Robert Stanes

Infobox Person
name = Sir Robert Stanes


birth_date = birth date|1841|05|13|df=y
birth_place = London, United Kingdom
death_date = death date and age|1936|9|06|1841|05|13|df=y
death_place = Coimbatore, India
spouse = Harriet Huntingdon Harris
occupation = Founder, T Stanes & Company; industrialist; educationalist.

Sir Robert Stanes (13 May 1841–6 September 1936) was a British businessman and philanthropist in India who founded United Nilgri Tea Estates (UNTE) in Coimbatore.

Stanes arrived in India in 1858 while still a boy of seventeen. He immediately launched himself on a successful career as a coffee planter in Coimbatore. Five years later he established the first inland coffee-curing plant in India, In 1885, Stanes & Co went out of business. Stanes recalled that "the firm suffered great losses and Messrs Stanes Watson failed in business, which led to the collapse of my firm. I had to begin all over again, all that I had was 500 rupees" (about £40 at that date). Failure in business was at that time a disgrace and Stanes's son, Fred, who was five at the time, remembered both the shame and also having to return to England on a cargo boat. Stanes wrote that "my dear wife endured it all without a murmur and with the greatest patience". He started again and the business again prospered. By the time of his death he owned cotton mills, coffee and tea plantations, coffee curing plants, motor works and tire retreading plants; Coimbatore is still a major industrial city today, largely through Stanes's contribution.

When Coimbatore City Council was formed, he became chairman. He set up the Stanes School in the city in 1862. His elder brother, Thomas Stanes, had established the Stanes School in Coonoor, in 1858. [ [http://www.stanescoonoor.com Stanes School, Coonoor website] ]

In 1913, he was awarded the Kaiser-i-Hind Gold Medal for services to Coimbatore and to education and he was knighted in the 1920 New Year Honours. [LondonGazette |issue=31712 |date=30 December 1919 |startpage=3 |supp=yes]

Footnotes

References

*Obituary, "The Times", 8 September 1936
* [http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/mp/2005/07/23/stories/2005072302040300.htm Robert Stanes in "The Hindu Metro Plus"]