Edward Tyas Cook: A Montague Contemporary

[Johnr]

I have started a separate thread on Edward Tyas Cook, so as not to blur the lines on the neighbouring thread Druitt and the Civil Service.
Those interested will in Cook find much interesting in a biographical way on that thread.
My interest in Edward Tyas Cook began when I was compiling lists of people who went to the same institutions as MJD back in the '70's.
Cook's name seemed to appear in a few, so when Chris Scott posted the Civil Service Exam List for January, 1881, this also listed Cook and Druitt.
Can some whizz-bang techno tell me if it is possible to transfer a couple of the more comprehensive biographical items from that other thread to this?
Or is that not encouraged under house rules?
Thanks to everyone who dug out useful information on Cook, who to me, is starting to look quite inter-esting. JOHN RUFFELS.

[aspallek]

I'll start by moving over this map showing Cook's Lewisham/Blackheath residence on Lansdowne Place (blue) in comparison with Druitt's at no. 9 Eliot Place (red), and for good measure John Henry Lonsdale at no. 5 Eliot Cottages (green).

[aspallek]

Someone might want to check out this book:

Sir Edward Cook, K. B. E.: A Biography By John Saxon Mills
Published 1921
Constable & co. ltd
304 pages.

There is a copy at a unversity here in St. Louis. I don't have time at the moment but perhaps in a week or two I can get it via interlibrary loan.

Google books gives the first three chapter titles in its "snippet view:"
CHAPTER I 1
E. T. Cook, Tichborne, Winchester
CHAPTER II 12
E. T. Cook, Oxford Union, Lord Sumner
CHAPTER III 37
Pall Mall Gazette, Alfred Milner, Frederick Greenwood
14 other sections not shown

[aspallek]

Mrs. Cook

Mrs. Emily Cook from The Woman at Home, date unknown:

[Johnr]

Thanks Andy,
That biography might have something, even if it is just the atmosphere Montague lived in.
Thanks for moving the map over. All that will be useful later on.
I have been back and winnowed my old notes on Montague's Contemporaries.
I think their used to be a thread called " Montague Druitt's Friends".If so I'll put them there if not, I'll create a fresh one.
Tomorrow. JOHN RUFFELS.

[Chris Scott]

Here is the man himself

[Johnr]

Thanks again Chris,
You certainly find such interesting and germane stuff. Well done.
I once wrote I'll have to type up a standard "Thank You" response post, and then all I'll have to do is "Cut & Paste" it when needed.This idea still applies.
JOHN RUFFELS.

[Chris Scott]

Cook and Druitt and the Winchester Debating Society

From Dan Farson:
Druitt was an active member of the Debating Society, speaking at most of the meetings from 1873 onwards and duly being elected as Secretary and Treasurer. His subjects ranged widely: he criticised the Government for the handling of the Tichborne trial; praised Gladstone as the "only redeeming point" in the Liberal Party; deplored the execution of Charles I and supported compulsory military service. He defended the French Republic and attacked the influence of Bismarck as "morally and socially a curse to the world."

From Sir Edward Cook, K. B. E.: A Biography By John Saxon Mills

"He quickly found his feet in the Debating Society.
His advocacy of the Tichborne claimant had many amusing features.
He appears for the first time in 1872 when he seconded a motion for the abolition of the House of Lords.
Other debates follow on the stock subjects of school debating societies such as Ghosts, Charles I, Thackeray and Dickens and in nearly all of them Cook took part. One debate, however, is conspicuous. The secretary. E.T. Cook, proposes that the conduct of the Government in the Tichborne trial is worthy of the severest condemnation. The secretary was an ardent, though perhaps not wholly serious, believer in the claimant, with whom he was privileged to have personal interviews and from whom he received a number of letters, still preserved, in acknowledgement of moral and financial sympathy."

[Natalie Severn]

I dug up some more information on Cook over these last few days.He was,by all accounts a very literary and artistic man who compiled biographies on Ruskin and Florence Nightingale among several others.He also compiled a first National Gallery Guide with his wife.
He bacame Editor of the Pall Mall Gazette during Stead"s incarceration.His opinion is not to be found on Stead"s radical and it has to be said profoundly lamentable "methods" of highlighting child sexual abuse, but it seems Cook was,like most decent thinking people, delighted with the result-it being the raising of the age of consent and a positive move to end child procurement for prostitution.

Cook devoted much of his time to the Toybee Hall,where he organised art exhibitions including the compilation of illustrated Art Guides,again often produced with the help of his wife, as part of Reverend Barnett"s,"Educational Programmes" for Whitechapel"s "Working Men".He was very happy with his wife and her early death in 1903 appears to have caused him to suffer some significant depression.
He played an active role on The Toynbee Hall committee.
Natalie

just noted your comments on the debating issue Chris-----I knew they were both very keen on that---so they did have one or two joint interests-as well as similar political sympathies at that point in their lives anyway.But Druitt was always a very keen sportsman which Cook was definitely not!

[Chris Scott]

"Cook's Popular Handbook to the National Gallery was published in September 1888. For several years he had edited the catalogue of the annual exhibition organized by Mr. (afterwards Canon) Barnett at St. Jude's, Whitechapel, and from this sprang the suggestion for the more ambitious work."

From the J Saxon Mills book

[aspallek]

Here is the man himself

Something looks very familiar about him.

At any rate, since Natalie has pointed out Cook's connections with Toynbee Hall, we have yet another potential Druitt connection to the East End assuming they were and remained friends. So the myth that Druitt had absolutely nothing to connect him to the East End appears to have crumbled.

[Stewart P Evans]

Might As Well

Might as well post this one as well -

[Stewart P Evans]

W. T. Stead

W. T. Stead on E. T. Cook (1893) -

[Johnr]

Excellent stuff Folks,
I have noticed that a lawyer in MJDs area might cause confusion to the unwary.
When I saw the name "T.Cooke" at an Inns Dinner (I think Rob posted it some time back), among the names was a "T.Cooke'. Oh, I thought this could be a misprint for Tyas Cook.
Well, from the 1897 Western Circuit Bar List I see the name " Temple Cooke".
So obviously, I was wrong. JOHN RUFFELS.

[Natalie Severn]

Stewart,
Thankyou for posting this lovely portrait photo of Cook and for the authentic Stead bit.
I am posting a photo of Toynbee Hall which is more or less as it was in Cook"s time -plus an extension.It was modelled on the style of the Oxford Colleges which Toynbee Hall hoped to replicate ,both in philosophy and structure, for the working men of Whitechapel who up to then had had no access to such higher education.Its situation in the heart of the Rippers catchment area is noticeable because it is a world away from The Princess Alice Pub,immediately next door to it,and the George Yard crime site of Martha Tabram which it backs on to.
Many of our famous characters gave service work there,one of the most generous being Edward Tyas Cook but quite a number of others from New College Oxford and Cambridge---one of them being an Acland sibling-as well as even more famous celebrities.
Best
Natalie