Stephen Joshua Lett died at Johannesburg, Transvaal, on July 13th, 1933, at the age of 61.
He received his technical training from 1888 to 1892 in the laboratory of the late Mr. A. Norman Tate, and obtained experience in constructional work, well-sinking, and boring whilst acting for four years as chemical assistant to Mr. H. Ashton Hill.
In 1896 he went to Serbia, where he took sole charge of the assaying and chemical department of the Ripangi Quicksilver & Silver Mines, Ltd., near Belgrade. In the following year he was appointed assayer to the North Charterland Exploration Co., Ltd., and subsequently chief of the mining and prospecting department and spent four years in Central Africa, during which he was ‘bushed’ and exposed to great hardships.
From 1901 to 1905, he was in England engaged in working out the details of an improved method of cyaniding gold ores, but in 1906 he returned to Central Africa as engineer in charge of prospecting and development for the Zambezia Goldfields Limitada. Three years later he went to Sumatra as chief engineer in charge of prospecting and development in connexion with a number of claims on the west coast, and thence he made trips to Borneo, Java and Celebes to report on mining properties. Later he undertook work in South Africa and finally settled there.
He contributed a paper on the “Use of Standards in reading Gold Pannings” to Vol. XVIII of the Transactions of the Institution, and took part in the discussion of a number of papers by other authors.
Mr. Lett was elected an Associate of the Institution in 1902 and was transferred to Membership in 1912.
Vol. 43, Trans IMM 1933-34, pp.764-5
