A few years since the establishment of the Moreton Bay Penal Settlement, Captain Patrick Logan named land eight miles south of the Brisbane River penal colony “Cowper’s Plains”; an area explored by Logan in 1826 and by Allan Cunningham in 1828. The honour was to Dr Henry Cowper (1800-1849), the Assistant Surgeon of the settlement. Dr Henry Cowper had been appointed in the role on 1 September 1825, only months before Logan’s arrival as Commandant in March 1826 and it appears that that the relationship started well.
Henry’s prospects for being memorialise in Queensland history was good in those early years. He was born to a prominent family. His father William Cowper (1778-1858) became the minister of St Philip's Church, for a period the only clergyman permanently in colonial Sydney. His younger brother, Charles Cowper (1807–1875), was appointed secretary to the Church and Schools Land Corporation in 1826, later to become the noted New South Wales politician and second Premier of New South Wales. Henry, the eldest son, had showed himself as a devoted & respected Christian gentleman, and was assiduously recording the events and conditions of the Moreton Bay Penal Settlement. His medical training and extensive work in the New South Wales colony was, and has since been, highly regarded. Henry played a significant role in the search and recovery of Logan’s body in 1830. And yet he has mostly disappeared from the history record. Unlike his father and younger brother, and his employer (Logan), there are no references in the Australian Dictionary of Biography; not even a passing reference. Alas, poor Henry disgraced himself, and he became a ‘black sheep’ to both the family and Queensland history.
Much of what we know of Henry Cowper’s fall from grace comes from Dr John Fitzgerald Murray, a second Medical Officer appointed in May 1830, who records Henry’s drunken states, his ill-temper, and the settlement’s displeasure at his ‘insane’ behaviour. Logan is recorded as saying that Cowper was ‘his own greatest enemy’. The ghastly end came when Henry Cowper was dismissed by Governor Bourke in December 1832 after an official enquiry into the incident where Cowper and John Richards, the Master of the brig Governor Phillip, broke into the Female Factory and supplied female convicts with rum. If that wasn’t enough, Henry later became insolvent and couldn’t pay off his debts before his death on 5 June 1849.
Whereas ‘Cowper’, the village near Grafton, the New South Wales County, and the Australian Electoral Division, are named after the New South Wales Premier, there is much less distinction for the elder brother in Queensland. There is the Parish of Cowper in the Tablelands region but the author has no information to date on its name origin. There is also a street named Cowper Place in suburban Brisbane that is named after Dr Henry Cowper but that has only existed in the last fifteen years.
Cowper’s Plains – the great plain that stretches out beyond Mount Gravatt & the Nathan-Sunnybank-Annerley ridges, and across towards Mount Lindsey – became known as Coopers Plains, changing the spelling of ‘Cowper’ and dropping the apostrophe. There have been or are other ‘Coopers’ in Queensland. There may have been another Coopers Plains in Maryborough. There is Coopers Camp Road in Ashgrove, on the north-side of Brisbane, and there are few more streets named in honour of ‘Cooper’. Some of these may have something to do with Dr Henry Cowper.
It no longer, however, provided Dr Cowper the prominence he may have hoped for. Much of what was Cowper’s Plains is now suburbs of unrelated names, and the ever-spaning Coopers Plains has ironically dwindled to a suburb mostly on the foothills below the Nathan ridge.
References: Coopers Plains Local History Group. A Closer Look at Coopers Plains. 2nd Edition, May 2005. Pollard, N. S., 'Cowper, William (1778–1858)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/cowper-william-1929/text2301, accessed 18 July 2011. Ward, John M., 'Cowper, Sir Charles (1807–1875)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/cowper-sir-charles-3275/text4967, accessed 18 July 2011. Cranfield, Louis R., 'Logan, Patrick (1791–1830)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/logan-patrick-2367/text3107, accessed 18 July 2011. Mr. M. C. F. Pain & Mr. W. J. Kenny for the Cowper200 Committee. Dr. Henry Cowper: "Queensland’s First Medical Practitioner", http://www.cowper200.com.au/henry_cowper.html,accessed 18 July 2011.
From Neville Buch. "What's a Name Worth in Queensland: Coopers Plains". Professional Historians Association (Queensland) e-Bulletin, 18 July 2011 Issue. Reproduced with kind permission of editor, PHAQ e-Bulletin.