Born at Norwich on December 28th, 1838, the son of William Cooper, Recorder of Ipswich, by his wife Anna Marsh. He entered Merchant Taylors' School, then in Suffolk Lane, in April, 1850, and was afterwards apprenticed to W Peter Nichols, Surgeon to the Norfolk and Norwich Hospital. He entered as a student at St Bartholomew's Hospital in 1858; went to Paris in 1861 to improve his knowledge of anatomy in company with Sir Thomas Smith (qv), and on his return was appointed Prosector at the Royal College of Surgeons. He started practice in Jermyn Street and soon acquired a fashionable private connection. He was Surgeon to St Mark's Hospital for Fistula, to the West London Hospital from 1867-1884, to the Royal Hospital for Diseases of the Chest, and to the Lock Hospital in Soho. He visited St Petersburgh as medical attendant to King Edward VII, when Prince of Wales, on the occasion of the marriage of the Duke of Edinburgh in 1874. He was decorated by the Tzar, Chevalier of the Order of St Stanislaus of Russia. He was appointed Surgeon in Ordinary to the Duke of Edinburgh in 1893, and was knighted at King Edward VII's Coronation in 1902. At the Royal College of Surgeons of England he was a Member of the Council from 1895-1905 and served as Vice-President. He married in 1882 Lady Agnes Cecil Emmeline Duff, third daughter of the Duke of Fife, by whom he had three daughters and one son, Alfred Duff Cooper, DSO, MP, who afterwards distinguished himself in political circles. He died at Mentone on March 3rd, 1908, and was buried in the English cemetery. Cooper was gifted with great social qualities which were linked with fine traits of character and great breadth of view. He gained in the course of his life a wide knowledge of the world, partly at Courts, partly in Hospitals, and partly in the exercise of a branch of the profession which more than any other reveals the frailty of mankind, for he is now chiefly remembered as one who treated syphilis. The possession of a competence limited, but did not wholly destroy, his professional activity. Appointed early in life Surgeon to the Inns of Court Volunteers - 'The Devil's Own' -he cherished a deep interest in the reserve forces throughout his life. He was decorated with the volunteer medal for long service and became Surgeon Colonel to the Duke of York's Loyal Suffolk Hussars. Freemasonry appealed to him. He held high rank in the United Grand Lodge of England, and was instrumental in founding the Rahere Lodge No 2546, the first masonic body to be associated with St Bartholomew's Hospital in London. The portrait of him by Spy in *Vanity Fair*, 1897, is rather a likeness than a caricature. Publications: *Syphilis and Pseudo-syphilis*, 1884; 2nd ed., 1895. *A Practical Treatise on Disease of the Rectum*, 1887. The second edition (with F. SWINFORD EDWARDS) is entitled, *Diseases of the Rectum and Anus*, 1892.