Stanley took an active interest in the welfare of the native races of India. His knowledge of Indian life and institutions was wide, and he maintained a constant correspondence with educated Indians and regularly studied Indian newspapers. He was always ready to bring Indian grievances before the party leaders, the press, or parliament. He was a warm supporter of the National Congress movement, and would often quote the Arabic proverb that 'a child that does not cry gets no milk.' To Indians resident in England he was a friend and frequent host. He was a keen sportsman and a strict total abstainer, closing three inns on his Alderley estate. Stanley died at Alderley from pneumonia on 10 Dec. 1903. He was buried, by his own desire, in Alderley Park with Moslem rites, the Imam of the Turkish embassy officiating. His death was announced to the Indian National Congress, which was meeting at the time, and the assembly, numbering 1800 persons, rose as a mark of respect. He married in August 1862 Fabia, daughter of Don Santiago Federico San Roman of Seville, by whom he left no children. Lady Stanley survived her husband till 15 May 1905. His eldest surviving brother, Edward Lyulph, succeeded him in the peerage.
Besides the works mentioned Stanley edited:
- 'Rouman Anthology,' 1856.
- 'Essays on East and West,' 1865.
He translated for the Hakluyt Society: ’Barbosa's Description of the Coasts of E. Africa and Malabar in the 16th Century,' from the Spanish (1865); 'The Philippine Islands, Moluccas, etc.,' from the Spanish (1868); 'Vasco da Gama's Three Voyages,' from the Portuguese (1869); ’Barbaro and Contarini's Travels to Tana and Persia,' from the Italian (1873); 'Magellan's First Voyage round the World' (1874); 'Alvarez' Narrative of the Portuguese Embassy to Abyssinia, 1520-1527,' from the Portuguese (1881). He also translated Lamennais's ’Essay on Religious Indifierence' (1895), and wrote introductions to Hockley's 'Tales of the Zenana' (1874) and Plumer-Ward's 'Rights and Duties of Belligerents and Neutrals' (1875). He was a contributor to the 'Nineteenth Century' and a constant writer of letters to the 'Morning Post.'
[G. E. C[okayne]'s Peerage; Burke's Peerage; Reis and Rayyet, 9 Jan. 1904; family information; personal knowledge.]
STANLEY, