Astley Cooper - Life

Life

Cooper was born at Brooke Hall in Brooke, Norfolk on 23 August 1768 and baptised at the parish church on 9 September. His father, Dr. Samuel Cooper, was a clergyman of the Church of England; his mother Maria Susanna Bransby was the author of several novels. At the age of sixteen he was sent to London and placed under Henry Cline (1750–1827), surgeon to St. Thomas' Hospital. From the first he devoted himself to the study of anatomy, and had the privilege of attending the lectures of John Hunter. In 1789 he was appointed demonstrator of anatomy at St. Thomas's Hospital, where in 1791 he became joint lecturer with Cline in anatomy and surgery, and in 1800 he was appointed surgeon to Guy's Hospital on the death of his uncle, William Cooper.

In 1802 he received the Copley Medal for two papers read before the Royal Society of London on the destruction of the tympanic membrane; and in 1805 he was elected a Fellow of that society. In the same year he took an active part in the formation of the Medical and Chirurgical Society of London, and in 1804 he brought out the first, and in 1807 the second, part of his great work on hernia, which added so largely to his reputation that in 1813 his annual professional income rose to 21,000 pounds sterling. In the same year he was appointed professor of comparative anatomy to the Royal College of Surgeons and was very popular as a lecturer.

In 1817 he performed his famous operation of tying the abdominal aorta for aneurism; and in 1820 he removed an infected sebaceous cyst from the head of King George IV. About six months afterwards received a baronetcy, which, as he had no son, was to descend to his nephew and adopted son, Astley Cooper. He was subsequently appointed sergeant surgeon to King George IV, King William IV and Queen Victoria. He served as president of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1827 and again in 1836, and he was elected a vice-president of the Royal Society in 1830. In 1821, he was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. He died on 12 February 1841 in London, and was interred, by his own desire, beneath the chapel of Guy's Hospital. A statue by Edward Hodges Baily was erected in St Paul's Cathedral.

Cooper lived at Gadebridge House in the market town of Hemel Hempstead. Due to his influence, among others who were also residents of the area, his vigorous lobbying ensured that the London to Birmingham main railway line was constructed to the south of the town instead of through it, a more natural course. This led to the citizens of Hemel Hempstead having no railway station in their town, instead being obliged to use the one situated at Boxmoor.

Today, Cooper is remembered in the area with a number of local street names (Astley Road and Paston Road in Hemel Hempstead), and The Astley Cooper School, formerly Grovehill school, being renamed after him in 1984. The grounds of his former home are now a public park.