Background
Stanhope was born in Marylebone, London. A member of an important political family, he was the younger son of Philip Stanhope, 5th Earl Stanhope and Emily Harriet, daughter of General Sir Edward Kerrison, 1st Baronet.
Member of Parliament in the United Kingdom
Stanhope was born in Marylebone, London. A member of an important political family, he was the younger son of Philip Stanhope, 5th Earl Stanhope and Emily Harriet, daughter of General Sir Edward Kerrison, 1st Baronet.
Having joined the Royal Navy as a young man, he rose to the rank of lieutenant before he left the service. Having lost his seat in 1892, he was elected again in 1893 for Burnley, a seat he held until 1900. Defeated again, he was elected in 1904 for Harborough, a seat he held until 1906, when he was elevated to the peerage as Baron Weardale, of Stanhope in the County of Durham.
A prominent opponent of war - including the Boer War - he was president of the sixth National Peace Conference in Leicester in 1910, led the British group in the Inter-Parliamentary Union, and became president of that organisation from 1912 to 1922.
He was also president of the Save the Children Fund and a trustee of the National Portrait Gallery. With Lord Curzon, he became in 1912 joint president of the National League for Opposing Woman Suffrage, an anti-suffrage organisation.
In 1914 he was attacked with a dogwhip at Euston Station by a suffragette who mistook him for the Prime Minister, H. H. Asquith.
24th United Kingdom Parliament. 25th United Kingdom Parliament. 26th United Kingdom Parliament.
27th United Kingdom Parliament]
In 1886 Stanhope was elected to the House of Commons as Liberal Member of Parliament for Wednesbury.