​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.