[1][2] She received a law degree from Oxford University and in 1943 became the first woman magistrate in Nigeria.
[5] Her brother Peter Thomas became the first West African pilot commissioned in the Royal Air Force during World War II.
[7] While she studied law at Oxford and was a member of the Middle Temple in London, she was active with the West African Students Union, and a founding member of the League of Coloured Peoples, organized by Harold Moody.
[8] 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, featuring mostly London students in an all-Black cast.
[4] In November 1944, Stella Thomas married a fellow legal professional, Richard Bright Marke, in Freetown.