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Lancelot Taylor Cooke
Lancelot Cooke [or Cook] arrived on the Gilmore in 1829. He was a clerk in the employ of Thomas Peel, and featured prominently in colonial education. He was an exponent of the classics who disliked teaching elementary subjects. His career from 1830-1869 included teaching in Fremantle, Perth and Busselton. From 1842-1848 he was postmaster at Toodyay and an itinerant tutor. About 215 children from the ships Rockingham, Gilmore and Hooghly were probably given tuition in the temporary settlement at Clarence under bush timber in the sandhills. Mr Cooke was likely to have been assisting in settling the boys. He also officiated at a number of burials in the early 1830s, as shown by his signature in the register of St John's Church. He died in 1878 at the Mt Eliza Invalid Depot, Perth. (John Rikkers, and Diane Oldman)
References and Links
Oldman, Diane 2004, 'Was Clarence Beach one of the first 'schools' in the colony?', Family History Society of Rockingham and Districts Newsletter, vol. 9, no. 4, June: 7.
Western Australian Schools 1830-1980, compiled by John Rikkers, Planning Branch, Education Dept. of Western Australia 1984-.
This page incorporates material from Garry Gillard's Freotopia website, that he started in 2014 and the contents of which he donated to Wikimedia Australia in 2024. The content was originally created on 4 November, 2016 and hosted at freotopia.org/people/cookelancelot.html (it was last updated on 22 August, 2023), and has been edited since it was imported here (see page history). The donated data is also preserved in the Internet Archive's collection.