Skip to content ↓

View entry

Back to search results

Name: STONEHAM, Charles Thurley Arthur

image of individual

Birth Date: 27 May 1895 Devon

Death Date: 1965 Transvaal

First Date: 1915 - from Canada

Profession: In 1915 he joined the 25th Royal Fusiliers (Legion of Frontiersmen) at Kajiado

Area: Nanyuki, Nakuru

Married: Kathleen 'Kay' Hocking Costello b.16 Jan 1897, d. 1979 Deben, Suffolk. 'Babs'?

Children: Michael

Author: Prolific author . From Hobo to Hunter, 1956

Book Reference: Hobo, Stoneham Wanderings, Paice's Place

School: Brighton College

General Information:

Hobo - Left England in 1912 and went to Canada for 2 years adventuring. ..... In 1924 climbed Mt. Kenya. ..... In 1921 a Govt. entomologist named Wilkinson came and stayed at my house in Nanyuki. ....... Mr Fairbairn was the Forest Officer. ....... In 1925 I was making a precarious living hunting buffaloes in the Aberdares near Thomson's Falls. For relaxation I used to walk down to Nakuru at the weekend, a distance of 18 miles, spend a night at the hotel and attend a dance, and return to my mountain camp on the Monday. .......... Tom and Frank Black - famers from Rongai, strange men ....... Stoneham went with them to hunt elephants and stay on their farm. Tom Black was Tom Campbell Black, later to become famous as a pilot and married Florence Desmond, the actress. Frank was killed in WW2. Their father was Mayor of Brighton and they were at school with Stoneham. ......…
After WW2 returned to Kenya in 1947 and took a house outside Nakuru. ....... 1921 - the sundowner dances at the Silverbeck Hotel were the best of fun. .......... Spent 5 years at Nanyuki with his friend Walter making no money buying and selling sheep and butchering. ... Sailed to Mombasa in 1921 with his friend Walter. Selected Nanyuki for their ventures mainly because Stoneham knew a settler there. In Maritzburg Stoneham met a woman whose daughter had married a Kenya farmer. The butchery business was not very successful. After 5 years they established another butchery at Meru. Eventually Walter went off to the Lupa goldfields in Tanganyika. ... Wrote a short story about lions and sold it via an agent in London to 'The Tatler'. Thought his fortune was made but No! ..... Returned to England in 1931 with 30/- leaving his wife Kay in Cape Town with friends. ........... Returned to Kenya in 1947 ........
In his time he had been  an actor, hobo, navvy, lumberjack, barber, waiter, soldier, white hunter ..…..  
Stoneham Wanderings - In 1917 I was invalided to S. Africa, where I was told by 3 doctors that I had not long to live. I had survived over 40 severe attacks of malaria, dysentery and shell shock, but I had become so debilitated that I hated everyone and everything, and desired nothing more than to bury myself in the wilderness far away from men and cities. After some months of illness and depression I managed to get into the SA Mechanical Transport and was again sent to EA. ......... In 1923 I was living in the township of Nanyuki ........ In those days that district was 'wild and woolly'. There were a fair number of settlers scattered over a large expanse of veld ....... My friend and partner, Mr Walter Knight had just returned from a holiday in England .….…
Paice's Place - C.T. Stoneham, who later entitled his autobiography 'From Hobo to Hunter', ran a butcher's shop in Nanyuki in the 1920s. His problems were perhaps those of the shopkeepers as a whole. He had no experience whatsoever of being a butcher and depended on Major Gascoigne's cook to identify joints of meat. His only customers were other Europeans and there were so few of them that he had to throw away half his meat every week before it rotted. In the end he gave up.
Paice's Place - Occasionally the tensions turned violent, as when C.T. Stoneham and Commander Hook, owner of the Silverbeck Hotel, once settled a personal quarrel with their fists, in an encounter famous in the annals of settler Kenya.

Back to search results