Alfred Cooper

Sir Alfred Cooper (1838 to 1908) was an English surgeon and well-known London clubman of the late Victorian period. Born at Bracondale in Norfolk, the son of a barrister, he was educated at Merchant Taylors' School and trained as a doctor and surgeon, becoming a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons. His speciality was venereal disease, work that gave him unusual access to, and perspective on, the aristocrats of his day and their notions of morality, and his patients included Albert Edward, Prince of Wales. In 1899 he was appointed Surgeon-Lieutenant-Colonel of the Loyal Suffolk Hussars, a yeomanry regiment embodied for the Second Boer War, and he served as its senior medical officer until he resigned his commission in November 1902. He was knighted for services to medicine in the 1902 Coronation Honours. Cooper died at Menton, France, in 1908; his children included Duff Cooper, later the first Viscount Norwich.