Dame Mary Cook

Dame Mary Cook

Dame Mary Cook DBE (c. 1863 — 24 September 1950) was the wife of Australian Prime Minister, Sir Joseph Cook.

When she married Joseph Cook in 1885, Mary Turner was 22 years old and had been a schoolteacher for eight years. Beginning as a pupil teacher at Chesterton Girls’ School, by 1885 she was an assistant mistress. Like Joseph Cook, she came from a Staffordshire mining family. She appears to have had a role in helping both her brothers and her husband to overcome their lack of education. Usually considered self-taught, Joseph Cook had the advantage of a skilled teacher in his wife. At their Lithgow home, Cook studied in the evenings, moving from writing and grammar to typing and shorthand, and then to book-keeping. He also began studying to become a Methodist minister.

By 1891, six years after their marriage and emigration to Australia, the couple had three small sons, and Joseph Cook had a seat in the New South Wales parliament. By 1901 they had six children, and he had won the Parramatta seat in federal parliament. For the 20 years he sat in the federal parliament, Joseph Cook spent much of his time in Melbourne, where parliament sat. Mary Cook managed their large household in Sydney, with nine children born between 1866 and 1906.

When Joseph Cook became Navy Minister in Billy Hughes' government in 1917, the Cooks' children were aged between 20 and 11 years. Mary Cook was by then very active in the New South Wales Branch of the Australian Red Cross Society, and in Cook's electorate of Parramatta. From the time of her hushband's knighthood in 1918 Mary Cook became Lady Cook and was styled in that way until seven years later when she was honoured in her own right as a Dame. She spoke at meetings there in the 1919 election campaign, and also deputised at ministerial events, such as the unveiling of an Honour Roll dedicated to the 1914 – 1918 servicemen and women in General Granville Ryrie’s Manly electorate.

During her husband's term as High Commissioner, Mary Cook played a key role for the Australian Red Cross Society, including representing the Society at a meeting of the International Red Cross Board of Governors in Paris in 1923.

The Cooks returned to Australia in 1927, enjoying an active retirement. In 1928, on the foundation of the Newington College Parents' and Friends' Association, Dame Mary was elected President. The Cooks' five sons had attended Newington and in the first year of the association £300 was raised for equipment and improvements to the school's hospital.

Sir Joseph Cook died in 1947, and Dame Mary Cook died on 24 September 1950, aged 87, at her Bellevue Hill home in Sydney.