11. Magistrate Cook's anomalous community

Thomas Cook, Esq. J.P. was one of many immigrants of middling income and status who early in their life threw in their lot with the young Colony of NSW. A good image of Thomas Cook as a magistrate can be built up from the chance survival of the Magistrates Letterbooks of the Dungog Court in which is preserved much of his official outward correspondence, particularity from 1837 throughout the 1840s, dealing with a wide range of issues. Cook makes suggestions regarding the training of new arrivals to minimise accidental death, he badgers the government in Sydney for funds to improve the facilities at Dungog, to pay arrears owed people employed under him, and to secure blankets for the local natives. Cook is prepared to argue with the local landowners over legalities and shows occasional sympathy to those convicts and ex-convicts, who come before him. Cook also made efforts to assist the local people who were rapidly being displaced by the new settlers, making efforts to secure sufficient blankets and also to intervene, even if ineffectually, in at least one case where an overseer was holding Aboriginal women against the wishes of their male kin.

See also: Williams, M., 2022, 'This anomalous community: Dungog Magistrate's Letterbox, 1834-1839', Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Society, 108(1), p.73.

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