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HANDSWORTH

 
A  LOCAL  SOCIETY  MAGAZINE

CIRCULATING IN HANDSWORTH, PERRY BARR AND BIRCHFIELDS.

Vol. I				      AUGUST, 1894.				No. 2.

Our Picture Gallery.

No .2. – ALDERMAN WILLIAM COOK, J.P.
Birmingham has been especially fortunate in the number of her citizens who have devoted their time, ability and money to the public good.  Among the best of these the subject of our present sketch holds an eminent and illustrious position.  Mr Cook, by his great industry, perseverance enthusiasm and singleness of purpose, has won “golden opinions from all sorts of people.”  There is probably no public man living who has greater claim on the gratitude and good wishes of the inhabitants of this highly-favoured city; and like so many who have served the best interests of the people he is not a native of the place.  Birmingham must indeed be a very attractive town to have drawn so large a number of able men to make her the home of their adoption.  It is to her credit that when they come they remain and it has been for her own highest welfare that she has shown herself so hospitable to the strangers after they have “entered her gates.”

Mr Cook was born on November 28^th, 1834, at the village of Kingscourt, near Stroud in Gloucestershire.  His parents came to Birmingham when he was only eight years old.  He was brought up as a mechanic.  His skill and aptitude in his work won for him an early reputation.  While quite a youth he was elected a member of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers and his ability was so quickly manifest that at the age of twenty he was appointed the delegate from Birmingham to the meeting held at Manchester, for the purpose of revising the rules of the Society.  For six years he held the office of official Secretary for the Birmingham branch, when his great services were recognised by the presentation of a skeleton clock from his fellow members.

Mr Cook has always displayed the greatest enthusiasm on the subject of popular education.  As a teacher in the now famous Severn Street early morning schools for the instruction of adults, he has endeared himself to the hearts of hundreds, if not thousands of men who have profited by his labours.  That this love was not of a temporary nature, which comes and goes at the prompting of a new undertaking, is proved by the fact that for thirty years he has been a continuous labourer in this fruitful vineyard.  It is impossible to over-estimate the amount of good, which has been produced by the unchangeable devotion of such men as Mr Cook and his noble-hearted colleagues, in this truly philanthropic work.

Of course in such a place as Birmingham these and other kindred works, could not be allowed to pass unnoticed and the minds of the burgesses of his own ward naturally turned to him as a fitting and proper representative in the Town Council.  Accordingly, in 1873, he was elected for Hampton Ward, and when a change was made in the wards, he was re-elected for St. George’s Ward.  Without dwelling on the philosophical question of the “pre-established harmony of things” it does seem at times as if events justified that theory.  When we think of the many years which Mr Cook has so earnestly devoted to the subject of the health of the borough, there is something startling in the fact that his first work in the Council was connected with this great subject.  In the first election of committees he was placed on the Inspection Committee, which afterwards became the better known and more important Health Committee.

The years 1873-74 were marked by the visitation of an epidemic of smallpox and Mr Cook was elected Chairman of the Committee, which had to deal with this terrible scourge.  The evil was so thoroughly and energetically grappled with by the Committee and its Chairman, that the ordinary good health and low death-rate of the borough were again secured.  The Borough Hospital and Disinfecting Station were established and when the Public Health Act of 1875 was passed there were not many Corporations so ready to adopt and carry out its provisions as was the Corporation of Birmingham.  Year by year Mr Cook has been re-elected Chairman of this most important Committee and a not inconsiderable volume might be filled with the detailed records of his work.  It must suffice for us, with the limited space at our disposal, to show how thoroughly his good work was recognised by his fellow-committeemen.  In 882 some rash and unfounded charges were made against the Committee and its Chairman, impeaching them for actual dishonesty and corruption.  An inquiry of a very searching kind followed and ended in their complete justification, as everyone not blinded by prejudice and personal animosity knew that it would end.  Mr Cook was principally aimed at in this ungenerous and shameful attempt at persecution.  His Committee however proved loyal and faithful and in 1883 recorded their estimate of the Chairman by passing unanimously the following resolution: - “That, in tending to Mr Alderman Cook its best thanks for the consideration and able manner in which he has presided over its meetings during the past year, being the ninth year of his Chairmanship, the Committee desires to record its high appreciation of his indefatigable labours in promoting public health and particularly in connection with the efforts made for the suppression of epidemics of smallpox and scarlet fever with which the town has been recently visited; also in the erection of the new Fever Wards at the Borough Hospital; and in the numerous and invaluable improvements which have been made in the management and working of the Inspection Department.  The Committee further desires to congratulate him upon the success, which has attended his labours, as seen in the reduction of the death-rate and the generally improved sanitary condition of the borough.”

Alderman Cook is still Chairman of the Health Committee and in 1893-4 had to contend with an epidemic of smallpox and scarlet fever more virulent than that of 1874 and displayed the same energy and was rewarded with a like success.  He has also been a member of the Improvement, the Public Works and the General Purposes Committees, in all of which he has been active and vigilant in the discharge of his duties.  In 1883 Alderman Cook received our highest municipal honour and was elected Mayor.

There is probably no part of his public work on which he looks with greater and more justifiable pride than in his connexion with that peculiarly Birmingham institution, Hospital Saturday.  It is not only in raising funds for the medical charities that the working men’s yearly contributions have been productive of great results.  The establishment of the convalescent hospitals, both for men and women, at Llandudno, is the crowning achievement of his labours in this field of good work.  As Chairman of the Committee he has inspired all with his sanguine spirit and the heart co-operation of every member has enabled them to obtain the yearly-increasing amounts which have marked the history of this admirable movement.  It is an unexampled event in the records of charitable efforts that over £12,000 have been subscribed in one year for an object so purely unselfish and by working men of the city.  May it be perpetual!

Even this does not exhaust the Alderman’s labours in the field of charity.  This very year (1984) has added one more to our annual collections.  The establishment of a Lifeboat Saturday shows that the generous spirit of the people is not yet exhausted.  The procession which inaugurated the work on July 14^th will not soon be forgotten by the tens of thousands who witnessed its progress through the streets.  Of this Committee our indefatigable Alderman is the chairman.

Alderman Cook has also been an active politician.  As politics are properly excluded from our pages, we can simply record that he is a strenuous Liberal; that in 1885 he was elected M.P. for the eastern division of the city, but failed to secure re-election in 1886.  He is the President of the Birmingham Liberal Association.

Such is a brief record of a most active and most useful life.  How thoroughly he had endeared himself to the inhabitants was clearly manifested by the universal sympathy which he received from all classes and all parities on his great bereavement in the loss of his wife and the long and dangerous illness through which he recently passed.  All rejoiced at his recovery, all welcomed him back to public life, all are glad of the laurels which he has earned and will say with us “he won them well, and may he wear them long.”