Thomas Cooper

Thomas Cooper was born in Montacute in 1826. He was baptised on 30 July that year but no birthdate was recorded in the register.

Thomas was 15 years old when his family emigrated to New Zealand in 1841. He first appears on a Jury list in 1847 when he would be 21 as a labourer living in Thorndon Flat. By 1848 he was recorded as a shoemaker and this remained the same until 1850 when he was described as a publican.

Thomas was married in 1850 to Charlotte Pike, another Somerset native who had emigrated with her parents arriving a few months ahead of the Cooper family in 1841. By 1852 his aerated water business, making ginger beer, soda water and cordials in Pipitea Street was becoming established. Thomas had placed advertisements in local newspapers from at least 1853 wanting to buy bottles.

By 1866 Thomas and Charlotte had a family of nine children. For a short time in the mid 1850’s Thomas is thought to have left Wellington and ventured to the Victorian goldfields with his brother James. There is also a mention of him relocating to the Rangitikei area briefly before returning to Wellington to re-establish his ginger beer and cordial enterprise on Mulgrave Street.

It would seem that the business must have operated from the site now occupied by Wellington Girls’ College or across the road close to the site of the old brewery (Staples Brewery est. 1866, later Thorndon Brewery and then Lion Breweries) where New World is now located.

In October 1866, two months after the death of his father, Thomas’s wife Charlotte passed away leaving him with their nine children aged 2-16. Just four and a half months later Thomas mysteriously disappeared. A report of his disappearance appeared in the local newspapers. This one in the Wellington Independent on Thursday 28 February reads:

"MYSTERIOUS DISAPPEARANCE. – We regret to state that Mr Thomas Cooper, a ginger-beer manufacturer, residing at Thorndon, has disappeared in a very mysterious manner. He left the Thistle Inn about eight o’clock on Monday night, and was seen shortly afterwards by a man named Allison to be going in the direction of Brown’s wharf. It is feared that Mr Cooper, who had been drinking, missed his way and fell into the water, and the drags were employed in that part of the harbour yesterday, but nothing was discovered that would throw any light on the fate of the missing man."

The following week, on 5 March, 10 days after his disappearance his body was found by a lighterman taking ballast out to a ship moored in the harbour from near Plimmer’s wharf. The witnesses at the inquest held the same day at the Te Aro Police Station included a friend who had been with him at the Thistle and his younger brother Frederick. They, and the lighterman who also knew Thomas, identified him by the clothes he was wearing. Ten days in the water is not gentle on a body.

His death certificate records his date of death as 5 March 1867, the day of the inquest, when it is more likely to have been 25 February, the date which he was last seen alive.

I have done a little bit of research and have been able to identify the location of Brown’s wharf. Very close to the Thistle as it happens. Anyone familiar with Wellington will know the stories about patrons of old, including Te Rauparaha, pulling their dinghies or waka up on to the beach near the hotel. The steps outside now take you from the pavement to Kate Shephard Street (formerly Sydney Street West) but back in the days before earthquakes and reclamation the shoreline was right there.

In 1867 some reclamation had begun and of course the earthquakes of 1848 and 1855 also contributed to the changing shoreline. Browns wharf is described in the New Zealand Electronic Text Collection “Early Wellington” published by Whitcombe and Tombs Limited in 1928, as being

“opposite the Royal (now Cecil) Hotel”

The site of the Royal Hotel which later became the Cecil Hotel, was known as the Hotel Cecil Block and was situated on Thorndon Quay where the Wellington bus terminus now is.

Plimmer’s wharf will have been located further along Lambton Quay, close to Plimmer’s Steps near the Old Bank Arcade (formerly Bank of New Zealand). 

Who was looking after the children all of this time while their father was missing ? Who assumed responsibility for them after his death ? More about Thomas’ business can be found here.