Sir James Stansfeld, (; 5 March 182017 February 1898) was a British Radical and Liberal politician and social reformer who served as Under-Secretary of State for India (1866), Financial Secretary to the Treasury (1869–71) and President of the Poor Law Board (1871) before being appointed the first President of the Local Government Board (1871–74 and 1886). Background Stansfeld was born at Akeds Road, Halifax, the only son of James Stansfeld Sr (1792–1872) and his wife Emma Ralph (1793–1851), daughter of John Ralph (d.1795), minister of the Northgate-End Unitarian chapel, Halifax and his wife, Dorothy (1754–1824). Stansfeld's father, James Sr, was the sixth son of David Stansfield (1755–1818) of Hope Hall, Halifax, and his wife Sarah Wolrich (1757–1824), daughter of Thomas Wolrich (1719–91) of Armley House, Leeds. He was a descendant of the Stansfeld family of Stansfield and Sowerby, Yorkshire, and a distant cousin of the politician William Crompton-Stansfield and the soldiers James Rawdon Stansfeld, Thomas Wolryche Stansfeld and John R. E. Stansfeld. James Sr was originally a member of a firm of solicitors, Stansfeld & Craven, and subsequently served as a county-court judge in the Halifax district. James Stansfeld Jr's sister, Mary (d.1885), married the Liberal MP George Dixon. Education Brought up as a nonconformist, Stansfeld was in 1837 sent to University College, London, and graduated BA in 1840 and LLB 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. 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. 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". Political career In 1859, Stansfeld was returned to Parliament as a Radical member for Halifax, which 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