BURIED TOGETHER
Partner Mary Josephine Bedford, buried together
Queer Places:
St Thomas' Hospital, Westminster Bridge Rd, Lambeth, London SE1 7EH, Regno Unito
The Mansions, 70 George St, Brisbane City QLD 4000, Australia
St Mary, 455 Main St, Kangaroo Point QLD 4169, Australia
Toowong Cemetery, Frederick St & Mount Coot Tha Road, Toowong QLD 4066, Australia
Lilian Violet Cooper (1861-1947), medical practitioner, was born on 11
August 1861 at Chatham, Kent, England, daughter of Henry Fallowfield
Cooper, captain of Royal Marines, and his wife Elizabeth, née Shewell.
Educated privately, she dedicated herself to medicine when young. Despite
parental opposition, she entered the London School of Medicine for Women
in 1886, completed the course in October 1890 and, after passing the
conjoint examinations of the Royal College of Physicians, Edinburgh, the
Royal College of Surgeons, Edinburgh, and the Faculty of Physicians and
Surgeons, Glasgow, received a licentiate from Edinburgh.
Cooper worked briefly and unhappily for a practitioner in Halstead,
Essex, then came to Brisbane in May 1891 with her lifelong friend
Josephine Bedford, and in June became the first female doctor registered
in Queensland. Induced to work for an alcoholic doctor, she finally
secured a cancellation of her contract and was boycotted professionally
for two years. She was allowed to join the Medical Society of Queensland
in 1893, and later became an honorary in the Hospital for Sick Children
and the Lady Lamington Hospital for Women. In 1905 she became associated
with the Mater Misericordiae Hospital and stayed with it for the rest of
her life.
In June 1911 Cooper returned to England. Travelling through the United
States of America, she visited the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota and the Johns
Hopkins Hospital in Maryland; she then went on to win a doctorate of
medicine from the University of Durham in June 1912. With Miss Bedford she
joined the Scottish Women's Hospitals in 1915, served for twelve months,
including a time in Macedonia, and was awarded the Serbian Order of St
Sava, fourth-class.
Cooper settled again in Brisbane after the war and, despite an
unsuccessful action for damages against her in 1923, won a large and
successful practice. A tall, angular, brusque, energetic woman, prone to
bad language, she travelled first by bicycle but became an early motorist
and did most of her own running repairs. In 1926 she bought a house called
Old St Mary's in Main Street, Kangaroo Point, and settled there in
semi-retirement, becoming a foundation fellow of the Royal Australasian
College of Surgeons in 1928. She retired in 1941 and died in her home on
18 August 1947. She was buried in Toowong cemetery with Anglican rites;
her estate, sworn for probate at £12,315 in Queensland and £2896 in New
South Wales, was left mainly to members of her family.
After Cooper's death Miss Bedford gave the site for the Mount Olivet
Hospital of the Sisters of Charity, part of which was entitled 'the Lilian
Cooper Nursing Home'. St Mary's Church of England in Kangaroo Point has
memorial windows and an altar on the frontal of which is embroidered Dr
Cooper's medal of St Sava.
My published books:
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Cooper, Lilian Violet (1861–1947)
by C. A. C. Leggett
This article was published in Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 8, (MUP), 1981: http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/cooper-lilian-violet-5770