William Cowper was born at Davington in Kent on 21 March 1865, the son of Joseph Meadows Cowper. He was educated at King’s School, Canterbury, and at Pembroke College, Cambridge, where he took first-class honours in both parts of the Classical Tripos. In 1888 he turned to teaching — Queen’s College, Taunton; Tonbridge; Liverpool College. An interview with the Rev. William Simms brought him to Jamaica on 6 February 1891 as second master of the Jamaica High School, later Jamaica College.

In 1895 he married Blanche Elliott Evelyn of Linstead. Their four children were all educated at Wolmer’s. The trustees appointed him headmaster of Wolmer’s in 1901, six years after the free school had been remodelled as a secondary school. William Seivright, writing in 1929, gives the roll as 79 at appointment and 150 in 1902 after amalgamation with the Church of England Grammar School.

He is the man the 1929 souvenir — and Cowper himself, speaking at the bicentenary — credits with the motto Age Quod Agis. He convened the meeting that founded the Wolmer’s Old Boys’ Association on 4 May 1905.

He left Wolmer’s in 1915. The Gleaner of 24 October 1939, reporting his funeral from St Dunstan’s Chapel at Jamaica College, states that he was head of Jamaica College from 1915 until April 1933. His daughter Mary was then still headmistress of Wolmer’s Girls.

Sources

Sources: Wolmer’s School Bi-Centennial Booklet, 1929; Daily Gleaner funeral report (Jamaica College museum scan), 24 October 1939.