Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Sandford, Francis Richard John
SANDFORD, FRANCIS RICHARD JOHN, first Lord Sandford (1824–1893), eldest son of Sir Daniel Keyte Sandford [q. v.], was born on 14 May 1824, and spent some years in the high school of Glasgow and the Grange School, an institution of repute kept by a Dr. Cowan at Sunderland. Thence he passed successively to the university of Glasgow, and, as Snell exhibitioner, to Balliol College, Oxford, where he matriculated, 10 March 1842. At Oxford he obtained a first class in the school of literæ humaniores (B.A. 1846, and M.A. 1858). In 1848 he entered the education office. In that office, with an interval in 1862, when he acted as organising secretary to the International Exhibition, and another from 1868 to 1870, in which he was assistant under-secretary in the colonial office, he remained until 1884. During the last fourteen years of this period he was, as secretary, the permanent head of the office, and performed work of the greatest value in the organisation of the national system of education created by Mr. Forster's act of 1870. He acted at the same time as secretary to the Scottish education department and to the science and art department, then combining duties which since his period of office have been discharged by separate officials. The work he performed in these capacities was appreciated by statesmen of all political parties. In 1884 he became a charity commissioner under the London Parochial Charities Act. In 1885 he acted as vice-chairman of the boundary commissioners under the Redistribution of Seats Act, and in the same year he became the first under-secretary for Scotland. He held that office until 1887. He was knighted in 1862, became C.B. in 1871, and K.C.B. in 1879; was created a privy councillor in 1885, and was called to the House of Lords as Lord Sandford of Sandford in 1891. The entail of the estate of Sandford in Shropshire, which has been owned by the family for eight hundred years, passed to him in 1892. He died on 31 Dec. 1893. He married, 1 Aug. 1849, Margaret, daughter of Robert Findlay, esq., of Botwich Castle, Dumbartonshire. He left no issue.
[Private information; Burke's Peerage and Landed Gentry; Men of the Time.]