Cash Cooper | Charles "Cash" Cooper | Tattooist 1950s

Photo Circa late 1950's

Prof. Cash Cooper

Charles ‘Cash’ Cooper (1927-1979) was tattooing at Piccadilly Circus in the 1950s and ’60s, in what has been called the smallest tattoo booth in the world at the ‘Sports Garden’ Coventry Street, which was under the stairs of the arcade. Before leaving London to open a tattoo studio in Piccadilly of Greater Manchester in the north of England.

Cash did return to London in 1978 and set up a tattooing booth in the back of a Handbag shop at 22a Wardour Street, Soho. Sadly Cash passed away the following year in his armchair at the shop. Jack Ryan (aka Jack Zeek) also tattooed with Cash at times in London, but its been said they had a stormy relationship and after one altercation, Cash left to join the French Foreign Legion but was back in London after six weeks claiming he didn’t like it, Besides Cash and Jack must have got on reasonably well as they had a knife-throwing act - and once performed at the prestigious London Palladium.

Cash Cooper tattooed a moustache onto his own upper lip in the 1960s after hearing that a local newspaper was going to run a competition to find the person with the most unique tattoo in Great Britain, but was later disgusted when he heard that the prize was to be a box of chocolates and refused to enter. Cash ended up growing a real moustache over his tattooed one soon after.