TOPIC:

If at first you don't succeed, try, try, and try again......

In this instance, the name is Coope rather than Cope. Both branches of the family used the same coat-of-arms. I suppose it should have been obvious that these pieces were commissioned by, or presented to, a high-ranking officer. Colonel William Jesser-Coope was second-in-command and then camp-commandant at Diyatalawa. Already aged 64 at the time of the outbreak of the ABW, and having retired from the Army in 1871, he joined Brabant's Horse, commanding "B" Squadron until he was invalided after the battle of Ficksburg. It was then that he was posted to Ceylon. His wife was called Mary, so the box was almost certainly commissioned as a gift for her. The monogram therefore reads "MJC".

Given his position, I wonder whether the cabinet could have been a gift from the Boer prisoners. Over the years, I have seen a number of high-quality carvings that were presented to the commanding officers of camps.
An article published in the Boer camp magazine, "The Diyatalawa Lyre", certainly suggests that Colonel Coope and the other British officers were well liked: "A Friendly Enemy. Gratitude has been described by a cynic as a proper appreciation of favours to come, but as we are soldiers and not cynics, we have implicit belief that Colonel Vincent, Colonel Jesser Coope, and the officers and other gentlemen who have stiched [sic] many a point to make us happy and comfortable, and in a hundred kind ways done all that is compatible with discipline to lighten the sadness and monotony of our banishment, will accept our thanks for all their kindness.
Fate was unkind in sending us against our will to see the beauties of Ceylon; she has relented in placing us under humane officers and gentlemen.”

Having retired from the Army twenty-eight years before the ABW, I wouldn't have been able to find the colonel in the Official Army Lists, even if I had known I was looking for a Coope and not a Cope. Sometimes the absence of a name from an official roll does not mean an individual did not serve.


Black & White, 6th July 1901

A soldier’s distinction.

The Boer prisoners of war at Diyatalawa, Ceylon, are commanded by an officer of exceptional service and distinction. Colonel Jesser Coope is the only British soldier who has served both in the Crimea, 1854-5, and the Boer War, 1900-1. On June 18th, 1855, as Lieutenant Jesser Coope, 57th Regiment, he volunteered to carry through a heavy fire a dispatch from Earl De la Warr (then Lord West), commanding the stormers on the face of the redan, to Lord Raglan, the Commander-in-Chief, returning to Lord De la Warr with Lord Raglan’s reply. He was one of the stormers of the redan on that occasion, and was present at the storming and capture of the “Quarries” on June 7th, 1855; after commanded the light company of the 57th at the capture of Sebastopol on September 8th, 1855; he was present at the bombardment and capture of Kinburn and the subsequent operations under Brigadier-General Spencer on the Estuary of the Dnieper in October, 1855. Colonel Coope served in the Imperial Ottoman Gendarmerie under Valentine Baker Pasha, 1877 to 1880, and was taken prisoner by General Gourko in one of the outposts of Plevna. He afterwards commanded a brigade of Turkish troops employed in the construction of the famous lines of Buyuk-Tchckmedgie, eighteen miles from Constantinople. When the present Boer War broke out, Colonel Coope at once offered his services and raised two squadrons of irregular horse, one of which, in Brabant’s Regiment, he commanded at the Siege of Wepner and the subsequent operations under general Rundle around Thaba N’chu, Ladybrand and Ficksburg.










Lieutenant-Colonel Jesser-Coope's medals were sold through Noonan's in 2020: Seven: Lieutenant-Colonel William Jesser-Coope, Brabant’s Horse, late 57th Foot and 7th Royal Fusiliers; he served at the siege of Sebastopol in 1855, was later a Lieutenant-Colonel in the Imperial Ottoman Gendarmerie, being taken prisoner in the Russo-Turkish War in 1877-78, and commanded ‘B’ Squadron of Brabant’s Horse throughout the siege of Wepener in 1900, before his appointment as Commandant of Boer prisoners of War at Diyatalawa Camp, Ceylon.

SEE: Lieutenant-Colonel William Jesser-Coope


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Some fine detective work! He had previously written a book on his military experiences, which can be read online: books.google.gy/books?id=LsYCAAAAYAAJ .