His father at the time of his birth occupied the dairy farm at Mistley Park, Mannington, having removed there from Yorkshire.

On leaving school, Spooner was apprenticed to a chemist, George Jervis of Westbar, Sheffield, and at the expiration of his term entered the Royal Veterinary College, as a student, November 1828.

He obtained his diploma 21 July 1829, and shortly afterwards was appointed, chiefly through the influence of Professor Sewell, veterinary surgeon to the Zoological Society, a post in which he was soon succeeded by William Youatt.

Early in 1839 he reluctantly accepted the post of demonstrator of anatomy at the college and broke up his private classes.

He now stood at the head of his profession, and in 1858 became president of the incorporated Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons.

He married early in 1840 a Miss Boulton of Manchester, and left a family of five sons and three daughters.

Numerous reports of Spooner's speeches and lectures may be found in the ‘Veterinarian,’ the ‘Proceedings of the Veterinary Medical Association,’ &c. A lecture by him on ‘Horses,’ delivered before the members of the Farringdon Agricultural Library, was published in pamphlet form in 1861 (wrongly placed in the British Museum catalogue under the name of William Charles Spooner).