William Stafford

Brigadier-General William Francis Howard Stafford (19 December 1854 – 8 August 1942) was a British Army officer who served with the Royal Engineers in various campaigns in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Towards the end of his career, he was in command of the South Irish coastal defences. In his youth, he was a keen amateur sportsman and played rugby football for England against Scotland in 1874 and association football for the Royal Engineers, being on the winning side in the 1875 FA Cup Final. Family and education Stafford was born at Hansi, in what is now the Indian state of Haryana, on 19 December 1854 into a military family. His father was William Joseph Fitzmaurice Stafford (c.1820–1887), a major-general in the Bengal Staff Corps, who was the son of Major-General John Stafford (1785–1846). John Stafford was the cousin of Berkeley Buckingham Stafford (1797–1847) (High Sheriff of Louth in 1828), the father of Sir Edward Stafford (1819–1901), who served three terms as the Prime Minister of New Zealand. Stafford's mother, Emily Mary (c.1832–1909) was the daughter of Major Gavin Young, Judge Advocate General with the East India Company. William's two brothers also joined the Royal Engineers. Henry Laurence Caulfeild Howard Stafford (1859–1948) retired in 1909 with the rank of lieutenant-colonel while their younger brother Edmund Hyde Boyle Whalley Howard Stafford (1868–1940) retired in 1912 as a major.