2 Michael Williams, June, 2013

Thomas Cook, Esq. J.P. was one of many immigrants of middling income and status

who early in their life threw in their lot with the young Colony of NSW. Like many,

Thomas Cook made his contribution without achieving a major place in the history

books or leaving behind enough of a record to present a complete picture of his life.

Nevertheless, sufficient can be found to provide some fascinating glimpses of the

man, the magistrate and of the village of Dungog in the mid-nineteenth century.

An good image of Thomas Cook as a magistrate can be built up from the chance

survival of the Magistrates Letterbooks of the Dungog Court in which is preserved

much of his official outward correspondence, particularity from 1837 throughout the

appears an active and intelligent magistrate, though we also have an early complaint

making the opposite claim, namely of ‘the inactivity of the police force, under the

to minimize accidental death, he badgers the government in Sydney for funds to

improve the facilities at Dungog, to pay arrears owed people employed under him,

and to secure blankets for the local natives. Cook is prepared to argue with the local

landowners over legalities and shows occasional sympathy to those convicts and exconvicts,

those outside the law, and in at least one case a bushranger named Opossum Jack is

people who were rapidly being displaced by the new settlers, making efforts to secure

sufficient blankets and also to intervene, even if ineffectually, in at least one case

where an overseer was holding Aboriginal women against the wishes of their male

Thomas Cook (c.1788 – 1866), son of merchant Robert Cook, was born in Paisley,

Scotland, (near Glasgow) arriving with his wife of eleven years and their four children

who had become involved in a dispute with the Australian Agricultural Company

(AAC), which owned much of the land in the district and had even paid part of his

salary. Cook’s quick appointment, at an increased salary, may have been due to his

connection (their wives were sisters), to Colonel Snodgrass, former commandant of

Stephens, New South Wales, 1834-1839, a manuscript held by the National Library of Australia -

MS 3550. The bulk of the letterbooks, running until 1851, are held in the NSW State Archives -

14/12/1837.

3 Michael Williams, June, 2013

Cook was ‘directed to visit once a fortnight’ the ‘township of Dungog’ where cattle

lies, was soon after Thomas Cook’s arrival the scene of much uproar with the deaths

of five convict shepherds in what was at first thought was a general native uprising

and about which it was reported that: ‘Our various letters are loud in their complaints

Soon after, in 1837 when the police districts were reorganised, Cook was appointed

Police Magistrate of both Upper William and Port Stephens, but in a moved intended

to distance the magistrate from the influence of the AAC, he was now to reside at

the court at Stroud within Port Stephens) from 1837 until 1843. Thereafter he

continued to reside at Dungog on his property Auchentorlie (named after an estate at

his native Paisley), acting as a local magistrate and also registrar and coroner.

Sometime around 1860, Thomas Cook left Dungog for Woollahra in Sydney where he

died in 1866 aged 78; his wife Mary survived him by a few years, also dying in

Cook seems to have firmly believed in the authority that he represented and in its

power and duty to control and help those who this authority deemed needed such

control and assistance. When asked if a loan should be raised to encourage

immigration to the colonies the answer of ‘Thomas Cook, Esq., Police Magistrate,

Dungog’ was: ‘I do think were such a scheme adopted, it would instantly operate in

favour of the Colony, not only as regards its agricultural and commercial prosperity,

‘moral improvement’ is perhaps what involved Thomas Cook in a sectarian

controversy during the 1840s that first brings him to wider public notice.

In the early period of many settlements the court house was the first and for long the

only public building. As such, court houses were often used on Sundays by the

various Christian groups for services, and in the absence of an ordained minister or

priest it was not unknown for a prominent member of the community to read services

or simply from the bible. This Cook appears to have done as Police Magistrate,

practicing a ‘voluntary performance of Divine Worship’ which in 1837 (when

presumably Cook first commenced it), was praised by the Lord Bishop of Australia,

However the degree of ‘voluntary performance’ involved when a magistrate requested

his ticket-of-leave constables to attend services is questionable, and when the Irish

Catholic background of some of these constables is combined with a Presbyterian

Scots magistrate, the opportunities for conflict grow. Such a conflict appears to have

having ‘named’ Dungog, but this had officially occurred before even his arrival in the Colony.

