Constance May Cooper
Australian medical doctor (1881 – 1964)
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Constance May Cooper (27 April 1881[1] – 1964) was a medical doctor in South Australia.
Cooper was born in Adelaide, a daughter of George Windham Cooper (1857–1906) and Bertha Hannah Cooper, née Bostock, who married in 1880;[2] George was a wool expert of Elder, Smith, & Co., Ltd, and son of newspaperman George Lindsey Cooper.[3] Her mother was a stalwart worker for the WCTU and the Baptist Sunday school.[4]
Cooper was a student of the Advanced School for Girls[5] and the School of Medicine at the University of Adelaide. She was equal first in her third year, and recommended for the Elder Prize in Medicine,[6] and the Everard scholarship in her fifth year.[7] She graduated MB and BS[8] and was singled out for roasting at the Commemoration celebration.[9] She was appointed a resident medical officer at the Adelaide Hospital in December 1904, along with Phoebe Chapple and three male doctors.[10]
In 1907 she volunteered for a two-year honorary medical position at Fureedpore (modern Faridpur),[11] a Baptist mission in East Bengal, sailing by the Orontes in November[12]
In 1909 she married Arthur Kent Newbery in London before returning to Adelaide. Newbury had a chemist shop in Norwood from 1900,[13] and from 1904 at 66 Rundle Street.[14] In 1911 he sold the lease to F. C. Catt, the draper, and merged his business with that of Birks Chemists, becoming a director of that company.[15]
Nothing has been found of their later activities.
Family
Cooper married Arthur Kent Newbery (1877–1954) in London on 10 May 1909.[16] They had two sons:
- George Arthur Newbery (10 November 1911 – 1976) worked as a storeman at Birks Chemists until his death in 1976. He took no part in social or civic activities. His ashes were interred with his parents' remains.
- Kent Newbery (2 March 1918 – 29 August 1942) died when the Lancaster bomber on which he was deployed was shot down over Nuremberg.[17]