Dictionary of National Biography, 1912 supplement/Cooper, Alfred
COOPER, Sir ALFRED (1838–1908), surgeon, born at Norwich on 28 Dec. 1838, was son of William Cooper, at one time recorder of Ipswich, by his wife Anna Marsh. Cooper entered Merchant Taylors' School, then in Suffolk Lane, London, in April 1850, and was afterwards apprenticed to W. Peter Nichols, surgeon to the Norfolk and Norwich Hospital, and some time mayor of Norwich. In 1858 Cooper entered as a student at St. Bartholomew's Hospital. He was admitted M.R.C.S. England on 29 June 1861 , and in the same year he obtained the licence of the Society of Apothecaries. He then went to Paris in company with (Sir) Thomas Smith [q. v. Suppl. II] to improve his anatomical knowledge, and on his return was appointed a prosector to the examiners at the Royal College of Surgeons.
Cooper started practice in Jermyn Street. After an interval of waiting he acquired a fashionable private practice. But his social success rather stimulated than retarded his ardour for surgery. He was surgeon to St. Mark's Hospital for Fistula, City Road, from April 1864 till 1897; surgeon to the West London Hospital (1867–1884); to the Royal Hospital for Diseases of the Chast, City Road, and to the Lock Hospital, Soho. At the last institution he gained that sound knowledge of syphilis with which his name is chiefly associated. He was admitted F.R.C.S. Edinburgh in 1868, and F.R.C.S. England on 9 June 1870. Cooper had early won the friendship of William Alexander, twelfth duke of Hamilton, and the duke presented him with Cooper-Angus Lodge, Whiting Bay, in the Isle of Arran, which he made his homo when he retired from London.
Cooper visited St. Petersburg as medical attendant of Edward VII, when Prince of Wales, on the marriage of Alfred Ernest Albert, duke of Edinburgh, in 1874, and he received from the Tsar the knighthood of St. Stanislas. He was appointed in 1893 Surgeon-in-Ordinary to the duke of Edinburgh when he became duke of Saxe-Coburg. Cooper was knighted at King Edward VII's coronation in 1902.
Cooper, whose social qualities were linked with fine traits of character and breadth of view, gained a wide knowledge of the world, partly at courts, partly in the out-patient rooms of hospitals, and partly in the exercise of a branch of his profession which more than any other reveals the frailty of mankind.
Although the possession of a competence limited his professional activity, he was twice elected to the Council of the Royal College of Surgeons of England, on one occasion at the top of the poll, and was co-opted vice-president. Appointed in early life surgeon to the Inns of Court Rifle Volunteers, 'The Devil's Own,' he cherished a deep interest in the reserve forces throughout life. He obtained the volunteer decoration for long service, and was latterly surgeon-colonel to the Duke of York's Loyal Suffolk Hussars. Freemasonry appealed to him. He held high office in the United Grand Lodge of England, and was instrumental in founding the Rahere Lodge, which was the first masonic body to be associated with a hospital.
Cooper died at Mentone on 3 March 1908, and was buried in the English cemetery there. He married in 1882 Lady Agnes Cecil Emmeline Duff, third daughter of James, fifth earl of Fife, and sister of Alexander, the first duke; her first husband was Herbert Flower; by her Cooper had three daughters and a son. Cooper's works are: 1. 'Syphilis and Pseudo-Syphilis,' 1884; 2nd edit. 1895. 2. 'A Practical Treatise on Disease of the Rectum,' 1887; 2nd edit., with Mr. F. Swinford Edwards, entitled 'Diseases of the Rectum and Anus,' 1892.
[St. Bartholomew's Hospital Journal, xv. 1908, p. 105; Lancet, 1908, i. 901; Brit. Med. Journal, 1908, i. 660; personal knowledge.]