4 Michael Williams, June, 2013

an attack on ‘the most tyrannical, illegal, and arbitrary’ of proceedings. This was the

dismissal of the lock-up keeper and a constable at Dungog - both Catholics and one a

veteran of ‘the Peninsula’ - for ‘refusing to betray the faith’ of their forefathers. This

was an act of ‘religious intolerance’ that Cook compounded when he advertised for

issue as this editorial, the details of Cook’s behaviour were given by a local witness,

including his demand that all constables and ticket-of-leave men attend his Sunday

service on pain of either dismissal or having their tickets revoked. It seems the lockup

keeper, James Boland, and ordinary constable, Patrick Coleman had refused to

attend Cook’s service after being talked to by a Catholic priest. The writer also

complained that Cook had refused the use of the court house or the barracks to

Catholics and their visiting priest, the Rev. E. Mahony. The same writer also claimed

that Cook had been nearly dismissed the previous year due to complaints made and

The following Sunday Cook appears to have defended his actions to those attending

the view that to attack him ‘under the influence of sectarian feeling’ rather than on

felt that this paper merely feared that Cook’s Presbyterian zeal might overflow

Cook had received a letter from the Colonial Secretary about his ‘protestant only’

notice and had offered the two men their positions back but only on the promise that

they would continue to attend his Sunday services. The editor asserted that they

‘submitted’ with ‘want staring them in the face’. This editor went on to claim that

Cook regularly used publicly paid officers to perform his private business and called

denying that he had nearly been dismissed the previous year, claiming that in fact he

was ‘honored and gratified by the pleasing countenance’ of his superiors. As to the

Sunday services, they were well attended and often had a Rev. Mr. Ross from

Paterson preaching at them. Cook however did not deny the charges of forcing people

to attend his services, claiming that both the ‘Roman Catholic Clergyman’ and

surprisingly the ‘Clerk of the Bench’, had encouraged his constables ‘in the

attend his services. He added that the need for ‘only Protestants’ was ‘necessary for

at that time by a Scottish convert to Catholicism, William Augustine Duncan.]

5 Michael Williams, June, 2013

the security and good order of the District’ and denied ever refusing the use of the

who signed himself ‘A Subscriber & A Protestant’, while Cook’s defence only led it

Magrane, the Dungog Clerk of the Bench, denying all accusations of interference on

his part with the constables and also stating that Cook’s letter contained other

Magrane does not seem to be aware that “all things are lawful” to a certain description

letter about the numbers attending his services and the near loss of his position, and

another detailing Cook’s refusal to hear any cases brought by Mr Hooke, a large

landowner with whom Cook was at odds (over shooting a pig), which according to the

Throughout all this public controversy Thomas Cook as Police Magistrate was

maintaining a regular correspondence with Sydney based officials, including the

Colonial Secretary. This correspondence is preserved in the Dungog Magistrates

Letterbooks and in his letters very few hints regarding the controversies he was

involved in are given by Cook. An exception being the copy of a note to John Hooke:

Sir,

I do myself the honor to inform you that until you make an

ample apology for the contempt shown to this Bench the last

time you visited this Court House I must decline entertaining

any cases you may be disposed to bring before me.

I have the honor to be Sir

your most obedient servant,

Thomas Cook, JP

To John Hooke Esq,

Croom Park.

6 Michael Williams, June, 2013

The controversies continued with perhaps one helping to fuel another with Michael

denied him a publican’s license because he was a Catholic. Michael Ryan provided

letters of recommendation from a number of local landowners (including Hooke) and

claimed that Cook had told him he would grant him a license, on the strength of which

recommendation from Paterson, from where he came, and 'unpardonable reports' lead

‘some settlers from the Upper Williams’ River’ had come to Sydney to complain of

Cook, and publishing two letters of Cook’s thanking people for assisting him in

Continuing the following month, the paper referred to an investigation and also

published a letter in which Michael Ryan, the denied licensee, provoked Cook in his

This was presumably at the time Michael Ryan was arrested for keeping a disorderly

house, the same letter by Cook also revealing that Ryan, also known as 'Mickie the

Having carried on its anti-Cook campaign since March 1840 the controversy widened

in scope when in October the ‘Auxiliary Catholic Institute of Hunter’s River’ carried a

series of motions drawing the attention of Magistrate Cook’s activities to the

Institute’s Central Committee in Sydney, including his ‘unmerited insults to the

Catholics of the colony’. Attending the meeting and proposer of the first motion was

of an ‘Inquisition’ to put officials on trial, was now evident; a plague was beginning,

aliases. The editor defended Cook, who it declared had reason to believe a priest had

‘interfered with a policeman’. No direct mention was made of the compulsion to

attend Sunday services but instead an ingenious argument was made that Cook was

saving the consciences of Catholics from the clash of needing to serve a Protestant

authority. After all, no one could trust an ‘ignorant Papist, where a Priest interferes’.

The editorial then moved onto an even higher level of hysteria, declaring that the

Catholic Institute has ‘treason for its aim, and blood for its end’ and finished with a

7 Michael Williams, June, 2013

Having reached this frenzied pitch the Cook sectarian controversy seems to have

against Police Magistrate Cook, such as another letter from a Dungog resident going

over some of the old issues and adding one of cowardice in pursuit, or lack of pursuit,

of local bushrangers. The writer added that this anti-Catholic magistrate had happily

directed armed Catholic ticket-of-leave men guard his family during the incursion and

Cook had casually ordered twenty lashes and did not care when fifty were

But just as Cook’s problems with Catholics appeared to be fading he managed to

began reading a sermon from a printed book of such sermons, as he had often done.

