Page:The Dictionary of Australasian Biography.djvu/119

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DICTIONARY OF AUSTRALASIAN BIOGRAPHY.
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office of emolument under the Crown. For his services at Paris and his successful management of the New South Wales Court he was created C.M.G. and an officer of the Legion of Honour. Mr. Combes, who married a daughter of the late Wm. C. Hare, is a member of the Institution of French Civil Engineers, and an associate of the Institution of Civil Engineers of London. He is also an artist of considerable merit, and has exhibited with success at some of the leading London picture galleries. Mr. Combes was nominated to the Legislative Council of New South Wales in 1891.

Conigrave, John Fairfax, J.P., is the son of Benjamin Conigrave and Martha his wife, and was born in Adelaide, S.A., on Nov. 23rd, 1843. He served his articles in the South Australian Register office, and was also for some years on the literary staff of the Advertiser. Mr. Conigrave, who has been secretary and shorthand writer to many royal commissions and select committees in South Australia, was for a number of years secretary to the South Australian Chamber of Manufactures. He was secretary to the South Australian Commission for the Colonial and Indian Exhibition of 1886, secretary to the Adelaide Jubilee International Exhibition of 1887, and representative of South Australia at the Melbourne Centennial Exhibition of 1888. Mr. Conigrave married in 1868 Sarah, daughter of Charles Price, of Hindmarsh Island, S.A.

Conolly, His Honour Edward Tennyson, Puisne Judge, New Zealand, the son of Dr. John Conolly, of Hanwell, Middlesex, the eminent authority on insanity, who divided with William Tuke and one or two more the credit of introducing the non-restraint system into England, was born on August 31st, 1822. He entered as a student of the Inner Temple on Jan. 18th, 1849, was called to the bar on Jan. 30th, 1852, and for thirteen years practised in England on the Home Circuit. In 1865 he went out to New Zealand, and took up his residence at Picton, in the south island. He represented Picton in the Marlborough Provincial Council from Jan. 1867 to 1876, when the provinces were abolished. In Dec. 1881 he was elected to the House of Representatives for Picton, and again in July 1884. In 1882 he accepted the office of Minister of Justice under Sir Frederick Whitaker. Under Major Atkinson, in Sept. 1883, he retained his portfolio, becoming also Attorney-General, but retired when the Government went out of office in August 1884. He was appointed a Supreme Court Judge in August 1889.

Cooke, Ebenezer, J. P., Commissioner of Audit, South Australia, was accountant and subsequently manager of the English and Australian Copper Company in South Australia from 1862 to 1882. From 1875 (in which year he was made J.P.) to 1882 he represented Flinders in the Legislative Assembly of South Australia. Mr. Cooke was Chairman of the Royal Commission on Finance from 1880 to 1882, and a member of the Royal Commission on Education from 1882 to 1883. In February of the latter year he was appointed First Commissioner of Audit.

Cooper, Sir Charles, first Chief Justice of South Australia, was the third son of the late Thomas Cooper, of Henley-on-Thames, Oxon, where he was born in March 1795. He entered at the Inner Temple in Jan. 1822, and was called to the bar in Feb. 1827, and went the Oxford Circuit until 1838, when he was appointed sole Judge of the Supreme Court of South Australia. He arrived in the colony in Dec. 1839, and for ten years exercised unaided jurisdiction in civil, criminal, and insolvency cases. In 1849 he was appointed first Chief Justice of the colony, and held that office until 1862, when he returned to England, and resided at Bath and Cheltenham. Sir Charles, who married, on July 7th, 1853, Emily Grace, eldest daughter of Charles Burton Newenham, Sheriff of South Australia, was knighted in June 1857, and died at Bath on May 24th, 1887. Cooper's Creek, in the centre of Australia, was named after him by the explorer Captain Sturt.

Cooper, Sir Daniel, Bart., G.C.M.G., second son of Thomas Cooper, of Richmond Cottage, Double Bay, near Sydney, N.S.W., who emigrated to Australia from Bolton-le-Moors, Lancashire, was born on July 1st, 1821. In 1843 he went to New South Wales, and was elected a member of the Legislative Council in 1849. In 1856 he was returned to the first Legislative Assembly of that colony for Sydney Hamlets, and was chosen the first Speaker of the Lower House. This position he held till 1860,

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