Laura M. Cooper

Laura Mary Cooper (1855-1924) was an English member of the Theosophical Society and sister of Isabel Cooper-Oakley. She was married to G. R. S. Mead.

Personal life

Laura Mary Cooper was born on October 14, 1855 in Amritsar, Bengal, India to Frederick Henry Cooper and his wife Mary Steel Cooper. She was the third child, following a brother Frederick Allen Cooper (1852-1856) and Harriet Isabella Cooper (1854-1914).

In 1899, at the age of 44, she married scholar George Robert Stow Mead (1863-1933), with whom she had worked in the households of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky and Annie Besant for many years. They lived at 16 Selwood Place, South Kensington, London.

She died on October 4, 1924 in Middlesex, England.

Theosophical Society involvement

In 1890 she was placed in charge of The Working Women's Club along with Annie Besant. That same year in August she became a member of H. P. Blavatsky's Inner Group in London.

Laura Cooper wrote an account of H. P. Blavatsky's death entitled "How She Left Us", which was the first essay in the book "In Memory of H. P. Blavatsky" written as a tribute by some of Madame Blavatsky's pupils in 1891.