James Cope joined the 67th Regiment in the British Army on 17th.August, 1839 (this would make him only 15 years old). He then served in the London Metropolitan Police, the convict establishments of Bermuda, Gibraltar, and Western Australia, arriving in W.A. on 13th. July 1867.

NAME: James COPE

BORN: 1824

MARRIED: Ellen TWOHIG

RECORD NO: 126,149

The following letters were written by James Cope in 1881 and 1883. Both letters are in longhand and appear to have been written and signed by different people.

Fremantle:

W Australia

15th. January 1881

To the Right Honorable

Earl Kimberley

Her Majesty’s Principal Secretary of State for the Colonial Department My Lord,

1st       I have the honor of bringing under your Lordship’s notice, the following facts in connexion with my service, as an officer formerly connected with the “London Metropolitan Police”, but at present serving in the “Convict Department” in this Colony, with a view of submitting the question of the computation to the pension to which, on my retirement from the Service, I may become entitled to.

2nd     I joined the Metropolitan Police, London, as constable, on the 29th April 1850, and resigned on the 11th August 1856. In the latter year, Her Majesty’s Secretary of State applied to the Commissioners of Police in London, for Volunteers to join the Convict Establishment at Bermuda as Warders. I, for one, responded to that invitation, resigning my appointment on the Police Force, in order to join the Convict Service, in which I have remained ever since, having been stationed at Bermuda and Gibraltar, from which latter place I was transferred to Western Australia.

3rd      My object in addressing your Lordship, is respectfully to ask whether my former Service in Police, prior to joining the Convict Department, should not be reckoned as a factor in the computation of my pension on retiring allowance, the continuity of Service not having been broken, as the dates of my appointment will show.

James Cope was a widower and it is believed that his first wife was Spanish. His son James accompanied him to W.A. where he was apprenticed to a Saddler and Harness Maker. (see notes on James Cope #151). A receipt for his indenture papers dates June 1870 shows James Cope Senior to be at Canning Bridge at the time.

James Cope married his second wife (Ellen Twohig) in 1871. They lived in the Warder’s cottages outside the walls of Fremantle Prison where their five children were born. They moved to Jarrahdale sometime in the early 1880’s where we worked in the mill and Ellen ran the boarding house. See ‘Mills of Jarrahdale’ V.G. Fall 1972 pp55-57