Ralph Shelton Griffin Stokes, son of Francis Griffin Stokes, was born in England on 31 July, 1882. Stokes who was privately educated, interrupted his studies to come to South Africa to take part in the Second AngIo-boer War as a trooper in Paget's Horse, and after the war went to Johannesburg to try his luck on the gold mines He joined H. Eckstein and Company (The Corner House) in 1902 and his first appointment was as a sampler and assistant surveyor on the Crown Reef Mine.

An offer from Abe Bailey to work as the part-time mining editor of the Rand Daily Mall enabled Stokes to continue his studies and to tour the mines of the British Empire. A series of articles described his travels and appeared in the Rand Daily Mail between June, 1906 and September; 1907, His book Mines and Minerals if the British Empire was published m 1908 followed by Text Book if Rand Metallurgical Practices m 1912, His second term of employment with H. Eckstein and Company, commencing in 1907, coincided with a period of intense activity on the gold mines of the Witwatersrand. It was not only the beginning of the great amalgamations but also of considerable change on many mining properties. Stokes assisted the well-known William Wallace Mein with the valuation of the New Modderfontein Gold Mining Company Ltd, and was responsible for the sampling of the ore exposure when the famous Turf Shaft, Village Mines and Eckstein's Central Administration. During this time he obtained the government's Surveyor's Certificate"

From 1912 to 1914 he was employed as a field engineer by the International Nickel Company of New York. In 1912, while inspecting the newly discovered Arkansas Diamond Mine he met, in one party, Henry Cleveland Perkins, Hennen Jennings, Sidney J. Jennings and Willie Mein, the four American engineers who had played such a significant role in the history of H. Eckstein-Werner, Beit and Company and the development of the Witwatersrand gold fields.

Stokes returned to South Africa as superintendent of mines and assistant general manager of De Beers consolidated Mines Ltd at Kimberley Eight years after he resigned to join his old film in Johannesburg which has become the Central Mining and Investment Corporation Ltd. During his term of office as consulting engineer and technical director of Central Mining, he played a major role in the acquisition and development of its gold mines in the Orange Free State.

He was chairman of the Blyvooruitzicht Gold Mining Company and witnessed the sinking of the first boreholes at the Harmony Mine in 1949. He was appointed as director of Central Milling in 1944, a position he held until he retired from the board in 1959. He was also a director of Transvaal Gold Mining Estates Ltd and chairman of Trinidad Leaseholds Ltd from 1944 to 1947.

In addition to his remarkable capabilities as a mining engineer, Stokes has a distinguished military record During the First World War he was in France with the tunneling companies and as controller of mines with the rank of colonel of the First Army. He was chief engineer of the Expeditionary Forces in North Russia from 1918 to 1919. Undeterred by the fact that he was 57 when the Second World War broke out, he returned to England to offer his services to the War office. He was first sent to Narvik and then to the Western Desert as chief engineer in charge of construction of airfields with Montgomery's Eight Army. He rose to the rank of brigadier and was awarded the CBE, in 1942. In the course of the two world wars, he was mentioned in dispatches no fewer than seven times. He recorded some of his war-time experiences entitled 'Our Arctic Campaigns Archangel 1918-1919; Narvik 1940' in the Royal Engineers Journal

In 1937, (and in 1954) he served as the president of the Chemical, Metallurgical and Mining Society which became the South African Institute of Mining and Metallurgy and wrote some outstanding papers of various aspects of the Witwatersrand gold mining industry. His presidential address, 'Future Resources and Problems of the Witwatersrand Gold Field' (1954) was acknowledged as a remarkable piece of work. He was also a member, and in 1954 president, of the London Institution of Mining and Metallurgy and published material in its bulletin After his death in 1979, the South African Institute of Mining and Metallurgy established the Brigadier Stokes Memorial Award which recognizes outstanding achievement in, and contribution to, the milling industry

In 1921 he married Lora Mary (Molly) Bradford and had four daughters. A remarkable resilient man with an inexhaustible energy and an insatiable curiosity. He traveled very extensively, retaining a dry sense of humor and an agile mind until his death at the age of ninety-six He had a host of friends and was affectionately known as 'The Brig'

Don Visser
Acknowledgement The Encyclopedia of South African Biography