Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

The Rev. J. L. Cope

The death occurred at Surrey Hills on May 19 of the Rev. J. L. Cope, of Sydney. Mr. Cope was born in Melbourne in 1867, and was the son of the Rev. John Cope. He was educated at Horton College & Queen's College, and Ormond College, Melbourne. After several years in the ministry of the Methodist Church he entered the Presbyterian ministry, and occupied the charges of Berwick, Cranbourne, Chalmers. (Launceston), North Carlton, and Woollahra (Sydney). During the war he saw active service at Gallipoli and in France as chaplain to the 14th Battnllon, A.I.F, In 1933 he retired from active work, and resided at Roseville, Sydney, where his wife predeceased him In 1936.

He is survived by three daughters. The funeral took place yesterday at the Springvale Crematorium. The Rev. R. W.Macaulay, the Rev. J. K. Robertson, and the Rev. J. W. Grove conducted the service. Arrangements were made by Le Pine and Son Pty. Ltd.

The Argus Saturday 21 May 1938 page 2

When he enlisted as an army chaplain in 1915, the Reverend John Lelean Cope was the minister at the Presbyterian Church (demolished in the 1970s) on the corner of Princes and Nicholson Streets, North Carlton. John and his family were living at the manse (today the Carlton Neighbourhood Learning Centre) just around the corner at 20 Princes Street. The grassed block on that corner, reduced in area by road widening in the 1990s, once housed the church, a bluestone hall, two double storey shops facing Nicholson Street and another house at 16 Princes Street. It is part of a larger area bounded by Station, Nicholson and Princes Streets which was granted to the Presbyterian Church in 1870.World War 1 chaplains were appointed in numbers intended to reflect the proportion of each denomination in the population, as indicated by the 1911 census, and John Cope was one of 70 Presbyterian chaplains out of a total 414 in the AIF. 175 chaplains were Anglican and 86 Roman Catholic. As was usual, he was appointed initially to the rank of Chaplain 4th class, equivalent to captain. Chaplains received very little explicit training for their role and largely used their own initiative to determine their duties.1

At the age of 48 Cope was older than most serving clergy and at the upper limit for those undertaking continuous service at the front. (Many chaplains served only on voyages accompanying troopships to the point of disembarkation and returned on the next available hospital ship.) Presumably his age would have made him something of a father figure, an asset in this situation. His own eldest child, Helen Beatrice, born in 1897, was the same age as many of his young charges. John Cope, chaplain to the 14th Battalion, sailed on HMAT Nestor on 11 October 1915 and was posted first at Gallipoli, later in France and returned in February 1917 on the HMAT Ulysses.

The War Memorial in Canberra has a collection of his papers totalling more than 2000 pages, including 21 diaries covering the period July 1915 to January 1918 and letters written to his family during his time overseas. Topics covered include his methods for censoring letters (an duty unwelcome to many chaplains), a description of fighting at Gallipoli, doubts as to his ability to carry out some of chaplaincy roles and relations with officers, soldiers and other chaplains.

It would have surprised no one that John Cope became a clergyman. His father John and a close friend William Drew Lelean were soon to be ordained as Wesleyan ministers when in 1854 they attended a special service in Mevagissey Chapel, Cornwall, where a call was made for men willing to serve in the then difficult social conditions of Van Diemen's Land (renamed Tasmania in 1856). Both men responded. In November 1854 John was married to William's sister Mary Ann and in 1855 the trio travelled to their new home. Four daughters were born to John and Mary Ann between 1855 and 1860, followed in 1863 by a son who did not survive. Their last child, John Lelean Cope, was born in 1867 by which time the family was living in Melbourne after serving in various Tasmanian towns. Here again the family moved regularly with the Reverend Cope stationed in turn at Geelong, St Kilda, Richmond and Ballarat until in 1883 poor health forced him out of the ministry and into retirement in Hobart.2

Cope's son John Lelean was educated at Horton College, a prestigious boarding school near Ross in Tasmania, and Queen's and Ormond colleges at Melbourne University and followed his father into the Methodist church before becoming a Presbyterian minister. In 1896 he married Bertha Waterhouse and they had a family of three daughters. He served at Chalmers church in Launceston and Berwick and Cranbourne in Victoria before taking up the position at North Carlton in 1914. The decision to volunteer for service is an interesting one, given not only his age but also the fact that he was facing the challenges of a new congregation. Perhaps he was influenced by the examples of his father and father in law in travelling to remote Van Diemen's Land so many years before.3,4

After his return from war service, Rev. John Cope remained at the North Carlton Presbyterian church until at the end of 1920, when he received a call from the congregation at Woollahra, NSW. It was his last station before, in 1933, he retired from the regular work of the ministry, afterwards living in the Sydney suburb of Roseville with occasional work in various churches. It was not a long retirement; he died at his sister's residence in Union Road, Surrey Hills in May 1938 at the age of 70. Bertha had died two years earlier.5

Notes and References:
1 Australian War Memorial
2 The Hobart Mercury, 1 June 1909, p. 2
3 The Sydney Morning Herald, 30 May 1938, p. 7
4 The Argus, 21 May 1938, p. 2
5 The Sydney Morning Herald, 18 December 1920, p. 7

http://www.cchg.asn.au/greatwar.html