He was born at Akeds Road, Halifax, on the 5th of October 1820, the only son of James Stansfeld (1792–1872), originally a member of a firm of solicitors, Stansfeld & Craven, and subsequently county-court judge in the district. His mother was Emma, daughter of John Ralph, minister of the Northgate-End Unitarian chapel, Halifax, and his sister married George Dixon.
In 1837 Stansfeld was sent to University College, London, and graduated B. A. in 1840 and LL. B. in 1844. He was admitted a student of the Middle Temple on 31 October 1840, and was called to the bar on 26 January 1849; he does not seem, however, to have practised as a barrister, and later in life derived his income mainly from a brewery at Fulham.
In 1859 he was returned to parliament as Radical member for Halifax, which town he continued to represent for over thirty- six years. He voted consistently on the Radical side, but his chief energies were devoted to promoting the cause of Italian unity. He was selected by Garibaldi as his adviser when the Italian patriot visited England in 1862. In 1863 he moved in the House of Commons a resolution of sympathy with the Poles, and two months later was made a junior lord of the admiralty. In 1864, as the result of charges made against him by the French authorities, in connexion with Greco's conspiracy against Napoleon III, Disraeli, in the House of Commons, accused him of being " in correspondence with the assassins of Europe. " Stansfeld was vigorously defended by Bright and Forster, and his explanation was accepted as quite satisfactory by Palmerston. Nevertheless he only escaped a vote of censure by ten votes, and accordingly resigned office. In 1865 he was re-elected for Halifax, and in 1866 became undersecretary of state for India. In the first Gladstone administration he held a variety of public offices, finally becoming, in 1871, the first president of the local government board. The remainder of his life was mainly spent in endeavouring to secure the repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts, and in 1886 this object was attained. In the same year Stansfeld again became president of the local government board. He died on the 17th of February 1898.
He took an active part in propagating radical opinions in the north of England, frequently spoke at meetings of the Northern Reform Union, and was one of the promoters of the association for the repeal of "taxes on knowledge".
On 27 July 1844 Stansfeld married Caroline, second daughter of William Henry Ashurst, a radical and friend of Giuseppe Mazzini, to whom Stansfeld was introduced in 1847: they became close. Stansfeld also sympathised with the Chartist movement, even if Feargus O'Connor denounced him.
She was a member of an important family of radical activists in mid-nineteenth-century England who supported causes ranging from women’s suffrage to Italian unification.
Sir
