Author: Stanfield, James Field
Biography:
STANFIELD, James Field (1749-1824: ODNB)
Although no documentary evidence has been discovered, he is believed to have been born in Dublin to an Irish Catholic family, and to have been educated in France. He was intended for the priesthood but chose to become a mariner and sailed on a slaving voyage to Benin in 1774. He worked there for a time before travelling to the Caribbean in 1775; during the voyage a number of slaves and European sailors died, and the journey was the foundation for Stanfield’s later anti-slavery writings. He is known to have returned to Liverpool in 1776 and in the 1780s he became a travelling actor. In 1785 he married Mary Hoad, also an actor, at Cheltenham. They toured the northern circuit with a group of travelling players (Stanfield was joint-manager of the company), and eventually settled in Sunderland where he set up as a brandy merchant (1793-96), founded a subscription library, and became a freemason (some of his anti-slavery poems were printed in the Freemasons’ Magazine). He and Mary had a number of children (a son, Clarkson, became a well-known painter and Royal Academician), but she died in 1801. Later in the same year he married Maria Field Kell (d Edinburgh 1816); they also had children. He died at Lambeth, and was buried at St. Mary’s, Lambeth. He wrote other works, and The Guinea Voyage was preceded in 1788 by Observations on a Guinea Voyage, in a Series of Letters Addressed to the Revd Thomas Clarkson. He reprinted both in one volume in 1807. A biography, Life of the Late John Howard, was issued anonymously in 1790 and his Essay on the Study and Composition of Biography was published by subscription in 1813. He left an unpublished comic opera in manuscript at his death. (ODNB 30 Sept. 2020; ancestry.co.uk 30 Sept. 2020) SR