The difference this time being that an ordained ‘Presbyterian clergyman’, the Rev.

Mr. Comrie was present. There is some uncertainty whether Mr Comrie was late

arriving or was in fact present when Cook began preaching. In either case Cook

behaviour was a meeting of Presbyterians at Stephenson’s Inn, Dungog a few months

later at which it was agreed not to attend services at the court house but instead to use

recounted Cook questioning the Rev. Mr. Comrie publicly as to his intentions when

told this decision and that Cook subsequently put up a notice declaring that prayer

meetings would no longer be held at the court house but that musters of constables

Despite this seeming unpopularity, Thomas Cook was to remain acting as a magistrate

in Dungog for many years. Cook’s difficulties, if that is what he felt them to be, may

have reached their peak in 1841. Nothing either good or bad is heard of him in 1842,

and although in early 1843 a fire is thought to have been deliberately lit on his

property, that same year it was proposed to collect subscriptions ‘to purchase a piece

The collection was because Cook ceased acting as a paid Police Magistrate in early

1843. While such a token of appreciation may not be all it seems (this was a meeting

to discuss a meeting to collect money), the loss of his position as a Police Magistrate

does not appear to have been directly due to any previous complaints. Rather it was

likely due to a gradual reduction in paid Police Magistrates throughout NSW and their

replacement with local landowner’s who were Justice’s of the Peace performing the

Magistrates taking place whenever it was considered ‘there are a sufficient number of

8 Michael Williams, June, 2013

any case, as by then the government had reverted to nearly all unpaid magistrates as a

as one of these unpaid magistrates, though for a time local lobbying did attempt to

In 1845, when after some lobbying it seemed certain that the paid Police Magistrate’s

position would not be restored, a collection was made and a ‘purse’ of £43 was

presented to Cook in appreciation of his services with notice of this reprinted a

one enemy of Cook’s who roundly condemned the whole exercise as a farce and

published details of the collection of the £43 showing that some £30 of it came from

staff of the AAC, and that money from Dungog was only donated by various workers

within the legal establishment and ticket-of-leave holders, with nothing at all from

those he could and that he was in favour with the AAC but not with the respectable

folk of Dungog itself.

Having ceased to be paid as a Police Magistrate, Cook did not cease acting as a

Dungog magistrate since he was still a Justice of the Peace. Cook and his family had

settled on the Williams River and at some point it seems purchased land that had been

part of Crawford Logan Brown’s 1829 Cairnsmore grant just north of Dungog village,

blocks for a cost of nearly £50 within the area of the recently laid out village of

Dungog, presumably for purposes of speculation; all but a handful of these allotments

In addition to general duties as a magistrate, Cook also acted as Commissioner for

Affidavits, Coroner, Commissioner of Crown lands, and could order out the mounted

often had a role in community positions, such as the convening and chairing of

meetings; including one meeting concerning roads in which his opening address was

appointed to the new District Council of ‘Raymond Terrace and Dungog and again in

name headed a petition from the residents of Dungog requesting road repairs, and in

Scotland.

5/9/1846, p.2.

9 Michael Williams, June, 2013

1854 he was part of a group that examined the children at the new National School

The newspapers that are the source of most of our knowledge about Thomas Cook

focus much on his official activities, but occasionally more personal aspects slip

through, as when in October 1845 Cook lost his watch on a farm on the Williams

River. He advertised a £2 reward for the return of this ‘plain gold watch’ with the

when he slipped fording a flooded river near his home; he managed to grab hold of a

following year he advertised some 40 acres of farm land to let, land Cook claims

yielded 35 to 40 bushels of wheat per acre and situated where ‘pilfering (the greatest

controversy of the past was forgotten as the ‘senior magistrate of the district’ and his

daughter ‘Miss Cook’ opened with a bottle of sherry ‘The Union Bridge’ over Verge

Apart from their names little is know about Cook’s family either in Dungog or

know that Thomas Cook was unlucky with his children, with two dying in early

adulthood while living at Dungog, Henrietta, his eldest daughter aged 20 ‘after a short

illness’ in 1842, and his youngest son Thomas in 1852 aged 24 from an infection after

being bled by a ‘quack doctoress’ using an ‘unclean lancet’ according to the local

London in 1874, while nothing is known of the remaining daughter who helped him

In 1855, Cook is naturally part of the notables involved in a local patriotic fund

ready as usual to make a speech, Cook lay the foundation stone of the ‘Established

community event may hint at deeper divisions within the community, for less than a

month afterwards another laying of a foundation stone for a Presbyterian Church

occurred in Dungog. On this occasion local landowner George Mackay lay the

10 Michael Williams, June, 2013

foundation stone for the Presbyterian Church of Eastern Australia, associated with the

