John William Stokes

Who was John William Stokes?

John William Stokes, also known as Jack Stokes was an Australian administrator in the Northern Territory Police, and on the Territories of the Cocos Islands and of Christmas Island.

His maternal grandparents were from Stolp, Pomerania, now within Poland, and after moving to Australia in the 1870s they became farmers at Burnt Creek, Victoria. His paternal grandfather was from North Carolina, USA, and died for the Confederates in the American Civil War. Upon his death, Stokes’ father went to sea at the age of 14 due to the destitution at home. He eventually joined the Calcutta Police Force in India and came to Victoria in the 1870s when his first wife’s health deteriorated. There were no children. After her death in 1894, his father, then one of the first plain clothes detectives in the Victorian Police Force, married his first wife’s nurse in 1895. They had six children, the youngest being ‘Jack’ Stokes.

Jack left school in 1924 at the age of 14 after the death of his father and joined the Victorian Railways as a “boy labourer”.