Cirrus@Austlit

Sophy was the eldest of seven children born to James Taylor, bead merchant and jeweller of Clerkenwell, London, Sophy went to Australia in 1851 on the Candahar to marry Edward (Thomas Edward) Cooke, who had come to SA in 1847.

At the time of her arrival Edward had a store selling "grocery, drapery and something of everything", but there was little money in the colony at the time and soon after their marriage Edward left for the gold diggings, leaving Sophy to run their store in his absence. Sophy's letters to her family in England cover the period of the voyage and her settling in Adelaide. Edward returned to Adelaide in 1852.

The couple had one child, who died at the age of six weeks of an ear infection, and Sophy herself died less than three weeks after her baby, of 'debility after childbirth'.