DR. HENRY WESTWOOD COOPER... IF THAT IS YOUR REAL NAME...

Did you know... a notorious forger and conman briefly made Mulmur Township his home?

In 1897, Dr. Henry Westwood Cooper, a British aristocrat, arrived in Mulmur Township, where he settled in the village of Stanton. The doctor had traveled North with a Stanton local, Nellie Atkinson, who had been receiving treatment for consumption in Toronto when she met him. Cooper also arrived in town with a woman named Bertha Young, whom he claimed was his wife.

Dr. Cooper wasted no time making a name for himself in his new town. Claiming to be a lecturer at Toronto General Hospital, he showed documents proving his surgical feats. At only 27 years of age, he healed patients with a seemingly magic touch. Not everyone in the town was convinced of the young doctor's story. The seed of doubt had been planted and rumors began to spread. Dr. Cooper was unconcerned and threatened legal action against those spreading rumors for defamation. Despite the rumors, Dr. Cooper continued to be a popular member of the community and held lectures in Stanton’s Presbyterian Church.

While he was living in Stanton, Dr. Cooper met and began a courtship with Ida Maude Campaigne. When asked how this was possible if he was already married to Bertha Young, he informed everyone the pair was travelling under false pretenses and they were not married. Telling Maude’s family that she was travelling to Toronto for throat surgery, the pair headed to Shelburne and obtained a marriage license. Bertha had accompanied them and even acted as a chaperone for Maude in Toronto, however, the pair abandoned Bertha once they were married. Maude would later return to Mulmur, she herself abandoned like Bertha.

Dr. Henry Westwood Cooper did not exist, in fact, he wasn’t even a doctor. The good doctors real name was Andrew John Gibson, a conman born in Australia. Over his lifetime Gibson had spent 44 years in prison, had as many as 40 aliases, and committed crimes such as forgery, fraud, bigamy, and other scams. He was a bigamist of the highest order marrying 13 – 20 women. Bertha Young would later claim to have never been legally married to Gibson as he had already married two other women in Australia before meeting Bertha and taking her to Canada. Gibson spent his life scamming and conning his way to the top. He traveled from Australia to Canada, and then to San Francisco where he spent time in San Quentin Prison. He went from San Francisco to South Africa, and finally back to Australia. Gibson was a man who believed that with the right sounding name and master forgery skills he could make the world bend to his whims.