Sarah Grace Cooke
Sarah Grace Cooke, the daughter and youngest of seven children born to Nancy Sharp and Joseph Cooke (1848-1927), a leather currier, in the village of Farnely, near Leeds, on 17th November 1883. (1)
In 1901, 17-year-old, Sarah Grace Cooke, was working as a pupil teacher at the Bramley National School, and residing with her parents and three older siblings in the village of Bramley. (2)
At 19 she went to Ripon Training College and three years later she attended college at Rumilly, France. (3) In 1910 she became a schoolteacher at Workington Grammar School. (3) She boarded with a 57-year-old widow, Mrs Jane Howes. Her daughter, Winifred Howes (aged 21) was also employed as a school teacher. (4) To an external bachelor's degree in 1910 she added a London University M.A. in 1915. Cooke was employed as a teacher of French and Latin at Holywell County School.(4a)
Holywell County School
In 1916 Miss Cooke met the ten-year-old Emlyn Williams. He later described the impression she made on him: "Atop a vigorous frame, under sensible parted brown hair, the strongly rounded face was pale without being wan, sallow but not unhealthy, 'pallow' might describe it. Helped by the full lips, now pursed fuller in thought, the fairly snub nose widening at the nostrils gave a negroid effect which in 1916 was not appreciated, though a painter ahead of his time would have found in the thirty-three-year-old Sarah Grace a beauty far superior to Miss Powell's winsome looks: high cheek-bones, humorous mouth liberally curved, and a pair of wide, fearless and - even behind glass - strikingly blue eyes." (5)
According to The Sunday Dispatch: "It was a memorable meeting between this shrewd Yorkshire woman of 32 and this chubby-faced ten-year-old, the son of a struggling innkeeper from a nearby village." The newspaper quoted Miss Cooke as saying: "The subject was French. "He had never done any French before coming to me, but on his first day he was the only one in the form to get all his diction right. I asked him how he had done it when he knew no French. Emlyn pointed to the boy next to him and said: "I read his book on the way home from school yesterday... It is, you see, the ability to concentrate that makes a boy successful. Emlyn just soaked up knowledge. A boy who is going to make a success shine out over the rest like a star." (6)
Miss Cooke was considered to be a feminist and was nicknamed the "Suffragette". She took a keen interest in the development of Emlyn Williams. He was invited to her home to every morning to have a cup of hot cocoa. "I perched on the edge of a chair, sipped, and peered surreptitiously round. It was a clean drab room overrun by an alien personality, as if the coloured-glass doors facing Holywell Mountain had been opened for sixty seconds to a ninety-mile-an-hour hurricane and then calvinistically sealed. There were the remains of a wolfed breakfast: scattered crumbs, an egg-cup on its side and half a cup of tea slopped into the saucer, not by a shaking hand but through an abstracted eye. The preacher's library, as safe behind the glass of the bookcase as the Highland cattle behind theirs, stood marshalled dogma shoulder to dogma, but the hurricane had got at the rest of the room and strewn it with literary debris; yet it was not disorder, but rather order of a tempestuous kind. Stray sheets, splashed with memoranda, spilled over an aspidistra; on the sideboard, a French periodical, its back broken and pages pinned back and scored in red, lay next to a book called Voltaire, both hemmed between a framed Methodist and a cast-iron sheep, while a voluminous newspaper was spread-eagled over the armchair: The Observer, the name was new to me. On the floor, a pile of exercise-books corrected, slapped-to and flung down like shelled pods, and on the sideboard, next to an umpire's whistle (hockey), another pile open, one on top of the other, meekly awaiting the eviscerant pencil." (7)
Emlyn Williams
James Harding claims that at first Emlyn Williams at first found Miss Cooke a disturbing figure: "Yet he could not forget her. She spoke English with explosive impact, each consonant, each vowel energetically mouthed. A pince-nez dangled from her lapel to be perched athwart her blue eyes and then impetuously dashed aside. Her gestures were impatient and commanding. The hair was brown and the face interestingly pale... George felt terror in her presence." (8)
It was Miss Cooke who bought Emlyn Williams his first pair of leather boots. "A few weeks later, next to the cocoa, lay the opened parcel; two boots set fair and square for rain and snow, seven-league Yorkshire leather built strip by strip for an infant Hercules. They made what I had on look like a couple of wrinkled old country ladies, but pride insisted that I wear these one more day, to prove that their case was not too parlous." (9)
According to Russell Stephens, the author of Emlyn Williams: The Making of a Dramatist (2000): "Grace Cooke recognised Williams's potential and was keen to stretch him mentally. He was a willing pupil, intellectually curious and anxious to learn, who responded well to her discipline, organisation and rigour. And there is no doubt that he enjoyed the idea of being selected for special attention. For her part Miss Cooke meticulously preserved a proper distance between teacher and star pupil, but she could not wholly deny feelings which verged on the maternal." (10)
