JILLY COOPER

Jilly Cooper is one of Britain's most prolific and successful authoresses. Her first work of fiction, Emily, was published in 1975 and since then she has released 19 further titles, including Riders, Polo and The Man Who Made Husbands Jealous. Her most recent work, Wicked! tells of life at two rival schools, one independent and one state - her own schooling was at Godolphin, an exclusive private school. The characters that populate her works are usually larger than life, and one wonders how much of her own background she draws upon when writing.

To whom is she related?

Jilly Cooper was born Jill Sallitt in 1937, the daughter of Brigadier William Baines Sallitt and his wife, Mary Elaine Whincup. His profession at the time of Jilly's birth was described as a metallurgical engineer, but this disguised his original career as an officer in the British army and latterly the War Office during the Second World War, before he found work in civilian life in an engineering firm. Both sides of Jilly's family have distinguished roots, but the more wealthy side would appear to be her father's lineage. William Baines Sallitt owed his unusual name to his mother, Ella Mary Baines. She was born in 1871 in Leeds, the daughter of John William Baines and his wife, Louisa Jane Haines. John William Baines was the scion of a family of newspaper magnates, who had originally bought a controlling interest in the Leeds Mercury in 1801 and used the paper to champion various causes close to their hearts - rights for dissenters (the Baines were staunch Methodists) and the abolition of slavery. The founder of the newspaper dynasty was Edward Baines senior, who is described in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography as 'newspaper proprietor, politician and historian.' He was born in 1774 near Preston, mainly because his father, Richard Baines, was driven out of town as a result of legal action taken the Guild Merchants, who forbade him from trading as a grocer because he was not a guild member. Consequently, his son was brought up in Leeds and was apprenticed to a firm of printers and booksellers who, at the time, owned the Leeds Mercury. By 1801 he had bought out his former employers, and transformed the paper into a thriving business.

“Both sides of Jilly's family have distinguished roots, but the more wealthy side would appear to be her father's lineage.”

Baines also turned his hand to writing history books, including various local works on Leeds and Yorkshire, but his views on reform established him as an influential local figure. He was eventually elected to Parliament as a Whig MP for Leeds in 1834, championing various elements of social reform such as limited regulation for factory employment and improved conditions for workers. His second son, Edward Baines junior, succeeded his father as the editor of the Leeds Mercury, and also followed him into the House of Commons, elected MP for Leeds in 1859. He was happy to take an anti-establishment line - for example, siding with the peaceful demonstrators at the Peterloo Massacre of 1819 - but was only in favour of a limited extension of the franchise. In many ways, his connections with the cotton industry limited his progress towards more radical politics - in 1835, he published a History of the Cotton Manufacture in Great Britain, and it is perhaps no co-incidence that his granddaughter, Ella Baines, went on to marry William Woodford Sallitt, the son of a prominent wool merchant and factory owner William Joseph Sallitt who in 1871 employed more than 100 hands, many of whom were children and young people. Such was life during the Industrial Revolution - a compromise between ideals and the realistic pursuit of power and money. There's probably a book or two in the story...

What's in a name?

Sallitt is a most unusual name, and only a handful of families bore the name in the nineteenth census records - indeed, less there were less than 100 as recently as 1998. Its origins appear to come from Nottingham, where the Jilly's family originated. It is possible that it derived from an earlier French immigrant - Salet or Salat appear in early census returns. In contrast, Cooper is clearly much easier to trace - derived from the occupation of barrel making.