Cooper, Herbert Frederick Thomas (1874–1960?), photographer, was born in London, possibly in Hammersmith; virtually no biographical details are known. In 1913 he bought a photographic business in Strabane, Co. Tyrone. He sold stationery, framed pictures, and travelled widely in the region taking group photographs of weddings and the like. It is said he travelled on horseback, with camera equipment in saddlebags, and took over 200,000 photographs in his career. In 1938 he was the owner of a cinema in Strabane, the Palindrome. After his death, his son gave the collection of glass plate negatives to the PRONI in Belfast; it forms the most important photographic archive of early twentieth-century life in Ulster. Over 20,000 of his photographs are of particular interest to social historians, documenting such events as agricultural shows, political parades, and fairs.
Sources
E. E. K. McClelland, Friendly Strabane ([1959?]), 22; Michael G. Kennedy, By the banks of the Mourne river: a history of Strabane (1996), 80–81; PRONI website