Stanley Ramplen Jones died in Batu Gajah Hospital, Malaya, on 21st December, 1957, at the age of 75.
Mr. Jones entered the Royal School of Mines in 1899 but left in the following year to serve with the Electrical Engineers, R.E. (London Volunteers) in the South African War in 1900. He returned to complete his training and gained the A.R.S.M. in mining in 1905.
Mr. Jones was briefly engaged on reporting work in Cornwall and South Wales before taking up the Colonial Office position in Malaya in 1906 of Inspecting of Mines, Malay States. He resigned in the following year to join Messrs. Osborne and Chappel, Ipoh, as assistant engineer, and three years later was appointed assayer and sectional mine manager to Tronch Mines, Ltd., Perak. He left in 1914 to begin practice as a mining engineer in Malaya, but in 1915 he joined the armed forces, serving from 1915 until 1919 as lieutenant R.E., Tunnelling Coy. and Field Coy. (41st Division), then as Field Engineer, and finally with the Road and Transport Directorate with the rank of captain.
From 1919 to 1926 Mr. Jones was engaged by Eastern Smelting Co., Ltd., as an agent, buying and selling tin ore in the Malay Peninsula and in Siam, and in 1926 he became consulting mining engineer to a property owner, Alan Loke, Esq. About eighteen months later he was appointed general manager to Hong Fatt (Sungei Besi), Ltd., Selangor, but left at the end of 1928 owing to ill health.
During 1929 he worked on the construction of the airport at Port Swettenham, Malaya, and, in 1931, he joined the Government Mines Department, working in the Tin Restriction Department. He was an Inspector under the Mineral Ores Secretary to the Tin Restriction Committee and compiler of the monthly Bulletin of Mining Statistics, F.M.S., until 1940.
Though on leave in Australia and over military age, Mr. Jones returned to offer his services to Malaya at the time of the Japanese invasion. He was subsequently interned in Changi Gaol and Sime Road Internment Camps for over three years. After a short recuperative leave in England he went back to Malaya in 1946 and set up privately as a consulting mining engineer with offices in Kuala Lumpur and Ipoh, and in the years which followed travelled to Australia, Britain, several countries in Europe, South Africa and the United States.
After an operation in Sydney in June, 1957, he returned to Malaya, but his health continued to fail and-he died six months later.
Mr. Jones became a Student of the Institution in 1903 and was elected an Associate Member in 1907. He resigned in 1922, but re-joined as an Associate Member in 1929.
Vol. 68, Trans IMM 1958-59, pp.226-27
