TOPIC:

Frederick Augustus Cooke

Private, 2nd Battalion, Lincolnshire Regiment – Anglo Boer War
Coal Porter, Royal Household

- Queens South Africa Medal (C.C, Paardeberg, Johannesburg) to 3005 PTE F. COOKE. 2ND LINCOLN: REGT.
- Royal Household Faithful Service Medal with Thirty Years Additional Award Bar (F. COOKE.)
- Coronation Medal 1911 – unnamed as awarded.
- Jubilee Medal 1935 – unnamed as awarded.

Frederick Cooke was born in Marylebone, in the City of London and was baptised in the local Parish church on 14 November 1875. His father, Henry Augustus Cooke was a Printer by trade and married to his mother, Julia Anne Cooke, born Johns. The family were living at 86 High Street, Marylebone. His father, at a later date and certainly by 1891, was a Government Servant (Clerk) living at St James Palace in London as a member of the Royal Household.


St James Palace where Cooke would have passed many a day with his father a member of the staff

Being raised in the rarified atmosphere of a Royal Household must have left an indelible impression on a young Frederick, instilling in him a deep and abiding sense of duty and service which was to see him enter Royal employ and stay the course for more than thirty years.

Cooke disappears from the records until making a reappearance in the 1891 England census at which point he was a 16 year old Porter living with his parents at St James Palace in the Strand. Not long after, at London on 26 January 1892, he completed attestation papers for Short Service with the Colours (7 Years with the Colours and 5 Years in the Reserve.) Confirming that he was born in London he was 18 years and 1 month old and a Cellarman by occupation. 5 feet 8 inches in height, he weighed a slender 120 lbs and had a fair complexion, blue eyes and light brown hair. A member of the Church of England he had no distinguishing marks about his person.

Having been passed as Fit by the Doctor, Cooke was assigned No. 3005 and the rank of Private with the Lincolnshire Regiment. Initially posted to the Depot, he was transferred to the 2nd Battalion on 12 December 1893. All of his initial service was served at Home and, on 26 January 1899 he was transferred to the Reserve. On 18 December 1899 he was recalled to army service as a result of the outbreak of hostilities between Great Britain and the two Boer Republics of the Transvaal and the Orange Free State in South Africa.

This war, long in the making, erupted onto the world stage on 11 October 1899 and the hopelessly outnumbered British military presence in the country was hard-pressed to stem the Boer tide as their Commandos swept across the Cape and Natal Colony borders. From the outset it became apparent that the British authorities had seriously underestimated both the resolve of the Boer leadership and the firepower they were able to muster. This was no ragged bunch of primitive tribesmen brandishing spears and out-dated blunderbusses but a highly mobile force of expert shots who knew the land intimately. In short, a force to be reckoned with and one which the British Tommy had not hitherto encountered.

Cooke’s 2nd Battalion sailed for South Africa on the Goorkha about 4th January 1900, and arrived at the Cape about the 25th. Along with the 2nd Norfolk, 1st KOSB, and 2nd Hampshire, they formed the 14th Brigade under Brigadier General Chermside, and part of the VIIth Division commanded by Lieutenant General Tucker. The VIIth Division took part in the advance from Modder River to Bloemfontein.

On 11th February 1900 they moved from Enslin and Graspan to Ramdan; on 12th to Dekiel Drift on the Riet River. The 13th was occupied in getting waggons across. On the 14th the division moved from Dekiel Drift to Waterval Drift, where Lord Roberts had made his headquarters. On the evening of the 14th the division moved to Wegdraai Drift, still on the Riet. On the 15th part of the division occupied Jacobsdal, to which place Lord Roberts moved his headquarters on the 16th.

On the 18th, the day of the battle of Paardeberg, the 14th Brigade, under Chermside, was ordered to march from Jacobsdal to Paardeberg, where it arrived on the evening of the 19th. Thereafter the 14th Brigade sat down at Paardeberg till Cronje came out, but it also did very important work in assisting to repel and defeat the Boer reinforcements coming to his assistance.

On the 7th March was fought the battle of Poplars Grove. In his despatch of 15th March Lord Roberts says: "The 14th Brigade of the VIIth Division, with its Brigade Division of Field Artillery, Nesbitt's Horse, and the New South Wales and Queensland Mounted Infantry, was ordered to march eastward along the south bank of the river for the purpose of threatening the enemy, distracting attention from the main attack on Table Mountain, and assisting the cavalry in preventing the Boers from crossing the river at the Poplar Grove Drift".

On the 8th and 9th March the army halted at Poplars Grove, but on the latter date Lord Roberts issued his instructions for his next advance in three columns on Bloemfontein. Lieutenant General Tucker commanded the right or southmost column, consisting of the VIIth Division – which included the Lincolns, the 3rd Cavalry Brigade, and Ridley's brigade of Mounted Infantry, and he was instructed to march via Petrusburg, Driekop, Panfontein, to Venter's Vlei, eighteen miles from Bloemfontein, in four marches; but on the 10th, after the battle of Driefontein or Abraham's Kraal had been fought by the left and centre columns, Lord Roberts asked Lieutenant General Tucker to halt his force at Driekop. The division did not reach Bloemfontein till the 14th; Lord Roberts having entered the town on the 13th.

