Has a blue plaque in Paradise Square, Oxford

Foster - Dr John Stansfield - Arrived at CMS Maseno hospital in 1926 and in Jan 1927 he took charge of Maseno School

See web http://www.headington.org.uk/history/famous_people/stansfeld.htm for a full biog.:

Stansfeld left school shortly after that census [1871] to work in an engineering office. After several jobs in the City, he entered the Civil Service, for which he was to work for 30 years. John decided to study Medicine in his spare time: on 4 November 1886 he was matriculated at the University of Oxford by Exeter College. He was a non-collegiate member (so lived in his own home), and was awarded his BA on 6 July 1889. Stansfeld sat his first MB examination in 1893. After a period working in Glasgow and London, he qualified at Charing Cross Hospital, and in 1897 founded the Oxford Medical Mission in Bermondsey, where, as a condition for receiving free medical treatment, young men and boys were asked to attend a Bible Class on the following Sunday.

The 1901 census shows him as a single man of 45 living in Bermondsey and described as “Physician & Surgeon, Oxford Medical Mission”.

On 16 June 1902 at All Souls, Langham Place, London, John Stedwell Stansfeld (46) married Janet Marples (32). They had two children:

• John Gordon Stansfeld (born in Bermondsey in 1903 and baptised at St Mary Magdalene Church there on 24 June)
• Phyllis Janet Stansfeld, known as Janet (born in Bermondsey on 18 November 1904).

Until 1909 Stansfield continued to earn his living by day as a clerk in the Civil Service, but that year he decided to take Orders.

Stansfeld left London because of his daughter Janet’s ill-health, and served as Vicar of St Ebbe’s, Oxford from 1912 to 1926, where he organized clubs and helped the unemployed of the area. In September 1914 the Revd Stansfeld, Rector of St Ebbe's, was also appointed to the rectory of St Peter-le-Bailey (held together).

By 1922 St Ebba's Priory was already being used by children from outside Oxford, as the Oxford Journal Illustrated of 26 July that year has four photographs of girl guides from London staying there, showing them doing the morning wash, chopping wood, cooking, and following their leader.

His wife Janet died of influenza at the age of 47 on 29 October 1918 and was buried at St Ebbe’s Church in Oxford four days later. (Her obituary appears in the Oxford Journal Illustrated on 6 November 1918.) Stansfeld used the money that they had been saving for a trip to the Holy Land to buy 20 acres of land off Quarry Road in Headington in order to give the children from the St Ebbe’s slums a chance of camping in the countryside at the weekend. This land, which he called St Ebba’s after his church, later became known as the Stansfeld Outdoor Centre.

In mid-1926 Stansfeld, who was now aged 72, resigned the Rectory of St Ebbe’s Church. He remained Rector of St Peter-le-Bailey, but obtained one year's leave to go to Uganda for mission work.In the event Stansfeld spent three years in Kenya setting up a mission school, not returning to England until 1929, when he was given a country living in Spelsbury. John Stedwell Stansfeld died at Spelsbury vicarage on 17 December 1939 at the age of 85. His effects came to £559 16s. 8d.