caused by the death of Joshua Scholefield. He was strongly supported at the election hustings, split the liberal vote, but ultimately came bottom of the poll: Richard Spooner [Cons] 2095, William Scholefield [Lib] 1735 and Sturge [Chartist] 346). In 1847 he stood once more, for , in the general election. There he was identified as "Bainesite" – a follower of Edward Baines – and was campaigning for schooling, with no state involvement, a divisive position in the British and Foreign School Society. Later life Sturge took up the cause of peace and arbitration being pioneered by Henry Richard. He was instrumental in the founding of the Morning Star in 1855 as a newspaper through which to promote the Peace Society and his other social ideas. In 1854 Sturge and two other Quakers, Robert Charleton and Henry Pease, travelled to St Petersburg to see Tzar Nicholas I, trying to prevent the outbreak of the Crimean War. In 1856 Sturge and Thomas Harvey visited the Grand Duchy of Finland to investigate the damage caused by the Royal Navy and French Navy gunboats, in attacks during the Crimean War. On this trip Sturge bought Robert Wilhelm Ekman's painting Sunday Morning in a Farmhouse, which was shown in the exhibition of the Royal Academy of Arts in 1858. The painting was brought back to Finland in 1960. Personal life Sturge married, first, in 1834, Eliza, sister of John Cropper. After her death, in 1846 he married Hannah, daughter of Barnard Dickinson and his wife Ann Darby, who was a daughter of Abraham Darby III; and they had five children, one being the peace campaigner Sophia Sturge (1849–1936). Fellow Quaker Stephen Henry Hobhouse wrote a biography in 1919 titled Joseph Sturge, his life and work. Joseph Sturge was a cousin of whaling shipowner, industrialist and philanthropist Thomas Sturge. Death and memorial Sturge died suddenly at his home on Wheeley's Road, Edgbaston, Birmingham, on 14 May 1859 of heart disease. He was buried in the graveyard at the Friends Meeting House, Birmingham. Rather than a grand public funeral, the family sought a modest event in keeping with their Quaker beliefs; but the mourning procession from the late Mr Sturge's home included forty carriages of friends and family, led by the mayor, Sir John Ratcliff. The Joseph Sturge memorial by sculptor John Thomas was unveiled on 4 June 1862 at Five Ways. On 24 March 2007, the