Emlyn Williams later wrote: "Miss Cooke taught me French and Latin, in the class of thirty of which I stayed steadily head in these two subjects as well as in English and History; at the foot of exercises, and on my term's report, she accorded me in her bold hand the word 'Excellent', from her there was no higher praise. I hardly ever saw her outside class... But though I had no contact with her, her influence on my work was considerable... I remembered everything she said and applied it to other subjects." (11)
Miss Cooke decided that with her help she could get Emlyn Williams to university. encouraged him, fostered his gift for languages and arranged for his stay in France. (12) Williams spent his time with Mademoiselle Jeanne Tardy, an old friend of Miss Cooke. Both women had studied at Rumilly College together. During the three months he was with her he studied French. It was also arranged for him to have private tuition in Italian and he had piano lessons. Tardy also took him to see Geneva in Switzerland. During this period he wrote regular letters in French to Miss Cooke. (13)
Williams gained his Matriculation Certificate in English, Greek, Latin and Maths for London University early in 1922. Sarah Grace Cooke now suggested the idea of trying the competitive Open Scholarship in French offered by Christ Church, Oxford, worth eighty pounds per annum. "As the competition was likely to be very stiff - he would be pitted against candidates from all over Britain, the best minds of his generation - all concerned at school, including at least on the surface Miss Cooke, agreed to regard the examination as being sat simply 'for the fun of it'." (14)
Emlyn Williams won the Open Scholarship in French at Oxford University. He records in his autobiography, George: An Early Biography (1961): "I said good-bye to Miss Cooke. The following week, Miss Morris heard Mr Robinson the Inspectator say to her. 'Miss Cooke, I promise you a place in Heaven, and if God treats you as you have treated George Williams, it will be a good place.'... The following year J. S. Roberts was to Jesus, Rica Jones later to Somerville, and Alwyn Fidler was to win the Prix de Rome for Architecture and become Master Planner for the new Birmingham." (15)
The Corn is Green
Sarah Grace Cooke and Emlyn Williams would correspond with each other every week for the rest of her life. She also saw a great deal of him and his wife after their marriage in 1935. Along with John Gielgud, Noel Coward and May Whitty, she attended the christening of his eldest child, Alan, at Chelsea Old Church, in January 1936. Cooke was godmother and Coward was godfather. (16)
at the christening of Alan Williams in January 1936.
Emlyn Williams became a successful playwright and the play The Corn is Green (1938) is based on his relationship with Sarah Grace Cooke. The idea was suggested by his wife, Molly Williams. "She was, after all, the largest single influence in his life, the woman who had sensed his promise, taught him, encouraged him, subsidised him, helped him in every possible way." Although the play was based on the events in his autobiography, for reasons of dramatic conflict, the boy is seduced by "a local hussy who becomes pregnant and so jeopardises his chance of an Oxford career." (17)
Miss Cooke received the manuscript of The Corn is Green with a letter of apology from Williams: "It would be useless to pretend that the character of Miss Moffat (in The Corn is Green) is not based very largely on yourself, though as you'd realise there has to be a great deal of dramatic licence.... I had to invent a situation of combat and antagonism with the boy and girl, and of course the end is completely away from the original. I hope you'll find a great deal to amuse and please you and nothing to offend or annoy - if you do, I'll change it, but you may rest assured that anything that may offend or annoy is something brought in to make the play more effective and not based upon you! As you know, there could be no completely accurate representation of a real person on the stage; in the most realistic play you have to add and subtract. It is like highlights in a painting, I suppose." (18)
Sarah Grace Cooke wrote several letters to Williams about the way she was portrayed in the play. Cooke also wrote about the same subject after she watched the play during its provincial try-out at Manchester Opera House. "I was interested to see myself, for much of myself is there - do you realise how much? Do you realise that Higher Education for girls has never thrilled me!!" (19)
It appeared that Williams was aware of Cooke's attitude towards the education of girls. Cooke was no feminist; she was proud of her Victorian attitudes and at Holywell County actively sustained the gender divisions in education. Not one of her several special pupils was a girl. She told Williams that she feared the critics' reaction to the play was to do with its possible sexual element: "I'm so afraid, so afraid, of a lot of talk about repressed sex." (20)