The division had no very serious fighting in the course of the eastern advance. After passing through Bloemfontein the division was posted north of the town, General Maxwell succeeding to the command of the 14th Brigade when General Chermside was given the IIIrd Division.

On 29th March Lieutenant General Tucker, with the VIIth Division, 1st and 3rd Cavalry Brigades, and Le Gallais' Mounted Infantry, fought the action at Karee Siding to drive the Boers off a line of kopjes from which they had been doing some mischief. The operations were successfully carried out. The enemy held several strong positions in the line of hills. Le Gallais on the right and French on the left found their projected turning movements very difficult, the enemy retaining their positions and even taking the offensive at parts until the infantry closed in in the afternoon. After the action the VIIth Division retained the hills they had won, thus keeping open the door for the subsequent advance on Brandfort.

When Lord Roberts moved north from Bloemfontein to Pretoria the VIIth and Xlth Divisions formed the centre of the army. The VIIth Division was on the right of the Xlth in the advance. Brandfort was occupied on 3rd May, Smaldeel on the 6th, Kroonstad on the 12th and Pretoria on 5th June. On the way some fighting had to be done, but the centre was never so seriously engaged as the right and left wings of the army.

After Johannesburg had surrendered on 31st May 1900 the VIIth and Xlth Divisions marched past the Commander-in-Chief in the town. The VIIth Division did not act together again.

After Pretoria was occupied the 14th Brigade was detailed to garrison the Boer capital and neighbourhood.

Early in July 1900 the post at Zilikaat's Nek, Uitval's Nek, or Nitral's Nek, in the Magaliesberg Mountains, was taken over from Baden-Powell's force by a squadron of the Royal Scots Greys, five companies of the Lincolnshire Regiment, and two guns O Battery, RHA, the whole under Colonel H R Roberts. On 11th July the enemy in great numbers attacked the position, and "owing mainly to the defective dispositions of the commanding officer, the enemy gained possession of the pass and captured the two guns, almost an entire squadron of the Scots Greys, and 90 officers and men of the Lincolnshire Regiment, including Colonel Roberts, who had been wounded early in the day".

The battalion was present at the ceremony of proclaiming the annexation of the Transvaal in Pretoria on 25th October.

Cooke, having been posted home to England on 18 October 1900, would have missed this grand event. He continued to serve on the Reserve until being discharged on 25 January 1904 and was awarded his Queens Medal with the appropriate clasps off the medal roll dated 14 August 1901 at Rietfontein.



A year before he severed all ties with the military, Cooke followed in his father’s footsteps, joining the staff of the Royal Household at Marlborough House on 1 February 1903 as an Assistant Coal Porter on £40 per annum and a Board Wage of 2/- per day. After King Edward VII ascended the throne in 1901, Marlborough House was allocated to his son, the Duke of York (later King George V), and his wife.

The Prince and Princess of Wales, known for their lavish entertaining, established the Marlborough House Set, a group that included prominent figures from politics, finance, and society and, as a Coal Porter, it would have been Cooke’s responsibility to make sure that the house occupants and their frequent guests were at all times snug and warm – he kept, so to speak, the home fires burning for the comfort of all concerned.

By 1910 he was still pursuing the same occupation but had been transferred to Buckingham Palace, possibly as a result of his former master, the Prince of Wales, now having ascended the throne on the death of his father. Cooke’s annual salary at this stage was a handsome, some would say, £54 per annum.



A year later the 1911 England census revealed that he was an Indoor Porter living at 54 Westmoreland Street – together with his wife of 8 years, Alice, and their two children – Alfred (7) and Mabel (6.) The couple had married in Westminster in 1903. 1911 marked the year of the coronation of George V and Cooke was awarded the Coronation Medal in honour of the occasion.

Cooke continued on with his Royal Household duties and was next seen in the 1921 England census where he was described as a being in “Domestic Service.” Now 46 years of age, his children seemed to have done well for themselves – 17 year old Alfred was a Clerk with the Admiralty and 16 year old Mabel was a Dress Maker in the employ of The Ladies Shirt Company in Sloane Square.

As a reward and in recognition of long and devoted service he was granted the Thirty Years bar to his Royal Household medal in February 1933. This event was also the precursor to his retirement which took place in 1935 when he had attained the age of 60. This was also the year of King George V’s Silver Jubilee and, fittingly, Cooke was awarded the Jubilee Medal to mark the occasion.

Sadly, Frederick Cooke, after a lifetime of service, wasn’t destined to enjoy a long break. He passed away at the Middlesex Hospital in Marylebone on 4 May 1936, bequeathing the sum of £112 to his wife. His home address was 20 Sussex Street, Pimlico – his widow and unmarried daughter, Mabel, were still living there at the time the 1939 Register was taken.

Acknowledgements:
- Stirling’s account on British Regiments in South Africa 1899-1902
- Find My Past for Royal Household and census data
- Ancestry for Family Tree and census data.