Charles Cooper, first chief justice of South Australia, a calm intellect behind timidity, hypochondria
South Australia's first chief justice Charles Cooper was important in regard to his view on the difficulty of applying English law to Aboriginal people.
Image courtesy State Library of South Australia
Charles Cooper, not recognised as South Australia’s first chief justice until 1853, arrived in 1839 to fill the vacancy left by the Justice’s John Jeffcott’s drowning in 1837. Cooper wasn’t liked by Adelaide’s popular press and derided as timid, conservative, casual and lax – rather than as gentleness, righteousness and rectitude.
Cooper helped bring peace to colony’s nascent legal fraternity and his intellect and independence has been belatedly recognised, especially in regard to his view on the difficulty of applying English law to Aboriginal people.
Charles Cooper had entered London’s Inner Temple in 1822 and became a pupil of Richard Preston, the celebrated conveyancing barrister. Cooper practised law in the Oxford circuit until appointed judge in South Australia in 1838.
He arrived in Adelaide in the Katherine Stewart Forbes with his sister, and stayed with George Milner Stephen while his own house was built in Whitmore Square. Here, in 1839 he held his first court. Sworn in by governor George Gawler, Cooper said he hoped for an end to the frivolous and vexatious litigation in the colony.
Cooper was religious, conservative and frugal. He married in late middle age and had periods away due to ill health. He was a hypochondriac ands ometimes absented himself from the court for months at a time. His complaints about his health caused the governor, Henry Young, to ask the colonial cffice in 1849 to appoint a second judge: the younger George Crawford. Crawford died after two years; Cooper lived beyond 90.
Cooper was dismayed by the confusion in the titles to land that existed in a colony less than three years old. In 1840, he proposed registration of deeds. A voluntary registry was established in 1842 and, although criticised by reformers, was kept almost unchanged for 16 years.
While Cooper remained strongly attached to English law, he helped to draft South Australian parliamentary bills and, in his most important judgment, in 1848, he disregarded the unpopular colonial ordinance imposing one-fifteenth royalties on minerals.
But Cooper’s real independence shone through in his positive attitude towards the Aboriginals and the native environment. He supported the explorations of Charles Sturt who named the legendary Cooper Creek in his honour.
Cooper retired in 1861. The South Australian Legislative Council voted him a lump sum £10,000 pension that he was ready to accept. But some members of the House of Assembly, with the controlling say, amended this to a pension of £1,000 per annum. But, because Cooper lived for nearly 26 years in retirement, this proved much more expensive for South Australia.