John Frederick Stanford (1815–1880)[1] was an English barrister, literary scholar and politician.[2]
Life
He was the youngest son of Major Francis William Stanford of the
1st Life Guards, from
County Mayo, and his second[3] wife Mary, daughter of William Gorton.[2][4] He was half-brother to Sir Robert Stanford (1806–1877). He was educated at
Eton College, and was admitted a pensioner of
Trinity College, Cambridge in 1832. He did not reside there, and was admitted to
Christ's College in 1834, matriculating in 1834, and graduating B.A. in 1838, M.A. in 1842.[2]
Stanford left £5,000 to the
University of Cambridge which went to support the creation of a dictionary of anglicised words which was finally published as Charles Fennell's Stanford Dictionary of Anglicised Words and Phrases.[5] The project was intended to complete his own Etymological Dictionary dealing with words and phrases from other languages adopted in English, a work that had consumed Stanford in the final years of his life.[6] Stanford had struggled to find a home for the project: it had been rejected by the
Philological Society in the 1870s[7] and, when it was offered to Cambridge,
Edward Byles Cowell,
Walter Skeat and
Aldis Wright all considered that the bequest should be rejected, but they were not in the majority when it came to a vote.[8]