Dictionary of Indian Biography/Cooper, Manackji Bejonji
COOPER, MANACKJI BEJONJI (1845–1904)
Born Sep. 15, 1845 : educated at Sir Jamsetji Jijibhai's Institution and the Elphinstone College, Bombay : headmaster of the Fort High School, Bombay, for nearly 20 years : the pioneer of higher education by private non-missionary enterprise in Western India. Sir W. W. Hunter, President of the Education Commission of 1882, stated that had there been others like Cooper in the chief centres of India, the Commission would never have been appointed, because his work had solved the problem of the Commission : the first Parsi schoolmaster to visit England, 1875, to study the educational systems of the West and apply them to his work in India. He was a household word among Bombay students : was popularly known as Manackji Master : his High School officially bore the highest reputation : he edited Pope's Homer's Iliad : died Aug. 4, 1904.