Stella Thomas

Stella Jane Thomas (later Stella Marke) (1906 – 1974) was a Yoruba Nigerian lawyer of Sierra Leonian descent.[1][2] She received a law degree from Oxford University and in 1943 became the first woman magistrate in Nigeria.[3]

Stella Thomas
Born1906
Lagos, Nigeria
Died1974
NationalityNigerian
Other namesStella Marke
OccupationLawyer, Magistrate
Years active1933-1974
Known forFirst woman magistrate of Nigeria

Early life and education

Stella Thomas was born in 1906, in Lagos, the daughter of Peter John Claudius Thomas, a Nigerian businessman of Sierra Leonian heritage. Her father was the first African to head the Lagos Chamber of Commerce.[4] She attended the Annie Walsh Memorial School in Freetown, Sierra Leone, "the oldest secondary school for girls in West Africa."[5] Her brother Peter Thomas became the first West African pilot commissioned in the Royal Air Force during World War II.[6] Another brother, Stephen Peter Thomas was the first Chief Justice of the Mid-West region.

While she studied law at Oxford and was a member of the Middle Temple in London, she was active with the West African Student Union, and a founding member of the League of Coloured Peoples, organized by Harold Moody.[7] She lived in Bloomsbury, and starred in a production of Jamaican poet Una Marson's first play At What a Price put on by the league at London's Scala Theatre.[8][7]

Career

Thomas was the first African woman called to the bar in Great Britain, in 1933.[9] In 1934, she was the only African woman to participate in a discussion with Margery Perham at the Royal Society of Arts, and she took the opportunity to criticize Lord Lugard and African colonialism before an influential audience. When she returned to West Africa, she was the first woman lawyer in the region.[10]

Upon her return to West Africa, she initially enrolled at the Sierra Leonean bar and in December 1935, she came back to Lagos and set up a law practice along Kakawa Street, Lagos Island. She worked on a wide range of legal matters such as criminal cases and family issues and also worked with lawyers Alex E.J. Taylor and Eric Moore.[11]

In 1943, she became West Africa's first woman magistrate[12] serving Ikeja magistrate court with jurisdiction for Mushin, Agege and Ikorodu districts.[11] She later was a magistrate at the Saint Anna Court house and the Botanical Gardens Court in Ebute-Metta.[11] She retired as a magistrate in Sierra Leone in 1971.[4]

Personal life

In 1944, Stella Thomas married a fellow legal professional, Richard Bright Marke, in Freetown. She died in 1974, aged 68 years.[4]

See also
  • First women lawyers around the world

References
  1. Nigeria The Case for Peaceful and Friendly Dissolution. The Futility of the Land Use. p. 40.
  2. Osun State College of Education (Ila Orangun, Nigeria). School of Languages (2007). School of Languages Conference Proceedings, Volume 1, Issue 1. Indiana University. p. 131.
  3. Helen Tilley, Africa as a Living Laboratory: Empire, Development, and the Problem of Scientific Knowledge, 1870-1950 (University of Chicago Press 2011): 429. ISBN 9780226803470
  4. Emeka Keazor, "Notable Nigerians: Stella Thomas" NSIBIDI Institute (4 November 2014).
  5. N. Sillah, "The ugly face of a bad policy in Sierra Leone: or is it crass stupidity?" Sierra Leone Telegraph (8 February 2013).
  6. Stephen Bourne, Motherland Calls: Britain's Black Servicemen and Women, 1939-1945 (History Press 2012): v-vi. ISBN 9780752490717
  7. Marc Matera, Black London: The Imperial Metropolis and Decolonization in the Twentieth Century (University of California Press 2015): 43-44. ISBN 9780520959903
  8. Delia Jarret-Macauley, The Life of Una Marson, 1905-1965 (Manchester University Press 1998): 48, 53. ISBN 9780719052842
  9. "West African Lady Barrister Called to the Bar" Nigerian Daily Telegraph (11 May 1933): 1.
  10. Marc Matera, "Black Internationalism and African and Caribbean Intellectuals in London, 1919-1950" (PhD diss., Rutgers University, 2008): 35-36.
  11. Akaraogun, Olu (June 1966). "Memoirs of Stella Thomas, Our Pioneer Lady Barrister". Spear Magazine.
  12. Fongot Kini-Yen Kinni, Pan-Africanism: Political Philosophy and Socio-Economic Anthropology for African Liberation and Governance (Langaa RPCIG 2015): 819. ISBN 9789956762767
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