On
the 9th.
of October 1813 convict Robert Cooper arrived in the
Earl Spencer
at the colony of New South Wales. He had been transported for the crime of
smuggling luxury items such as raw silk and ostrich feathers into England.
His rather naive defence "that he was only smuggling", failed to save him
from a 14 year sentence of transportation to New South Wales.
Robert Cooper was born in
London in 1777, son of another Robert Cooper and his wife Eliza. Not many
details are known but it appears that he came from a family of distillers
and hotel keepers in the Stepney district of London. The family owned a pub
The White Swan, or as locally known, the "Paddy's Goose". A distillery in
nearby Juniper Street was also probably owned by the Cooper Family.
While Robert Cooper no
doubt would have preferred to remain in London with his wife Mary Ann and
their 5 children, he came to conditions more favourable than he could have
imagined. The Governor of the penal settlement, Lachlan Macquarie, actively
encouraged emancipated convicts to remain in the colony and work for the
benefit of the colony, as well as for themselves. After five years in the
colony he was granted a conditional pardon and started a shop. He advertised
himself as being 'in George Street, opposite the Burial Ground'.
He formed a business
association with his name-sake Daniel Cooper, also a former convict but no
relation, and another merchant Solomon Levey. Robert Cooper was known as
'Big Cooper', because of his enormous size, or sometimes as 'Black Bob'
because of his thick black hair. The three men bought a small vessel and
started trading to Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania). Robert Cooper was granted
an auctioneer's licence and by 1829 his business activities included flour
milling, bread making, cedar cutting and cloth weaving. But his most
lucrative business was distilling 'Cooper's Best Gin'. The development of
"home distillation" was set a high priority by Macquarie.
Robert Cooper had three
wives (in succession), and was said to have had 28 children, seven from his
first two wives (Mary Ann and Elizabeth Kelly), and fourteen by his third
wife, Sarah May. However as common in those days, a number of these children
did not survive infancy.
It is said that "Big
Cooper" promised his young bride Sarah May (he was 26 years her senior), the
finest house in Sydney, and so built with his growing proceeds,
Juniper Hall.
Juniper Hall was built on an elevated and windswept site in then rural
Paddington. And it still stands there today, displaying the evidence of its
early colonial origins and a variety of occupations down through the years.
Robert and Sarah were
married on the 29th.
of January 1822, in St. Phillip's Church of England, Sydney. Sarah made it
her business to see that her children were not affected by the emancipist
tag, seeing that they were all well educated, and eventually taking them to
Europe and to schools in London and Paris.
When Robert Cooper died
on the 26th
of May 1857, he was both a prosperous and respected man.