The Corn is Green was turned down by Binkie Beaumont as he believed the public was not interested in education. The play was taken up by Stephen Mitchell, a thirty-year-old producer. When he was writing the play, Williams had his friend, Sybil Thorndike, in mind for the role of Miss Moffat. He got his way and Williams, aged 33, played the role of the 15 year-old Morgan. (21)
The play went on a brief provincial tour. The reviews were complimentary on the whole, especially those in the Liverpool papers, where Williams was more or less seen as a local playwright, but The Daily Dispatch was disappointed that was prpmised to be "a drama of social conflict" ended as "a more or less conventional comedy". (22)
It had its London premiere on 20th September, 1938. It was an immediate success. The Times suggested that the village world was presented with a "rare feeling of humanity", fully sufficient "to cloak its minor improbabilities". (23) Audiences showed tremendous enthusiasm for the play and as early as mid-October, The Corn is Green had broken the box-office record at the Duchess Theatre. (24)
In 1945 Bette Davis took the role of Miss Moffat in the film version of The Corn is Green. The actress who played the part on Broadway, Ethel Barrymore, claimed that at Davis, who was 36 at the time, was "too young for the part". As Miss Moffat was supposed to be in her 50s, Davis wore a grey wig and a "fat suit" that added 30 pounds (14 kg). Cooke who was introduced to Davis by Williams was impressed by the performance, "sperb, a flawless performance... a lovely piece of work. I can't help feeling that it is perfect acting." (25)
Other actors in the production included John Dall (Morgan Evans), Joan Lorring (Bessie Watty), Nigel Bruce (the Squire), Rhys Williams (Mr. Jones), Rosalind Ivan (Mrs. Watty), Mildred Dunnock (Miss Ronberry) and Arthur Shields (Glyn Thomas). John Dall and Joan Lorring were nominated for the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor and Best Supporting Actress, respectively. Warners were impressed with the rushes and signed Dall to a new contract. (26)
Retirement
Sarah Grace Cooke retired from teaching in October 1943. During her goodbye speech she defined the philosophy that lay behind her teaching: "I think if anyone had asked me what was my aim in education, the answer would have been twofold: to train students to dare to say No; to dare to be non-conformists, to dare to be non-smokers, to dare to be non-drinkers, and to see that every student is happy. Oh! by 'happy' I don't mean pleased or satisfied, and certainly the very opposite of 'self-satisfied'. I mean something much more affirmative - for the happiness of school life should be such as to lay the foundation of happiness in later life, and I believe that happiness is founded on 'I ought'... Life teaches the replacing of 'I want' by 'I ought', and I believe that happiness has passed by those who have never leant that replacement, and that school must help students to begin to say 'I ought'." (27)
After her retirement she set up house with her old friend and teaching colleague Mabel Swallow. They lived at Cliffe House, Old Farnley, Leeds. (28) Every week she wrote to Emlyn Williams and he usually replied with the latest news concerning his work. The Y orkshire Evening Post reported on 26th November 1952, Cooke organised a 47th birthday party for Williams at her home when he was appearing at the Leeds Grand Theatre. (29)
In 1959 Sarah Grace Cooke gave an interview to The Sunday Dispatch where she talked about her relationship with Emlyn Williams. "It is, you see, the ability to concentrate that makes a boy successful. Emlyn just soaked up knowledge. A boy who is going to make a success shine out over the rest like a star. There were never enough books for Emlyn. He read everything he could lay his hands on. Emlyn was a good little boy. He hadn't time to be a naughty because he was so keen on his lessons. He is a born scholar. I am shy about calling him a genius because geniuses are so often eccentric, and Emlyn is never eccentric. Emlyn absorbed knowledge; he didn't learn. That is the mark of a boy who is going to make a success.The only thing with these outstanding boys is not to teach them, but to give them opportunities. So many teachers are afraid of doing that. This is an age when everything is reduced to a common denominator, when the clever, the average, and the dull are all expected to swim together." (30)
Sarah Grace Cooke suffered serious health problems in her 70s and by 1963 she was suffering from cancer. On 20th April, 1964 she wrote her last letter to Emlyn Williams where she told him about the radio-therapy treatment she was receiving. Her last words were: "A sick room can be a very busy place. It is really is beautiful out of bedroom window. Very affectionately, S. G. Cooke." (31)
Sarah Grace Cooke died, aged 80, on 1st May 1964 at the age of 80. She left £8,521 in her will. This included leaving £500 worth of shares to Emyln Williams. Miss Cooke left the bulk of her estate, including the manuscript of The Corn is Green to her friend Mabel Swallow.
