10 Facts About Robert Stanes

Sir Robert Stanes was a British businessman and philanthropist in India who founded United Nilgiri Tea Estates in Coimbatore.

James Robert Stanes was a glass and china shipping merchant who established the Robert Stanes' presence in India by sending several of his sons to the country.

Robert Stanes was drowned in May 1852 while traveling near Kulhutty.

Robert Stanes was followed by the fourth son, Thomas Stanes, who arrived at Madras on the SS Hindustan on 26 June 1855.

James Robert Stanes senior visited his sons William and Thomas in Madras Presidency in 1855, accompanied by his third son, Henry Thomas Robert Stanes, who ran the London end of the family's businesses.

Robert Stanes immediately launched himself on a successful career as a coffee planter in Coimbatore.

Failure in business was at that time a disgrace and Robert Stanes's son, Fred, who was five at the time, remembered both the shame and having to return to England on a cargo boat.

Robert Stanes wrote that "my dear wife endured it all without a murmur and with the greatest patience".

Robert Stanes set up the Stanes School in the city in 1862.

Sir Robert Stanes died in Coimbatore in 1936 and is buried alongside his wife, Harriet Huntingdon Harris, at All Saints church, Coonoor.