowper-Temple found him employment in the Department of the Board of Health, where, in addition to routine work, he assisted Dr. Simon, of the Privy Council Office, in the preparation of his valuable report on vaccination.  In 1859, having become thoroughly settled in his religious convictions, Cooper joined the general Baptist body, and from time to time preached under the auspices of that organization.  Shortly before taking that step he had held several public discussions with George Jacob Holyoake, but long afterwards he expressed his clear conviction that public discussions on the evidences of Christianity never do any good and often do great harm.  At length his health broke down, and Mr. W. E. Forster, Mr. Samuel Morely, Dr. Jobson, and other friends initiated a subscription for him in his illness and his need.  Eventually a sum of £1300 was raised, which was used in the purchase of an annuity of £100 in the National Debt Office, for himself and his wife.

    From 1867 to 1872 Cooper was again employed in lecturing.  In 1878 his "Political Works" were collected and published, and shortly afterwards appeared "The Bridge of History over the Gulf of Time."  In 1882 he published his Autobiography, and since that period has lived in retirement.  During the course of his long career Cooper was thrown into contact with many of the most distinguished men of his time in literature and politics.  His character was strongly marked, and it was impossible not to be struck by his honesty, his manliness, and his independence.  His opinions on many questions were extreme, but his sincerity was undoubted.

    In 1886, when the Home Rule Bill was introduced, Cooper said in a letter to the secretary of the Liberal Unionist Society in Lincoln:—"I shall not vote at the city election because I agree with neither of the candidates.  The Tory candidate knows perfectly well that the old Chartist prisoner cannot vote for him.  I cannot vote for the Liberal candidate because, so far as my perception reaches, it would be voting in the dark.  The Irish people share the common privileges of English, Scotch and Welsh men.  What is it that they want besides?  I ask the question because they never tell us what they really want.  Home Rule is a vague answer, for it may have 20 meanings, and none of them be good.  Lately Mr. Gladstone has invented a new phrase—he proposes to give Ireland a 'statutory Parliament.'  But what is that, and wherein does it differ from our Parliament?  Why do the Irish want a separate Parliament?  It would only help make us more and more divided instead of a United Kingdom.  I must declare, whatever offence it may give to some people, that the Irish cry of Home Rule means separation from England, and that would be ruin to Ireland herself and a costly war for England."

______________________

 
Cooper meets de Quincy and interviews the sister of Robert Burns.

From The International Monthly Magazine, of Literature, Science and Art.
Vol. IV, 1851.

THOMAS COOPER, author of the Purgatory of Suicides, &c., has been on a lecturing tour through Ireland and Scotland, lately, and has given an account of what he observed, in several letters to the London Leader.  We copy from them a few paragraphs:

    I had two hours delightful conversation with Mr. de Quincy, at Lasswade, and was as deeply impressed with his intellectual power in talking, as I was with his writing when, in my boyhood, I read his “Confessions of an English Opium Eater.”

    On my return from visiting Kirk Alloway, and the cottage of Burns, I called on his remaining sister, Mrs. Begg, a highly intelligent woman of eighty, who gave me some information of an important character, as I deem it to be.  Her daughter, Isabella, was present while I had the short conversation with her.  I told her that I entertained strong doubts of the truth of many things which were said about her illustrious brother, and I  wished to have the benefit of her own personal knowledge respecting him.  She replied that she would have pleasure in giving me all the information in her power.  I told her that a person in Glasgow had declared to me, the other day, that he believed all the accounts of her brother’s irregular life; for a friend of his had called on Mrs. Begg lately, and she had said that she had often seen her brother sit at the table in a morning, after a night’s debauch, shading his face with his hand, while the big tears of remorse were dropping on the board before him.  Mrs. Begg seemed moved painfully.  “Nothing is more false,” she replied; “I never had such a conversation; and never could say so, for I never saw my brother either drunk or showing any such feeling; nor did I ever know him to be drunk.  It is true, I saw but little of him in the latter part of his life; but his son, who was with him almost constantly, told me that he never saw his father the worse for liquor but once; and thou he was sick, but yet perfectly conscious.  His son also said, that though his father would come home late during the latter part of his life, when they lived in Dumfmies; yet he was always able to examine bolts and bars, went to observe that the children were right in bed, and always acted like a sober man.  Besides,” added the intelligent old lady, “how was it possible that my brother could be a drunkard, when he had so small an income, and yet, a few weeks before his death, owed nobody a shilling?  That speaks for itself.”  Mrs. Begg furthermore confirmed what I also learned in Glasgow from persons conversant with those who had known every circumstance of the close of Burns’s life, that Allan Cunningham has sorely misstated many matters.  Burns did not die in the dramatic style which Allan tells of.  Allan was never in Ayrshire in his life; but had his materials from some old fellow who went about poking into every corner and raking out every false story about Burns.  A writer in Glasgow, in whose company I sat for a short time in the evening after I had delivered my oration there on Burns, contradicted Allan Cunningham’s account of Burns’s death, from personal knowledge—just at the time when Allan’s Life of Burns appeared; but Allan never took any notice of the pamphlet, and never corrected the misstatement.  Mrs. Begg said that she had seen the two volumes of the new life of her brother, by Robert Chambers, and the account was fairer than any she had seen before.