Primary Sources
(1) Emlyn Williams, George: An Early Biography (1961)
Atop a vigorous frame, under sensible parted brown hair, the strongly rounded face was pale without being wan, sallow but not unhealthy, 'pallow' might describe it. Helped by the full lips, now pursed fuller in thought, the fairly snub nose widening at the nostrils gave a negroid effect which in 1916 was not appreciated, though a painter ahead of his time would have found in the thirty-three-year-old Sarah Grace a beauty far superior to Miss Powell's winsome looks: high cheek-bones, humorous mouth liberally curved, and a pair of wide, fearless and - even behind glass - strikingly blue eyes.
(2) Emlyn Williams, letter to Sarah Grace Cooke (23rd March, 1938)
It would be useless to pretend that the character of Miss Moffat (in The Corn is Green) is not based very largely on yourself, though as you'd realise there has to be a great deal of dramatic licence.... I had to invent a situation of combat and antagonism with the boy and girl, and of course the end is completely away from the original. I hope you'll find a great deal to amuse and please you and nothing to offend or annoy - if you do, I'll change it, but you may rest assured that anything that may offend or annoy is something brought in to make the play more effective and not based upon you! As you know, there could be no completely accurate representation of a real person on the stage; in the most realistic play you have to add and subtract. It is like highlights in a painting, I suppose."
(3) Emlyn Williams, George: An Early Biography (1961)
Next morning I put on a spurt, it would not do to take the cocoa and then be late for prayers, and stole up to her lodgings, opposite the school: the Tudor-beamed pebble-splashed villa of a preacher... On the corner of the plush table-cloth, on a spotless napkin, a large steaming cup. I perched on the edge of a chair, sipped, and peered surreptitiously round.
It was a clean drab room overrun by an alien personality, as if the coloured-glass doors facing Holywell Mountain had been opened for sixty seconds to a ninety-mile-an-hour hurricane and then calvinistically sealed. There were the remains of a wolfed breakfast: scattered crumbs, an egg-cup on its side and half a cup of tea slopped into the saucer, not by a shaking hand but through an abstracted eye. The preacher's library, as safe behind the glass of the bookcase as the Highland cattle behind theirs, stood marshalled dogma shoulder to dogma, but the hurricane had got at the rest of the room and strewn it with literary debris; yet it was not disorder, but rather order of a tempestuous kind. Stray sheets, splashed with memoranda, spilled over an aspidistra; on the sideboard, a French periodical, its back broken and pages pinned back and scored in red, lay next to a book called Voltaire, both hemmed between a framed Methodist and a cast-iron sheep, while a voluminous newspaper was spread-eagled over the armchair: The Observer, the name was new to me. On the floor, a pile of exercise-books corrected, slapped-to and flung down like shelled pods, and on the sideboard, next to an umpire's whistle (hockey), another pile open, one on top of the other, meekly awaiting the eviscerant pencil.
(4) The Leicester Chronicle (16th March 1940)
Emlyn Williams, short, sturdy, dark, calls the story of his rise from greengrocer's son to successfully playwright. It is thus that he labels "The Corn is Green" whichin broad outline, is really a play about the life of Emlyn Williams; about the boy who, at the age of eight, could speak only one language - Welsh.
At 34, Emlyn, whose most noticeable mannerism is trousling his curly hair, is a man without ambition. Because all his wildest dreams have come true, he has yet to think of some other goal to aim at.
On a cold winter's day in November, 1905, Emlyn Williams was born over his father's greengrocer's shop in Penyfford, near Mostyn, Flintshire.
He grew up, like thousands of other compatriots, to speak only Welsh. His father moved to Claurafan, where he kept a pub, and Emlyn (then aged 11) was sent to the country school. His father wanted him to be a schoolmaster, but already at that tender age young Williams was making dramatic poses. His only audience was his reflection in the mirror, which always thought he was good!
Then came to the turning point in his career – he met Sarah Grace Cooke, the schoolmistress who prepared the path for a brilliant career. She stayed late at nights with him, coaching him, teaching him, drumming lessons into him and she has been well rewarded.
Emlyn won seven scholarships to Oxford and learned English, French and Italian. Father still wanted him to be a schoolmaster and Emlyn started off to be a schoolmaster and Emlyn started off to be one; one of his first pupils was Miss Megan Lloyd George. He taught her Italian but his heart was not in the schoolroom.
