The Dictionary of Australasian Biography/Cooper, Sir Charles
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.