It is unclear if this religious division within the Presbyterian community was a cause

or effect of other divisions within Dungog, or indeed even if it was a significant

division. But a reported speech of Cook’s and a further public controversy is

suggestive of factions, and religion was a significant ‘grouping’ factor in people’s

lives at that time. Cook for example appears to have been aware that his career in

Dungog had not been the smoothest, being reported in a speech of appreciation of one

of Dungog’s doctors to have said: ‘He had been a magistrate in the neighbourhood for

many years, and though he had trod on the toes of many, still he felt that, having done

While this speech of Cook claims that he did what he considered right without fear or

favour, another incident around this time raises some doubts. In this controversy,

Cook, though not a major participant, is not seen in a good light. The issue concerned

the dismissal of the long time Chief Constable of Dungog, seemingly for his having

come into conflict with a drunken J.P. In 1854 Thomas Abbott had charged Mr.

Foster, J.P. with being drunk and disorderly. Soon after this he was accused by Foster

of using insulting language to a magistrate. In both cases the presiding magistrates

preferred to send the case off to the Attorney-General rather than face either

ordered to live within the town, while Abbott claimed that his house was only one

dismissed as Chief Constable for failing to reside in the town. At this time the

magistrates were Chas. H. Green, John Hooke, George Mackay, Thomas Cook and

still standing house to the town and where he had lived throughout most of his tenure

as Chief Constable), but Cook and the other magistrates appear to have participated,

even if only by omission, in the victimisation of the less powerful for the purposes of

revenge and the dismissal of a man unwilling to turn a blind eye.

Despite this unpleasantness a similar subscription in appreciation of Cook’s services

at Dungog to that of 1845 was made in 1857, marking twenty years of such service. A

sum of £34.2s was gathered, with this time the AAC uninvolved and, although some

prominent storekeepers are, none of the major landowners’ names appear in the

testimonial, for £100 with an attached subscription list, and again, although two of his

1843’ when 450 ministers of the established Church of Scotland broke away over the issue of the

Church's relationship with the State.

11 Michael Williams, June, 2013

fellow magistrates, Dowling and Foster, are listed, the others are not, nor are the

Seemingly ever willing to take on any court related job, Cook in 1858 becomes the

quite for Cook, at least as far as the newspapers are concerned, ended in this same

year. In that year the Ross family was drowned during a flood and their deaths

investigated. A jury found that not enough had been done to assist the family and this

sought to justify their actions. As a result, Thomas Cook was much abused in a letter

By this time Cook was probably in his late 50s or perhaps early 60s and perhaps spent

less of his time sitting on the bench than breeding horses, for in May 1859 he is

suddenly Cook is making a petition to the NSW Legislative Assembly, ‘complaining

The loss of his position as Justice of the Peace by Cook may have been part of a

general government reform whereby numerous names were removed from the list of

petition in July 1863, prior to the announcement of the government reforms and again

in April 1865, ‘complaining of having been dismissed without compensation’. This

matter is still unresolved on the death of Thomas Cook in February 1866 at

a petition is presented to the NSW Legislative Assembly ‘from Mrs Mary Cook,

widow of the late Mr. Thomas Cook, who was for many years Police Magistrate at

Port Stephens, praying that the services of her late husband might be taken into

This rather modest end to the career of Thomas Cook is not the final word however.

Dogged by controversy throughout his life it seems to have followed him long

afterwards. This occurs in the form of newspaper accounts in the following century

declaring him to have been a flogging magistrate and linking him with a number of

exciting tales of death, convict murder and avenging bushrangers. These sensational

stories find no trace in the newspapers of the day and are perhaps variations on a

12 Michael Williams, June, 2013

originated in the work of ‘The Man in the Mask’, the pen name of a number of

other inaccurate pieces in which Thomas Cook is usually referred to as Captain Cook.

This is a title Cook seems never to have used himself, although at the time of the

Thomas Cook, father, Presbyterian, magistrate, J.P., letter writer, horse breeder,

landowner, opener of bridges, speech-maker, and at times a figure of some

controversy. Despite this list, our picture of the man remains incomplete and the

temptation to fill in the gaps in the manner of Gordon Bennett is great, though in

modern times we might emphasise his family relations and political interactions over

the number of floggings meted out or murderous convicts encountered. For the time

being, until further information is uncovered, we must be content with what

tantalising glimpses the often sketchy historical record has left us.

This research on Thomas Cook is ongoing and this paper will be revised accordingly

from time to time. If any reader has any information about Thomas Cook please write

to the author at – michaelstor@yahoo.com

he has dubbed himself without commission in army or navy, since his elevation from the spinning