(5) Yorkshire Evening Post (26th November 1952)
Activities at Cliffe House, Old Farnley, Leeds, stopped abruptly today, and Miss Sarah Grace Cooke, chief organiser of the activities went off on a trip.
With her went her one-time protégé, Emlyn Williams, and his wife. It was a special birthday trip to Hemsley Castle, for playwright Mr Williams, who is appearing at Leeds Grand Theatre this week, is 47 today.
The activities? They have been going on for some time – since Miss Cooke former schoolmistress to Mr Williams and the original Miss Moffat in his The Corn is Green realised that he would be in Leeds on his birthday.
After the theatre tonight there is to be a party at Cliffe House and Miss Mabel Swallow, who shares Cliffe House with Miss Cooke will be joint hostess.
The preparations have been top secret all this week, when presents have been hidden and pastries baked.
Miss Cooke first taught Mr Williams when he was 10. She was so impressed with his abilities that she personally paid for him to study in France.
(6) Ronald Pearson, The Sunday Dispatch (13th September, 1959)
The white-haired old lady who found a star sat bright-eyed and enraptured in the front row of Leeds Town Hall last week. On stage was Emlyn Williams. He was giving one more one-man performance of Dylan Thomas's A Boy Growing Up. And today the old lady is playing host to Emlyn Williams and his wife in her house in a Leeds suburb – Miss Sarah Grace Cooke has got his star about the house.
It was Miss Cooke who bought him his first pair of boots – paid for him to visit France. And as thousands of children go back to school, as millions of parents wonder and worry about their own children, I took Miss Cooke into a corner and asked her the question every mother wants to know.
How soon can you tell if you've got talent in the family? It was 44 years ago when she first met Emlyn Williams at Holywell Country School, in North Wales. It was a memorable meeting between this shrewd Yorkshire woman of 32 and this chubby-faced ten-year-old, the son of a struggling innkeeper from a nearby village.
The subject was French. "He had never done any French before coming to me, but on his first day he was the only one in the form to get all his diction right."
I asked him how he had done it when he knew no French. Emlyn pointed to the boy next to him and said: "I read his book on the way home from school yesterday."
She smiled at the memory.
"It is, you see, the ability to concentrate that makes a boy successful. Emlyn just soaked up knowledge. A boy who is going to make a success shine out over the rest like a star."
"There were never enough books for Emlyn," she recalled. "He read everything he could lay his hands on. Emlyn was a good little boy. He hadn't time to be a naughty because he was so keen on his lessons. He is a born scholar. I am shy about calling him a genius because geniuses are so often eccentric, and Emlyn is never eccentric."
"Emlyn absorbed knowledge; he didn't learn. That is the mark of a boy who is going to make a success."
"The only thing with these outstanding boys is not to teach them, but to give them opportunities. So many teachers are afraid of doing that. This is an age when everything is reduced to a common denominator, when the clever, the average, and the dull are all expected to swim together."
"But clever people should never be treated the same as ordinary people. They must be given opportunities, otherwise they waste so much vital time, they are held back."
"Could I find another Emlyn Williams? It is quite possible. I had pupils who were just as clever in a different way. One of them became a scientist. Another, Dr Edward Rogers, is Director of Education in Rhodesia. He still writes to me."
When I saw Emlyn Williams he said of her: "I owe her almost everything. But, quite frankly, when I first met her, I was rather afraid of her. She was a very strong personally. She even dominated the masters on anything she felt strongly about. But she was never aggressive."
"When she bought me a pair of boots, she did it with such tact and understanding. She said they didn't fit someone else she had bought them for."
"My parents though poor would not have liked charity. But I certainly needed those boots. I had a ten-mile walk to school and back every day."
But what are the elements of success? What is it that really adds up to a brilliant career for a boy still in school? Miss Cooke has no doubt – and her answers deny much that our educational scientists insist upon.
"I would say the ingredients for success," says Miss Cooke, "are 25 per cent, from the home, 25 per cent from the teacher, and 25 per cent, from other pupils."
And the other 25 per cent – you don't know where it comes from. "There are always the bright ones who get to the top. Some boys wake up too late. Emlyn Williams was an early bird."
(7) Halifax Evening Courier (19th February 1960)
Welsh-born actor, Emlyn Williams, who appears at the Cinema Royal, Halifax, tonight, has a very important call to make while he is in the West Riding. He plans to travel to Leeds to visit his former schoolmistress, Miss Sarah Grace Cooke.
