# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Sandford, John (1801-1873)

​SANDFORD, JOHN (1801–1873), divine, born on 22 March 1801, was the third son of Daniel Sandford [q. v.], bishop of Edinburgh. Sir Daniel Keyte Sandford [q. v.] ​was an elder brother. He was educated at the high school, Edinburgh, and Glasgow University, before proceeding to Balliol College, Oxford, where he matriculated on 22 June 1820. He graduated B.A. in 1824, with a first-class in literis humanioribus, and proceeded M.A. in 1841 and B.D. in 1845. Ordained in 1824, he was appointed successively to the vicarage of Chillingham, Northumberland (1827), the chaplaincy of Long Acre, London, and the rectories of Dunchurch (1836) and Hallow, and of Alvechurch, near Bromsgrove (1854) (cf. Foster, Index Ecclesiasticus, p. 156). In 1844 he was named honorary canon of Worcester, and acted for a time as warden of Queen's College, Birmingham. In 1851 he became archdeacon of Coventry in the same diocese, being also examining chaplain to the bishop of Worcester from 1853 to 1860. In 1861 he delivered the Bampton lectures at Oxford, the subject being ‘The Mission and Extension of the Church at Home.’ They were published in 1862.
Sandford was an active member of the lower house of convocation, and was chairman of its committees on intemperance and on the preparation of a church hymnal. His report on the former subject was the first step towards the formation of the Church of England Temperance Society. In 1863–4 he was a member of the commission for the revision of clerical subscription, being himself an advocate of relaxation. In politics he was a liberal. Among his intimate friends was Archbishop Tait. He died at Alvechurch in 1873, on his seventy-second birthday (22 March). Besides sermons, lectures, and charges, Sandford published ‘Remains of Bishop Sandford’ (his father), 1830, 2 vols.; ‘Psalms, Paraphrases, and Hymns, adapted,’ 1837, 12mo; ‘Parochialia, or Church, School, and Parish,’ 1845, 8vo; ‘Vox Cordis, or Breathings of the Heart,’ 1849, 12mo; ‘Social Reforms, or the Habits, Dwellings, and Education of our People,’ 1867–72, 8vo. He also edited and contributed a preface to ‘Prize Essays on Free-worship and Finance,’ 1865, 8vo. Sandford's portrait, as well as that of his two brothers, was painted by Watson Gordon.
Sandford was twice married, and left five sons and two daughters. His first wife, Elizabeth (d. 1853), daughter of Richard Poole, esq., and niece of Thomas Poole [q. v.], Coleridge's friend, was author of ‘Woman in her Social and Domestic Character,’ 1831, 12mo (Amer. edit. 1837), 7th edit. 1858; ‘Lives of English Female Worthies,’ vol. i. 1833, 12mo; ‘On Female Improvement,’ 2 vols. 8vo, 1836, 4th edit. 1848. She died at Dunchurch, near Rugby, in 1803. His second wife was Anna, widow of David, Lord Erskine, and eldest daughter of William Cunninghame Graham of Gartmore, Stirling.
His eldest son, Henry Ryder Poole Sandford (1827–1883), an inspector of schools from 1862, wrote pamphlets dealing with labour and education in the Potteries, and married a daughter of Gabriel Stone Poole, esq., a cousin of Thomas Poole; she published ‘Thomas Poole and his Friends,’ 2 vols. 8vo, 1888. The second son, Charles Waldegrave Sandford (b. 1828), became bishop of Gibraltar in 1874; the third, John Douglas Sandford (b. 1833), became chief judge in Mysore; and the fifth, Ernest Grey (b. 1840), was made archdeacon of Exeter in 1888.
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