Rupert Cecil Alabaster died in January, 1911, at the age of 32.
He joined the Royal School of Mines in 1897, and left the College in 1898, when he was appointed manager of the St. Augustine Diamond Mining Co., Kimberley. He returned to the Royal School of Mines in 1899.
Shortly after the outbreak of the South African War, in 1900, he entered the Royal Artillery and served through the war until 1903, when he resigned his commission and once more returned to South Kensington, where he completed his course in metallurgy.
In 1905 he gained considerable experience in copper smelting in the U.S.A., which was embodied in a paper on “Pyritic Smelting,” written in collaboration with F.H. Wintle, submitted to the Institution (Trans. xv, pp.269-80). From 1907 to 1909 Mr. Alabaster was on the Great Australian Mine, Cloncurry, Queensland, and from 1909 he was working on the Oonah Mines, Ltd., Zeehan, Tasmania.
He was admitted to Studentship of the Institution in 1908 and transferred to Associateship late in the same year.
Vol. 21 (XXI), Trans IMM 1911-12, pp.719