It was Miss Cooke who first realised Mr Williams's capabilities when he was one of her pupils at Holywell Country School, Flintshire, North Wales. She found him an outstanding scholar even at the age of 10, and encouraged him to develop his obvious talents.
Miss Cooke was largely responsible for launching him on his scholastic career which took him to France, Geneva, and Oxford, before he went on the stage.
Yesterday, at her home in Avenue Victoria, Roundhay, Leeds, Miss Cooke told a The Courier reporter: "He always had a passion for understanding. It is in the nature to learn. He is a great scholar." His interest in drama, said Miss Cooke, manifested itself at an early age for it is inborn in all the Welsh people."
A native of the West Riding, Miss Cooke was a schoolteacher for nearly 40 years.
(8) The Liverpool Echo (27th August 1964)
Miss Cooke who died on May 1 last, aged 80, left £851 gross, £8, 380 net. Duty of £336 has been paid. She left £500 5 per cent Funding Stock to George Emlyn Williams, "as some slight remembrance of the endless kindnesses shown to me by him, and which have done so much to make my life happy and full and in reciprocation of the gift of £500 made to me by him."
(9) Birmingham Daily Post (28th August 1964)
A schoolmistress who taught Emlyn Williams, the playwright and actor, who was the inspiration for the part of the schoolmistress in his play, The Corn is Green, recalls his "endless kindnesses" to her in her will, made known yesterday.
The schoolmistress was Miss Sarah Grace Cooke of Avenue Victoria, Roundhay, Leeds. She taught Emlyn Williams, then aged 10, at Holywell County School, Flintshire, and paid for him to study at a French school near Geneva.
Miss Cooke, who died on May 1, aged 80, left £500 five per cent funding stock to the playwright in her £8,380 will.
(10) The Daily Mirror (28th August 1964)
The spinster schoolmarm immortalised by her famous pupil Emlyn Williams in his play "The Corn is Green" left £8,521, her will revealed yesterday.
In the will she remembered the little Welsh village boy she put on the path to fame.
For Miss Sarah Grace Cooke, who died last May, aged 80, left £500 worth of shares to Emyln Williams.
The gift was "some slight remembrance of the endless kindnesses shown to me by him, and which have done so much to make my life happy and full.
It was at Holywell County School, Flintshire, that Miss Cooke first met the ten-year-old Emlyn. She recognised his talents as exceptional and paid for him to study at a French school near Geneva.
Years later Mr. Williams based the part of Miss Moffatt, the school mistress in his "The Corn is Green", on his village school mam.
Mr. Williams, 59, said at his London home yesterday: "I left Miss Cooke £500 in my will which was made out twenty-five years ago.
"But I told her, "I will probably outlive you, so you had better have the money now," it was typical of this wonderful women to repay it."
Miss Cooke left the bulk of her estate, including the manuscript of "The Corn is Green" to her friend Mabel Swallow.
When Miss Swallow dies the manuscript will go to the National Library of Wales.
(11) David Simkin, Family History Research (13th December, 2023)
Sarah Grace Cooke was born in the village of Farnely, near Leeds, West Yorkshire, on 17th November 1883, the daughter and youngest of seven children born to Nancy Sharp and Joseph Cooke (1848-1927), a leather currier. At the time of the 1901 Census,17-year-old Sarah Grace Cooke was working as a pupil teacher and residing with her parents and three older siblings in the village of Bramley (now part of the City of Leeds). In 1911, Sarah Grace Cooke, a 27-year-old school teacher, was boarding with a 57-year-old widow, Mrs Jane Howes, at a house in Workington, Cumberland. Mrs Howes's daughter, Winifred Howes (aged 21) was also employed as a school teacher. Another boarder at Mrs Howes's house, Miss Julia Walton (aged 32) was also a school teacher by profession.
When the 1921 Census was taken, Sarah Grace Cooke was boarding with Miss E. M. White at a house in Holywell, Flintshire, North Wales. On the 1921 Census form, Miss Sarah Grace Cooke (aged 37 years, 7 months) is described as a "Teacher" at Holywell County School.The General Register of 1939 records Miss Sarah Grace Cooke as a 'Teacher' living at a house called "Bramfield" in Holywell, Flintshire.
Sarah Grace Cooke, a spinster of 1 Avenue Victoria, Roundhay, Leeds, died on 1st May 1964 at the age of 80. She left £8,521 in her will