6) Richard Cooper 1825 - 1908

Already we have in mind a picture of Shuffleton , but perhaps it will be instructive to look deeper into Richard Cooper's life, his character and background, in a bid to understand why those Goole generations past appear to have more about them than those of today!

Previously, the earliest record of RC was the 1851 Census - when he showed up as Head of household, a single man, aged 25 born at Hook and an Iron & Brass Worker living in Foundry Street, Goole - gone now but then down by the Canal-side, off Bridge Street.

Further research has revealed that Richard Cooper was born at Hook to Thomas Cooper and Mary Briggs, and his baptism tok place on 25 May 1825.  Mary Briggs is believed to have been the daughter of Robert Briggs and Susan Butler, christened on 8 February 1801 at Wakefield St. John.

Mary's marriage to Thomas Cooper has yet to be traced, but she was a widow in 1841, when the census shows her to be 45 years old (to the nearest five years) and living at Calder Square, Goole, with daughters Sarah Ann, 18, and Elizabeth 14, and sons Richard 16 and Henry 8 years.

Mrs. Cooper also took in two lodgers - George Winter, 21 and Robert Holmes, 18 - both of them being Boiler men.  Interestingly, her next door neighbour was another widow by the name of Mary Pilkington, aged 60.  She had what may have been her daughter and grand-daughter living with her - Mary Sawyer 29 and Mary Jane Sawyer 2 years, together with two lodgers - Robert Whitehead, 23 and an Iron Moulder, and Byram? Crapper, 35, a Boiler maker. 

Their occupations suggest all four workmen were probably employed in the Iron Shipbuilding Yard on the Dutch River Side, that John Pilkington founded in Goole's earliest days as a port.  It is known that Richard Cooper served his apprenticeship with John Pilkington before he began the Phoenix Foundry on his own account, and chronology suggests that John Pilkington was the son of Mary Pilkington.

The Pilkington shipbuilding business was sold about 1870 to a talented engineer and inspired businessman, Ralph Peacock, who had set up the Cyclops Iron Works in Bridge Street in 1861.  Within a year or two, after a brief foray as Goole Engineering & Shipbuilding Co. around 1873, what had been the former Pilkington shipyard became Thomas Scott's Victoria Shipyard, and in its turn was taken over c. 1901 by Mr. Craggs, as Goole Shipbuilding & Repair Co., before it moved to a new site on Swinefleet Road where Goole-built ships were launched until recent memory. 

(See Riversea site on Goole's Waterways Museum - www.Goole-on-the-Web - for details of these vessels)

Visiting Richard Cooper on census night 1851 at his Foundry Street address were Mary Cooper, 55, born at Wakefield and the widow of a publican, and Henry aged 17 born at Goole who was an Iron/Brassworker, too.

By 1861 Richard Cooper, still Head of the house, was a married man, aged 34.  His address was 4 East Albert Street, and his business as an Iron and Brass Founder employed 5 boys and 2 men.  Richard Cooper had married Miss Ann Tait of Asselby on Christmas Day 1858 at Howden. In 1861 Mr & Mrs. Richard Cooper had a one-year old daughter - Minnie.

Mrs. Mary Cooper and her younger son Henry were living at Bridge Street, Goole in 1861 where Henry remained unmarried and was an Iron Moulder.

You will see an engraving of the Phoenix Works if you open Yorkshire Ridings Magazine - extract from June / July 2005

Richard Cooper continued to expand his business interests, opening an ironmongery warehouse in Bridge Street in 1863 and advertising his "Improved Cooking Stove to  Captains and Shipping Agents". 

In 1864 the Phoenix Iron & Brass Foundry was taken over by the firm of Pitt & Co.  It did not work out, and in January 1865 it was back under the eye of Richard Cooper.

Employing 10 men and 8 boys in 1871, RC and his wife Ann had increased their family from one daughter to four daughters and one son, with the births of Mary E(mma), Lillie, Susan and Richard junior joining Minnie, the eldest child.  Mrs. Cooper had domestic help from Mary Leggit and Emma Stratta.

During these years, Richard Cooper and William Gyles were the contractors for the new Primitive Methodist Chapel on the "corner plot of the field facing Boothferry Road" (Carlisle Terrace, since demolished for a furniture store, that was converted into the present library).  The chapel site cost £460 and the contracts amounted to £2,570.  At the foundation ceremony in September 1874,  the fourth memorial stone was laid by Miss Minnie Cooper (born 1860).

In 1875 the family and their ironmongery moved from Albert Street to Bank Buildings, in Aire Street.  By 1881, when Richard Cooper was 57, he appeared to be at the height of business and social success.  Describing himself as an Iron and Brass Founder and Engine Maker, he had 116 men and boys working for him. The family were joined by Mrs. Cooper's father, John Tate 74, a retired farmer, and a young lady visitor, a schoolfriend of one of the Cooper daughters, together with a young man who worked as an Assistant Ironmonger, and their domestic help, Alice Lockwood.

Three years later the Phoenix Foundry changed hands in 1884 - taken over by Messrs. Webster Jackson & Co.  Richard Cooper turned to housing development on land he bought from Robert Harrison.

On 1 April 1884, Richard Cooper paid £1,130 for 1 acre 3 roods 30 perches land forming part of Marsh Field Close.  Bounded on the north by houses belonging to several owners in Marsh Field, on the east partly by property belonging to Captain Woodhead, partly by property belonging to Robert Harrison (then 35, now 55 Hook Road), partly by Hook road and a small triangular area of garden land behind Robert Harrison's property, and partly by a property belonging to Edward Hunter (Ouse Cottage, now 53 Hook Road), on the south by land belonging to Richard Duckels and on the west by the occupation road or lane (then Millhouse lane, now Kingsway/rear Argyle Street) -- "the greater part of Richard Cooper Street was built (first named Phoenix Street) in 1885-6."

A warehouse was erected in September 1886 that became the new Phoenix Foundry.

Meanwhile, Miss Minnie Cooper was married in Spring 1888.  She became Mrs. William Patrick Cluff after a ceremony at Sculcoates, East Yorkshire.  Mr. Cluff, born in Ireland, was a customs officer who had worked at Goole (in 1881 he and a colleague boarded at the home of William and Hannah Marshall in Edinburgh Street).  Following their marriage, the Cluffs lived at Grimsby in 1891, where Mr. Cluff was an Examining Officer with HM Customs.  They had a two year old son Ashley Fitzgerald Cluff.  Sadly, his grandmother, Mrs. Ann Cooper, the wife of Richard Cooper, died at her daughter's home on 18 August 1892.   A daughter - Mary F. - was born to the Cluffs in 1896, at Caistor, Lincolnshire but then her father, William Patrick Cluff, died aged 44 at Falmouth, Cornwall in June 1899, leaving Minnie a young widow.

She brought her two children to live in Goole.  Richard Cooper ended his 82 years at 1 Phoenix Street - his daughter Minnie's home - in March 1908.  But before his life reached its natural demise, Richard Cooper gave Goole much to be proud of.  Not least of this legacy were the houses he built.