People Australia

Bertie Cook, by Johnstone, O'Shannessy & Co., 1908

State Library of Victoria, 49345068

Baxter Bertie Stuart (Bert) Cook (1877-1968) journalist and trade union official

Birth: 2 March 1877 at Prahran, Melbourne, Victoria, son of English-born parents John Baxter Cook (1841-1912), a clerk, from Great Barugh, Yorkshire, and Charlotte, née Chambers (1850-1930), from Chelsea, London. Marriage: 8 March 1899 at St Luke’s Anglican Church, South Melbourne, to native-born Harriet Ann Butler (1876-1965). They had two daughters. Death: 2 September 1968 at at Glen Iris, Melbourne; usual residence Albert Street, East Malvern, Melbourne.

• Cook was ‘a spruce, jaunty man, (who) in the prime of life, favoured genuine Van Dyke whiskers, pince nez clipped severely to the bridge of a nose, a Beaufort suit with a fancy waistcoat, and a boxer hat’.
• He entered journalism in 1889 as printer’s devil and copy boy at Melbourne Herald.
• Believing that journalists were ‘spineless, downtrodden crew’ he used the passage of Commonwealth Conciliation & Arbitration legislation to convene a meeting of journalists on 1 December 1910. As foundation secretary in 1910-1912 he prepared the Australian Journalists' Associations (AJA)  first constitution and rules.
• As Victorian district secretary in 1914-1915 and general president in 1916-1918 Cook led the AJA team in Arbitration Court proceedings that produced the union’s industrial charter/Isaacs award. Left the union in 1918 to establish the Commonwealth government’s first publicity bureau.
• In 1919 he moved to Broken Hill where he implemented a scheme for miners ‘torpedoed by Bolshies’.
• Later managed the Victorian Citrus Association and was financial and commercial editor of the Argus, supporting wage cuts for journalists during the Great Depression and the Commonwealth government ban of Egon Kisch in 1934.
• Publicity officer of the Royal Automobile Club of Victoria. 
• Cause of death: myocardial infarction (sudden), congestive cardiac failure (5 years) and coronary atherosclerosis (7 years).

Sources
Clem Lloyd, 1985; The Journalist, 24 April 1931, 31 October 1936, October 1968; Newcastle Morning Herald, 4 September 1968; Age, (Melbourne), 4 September 1968; Merrifield papers.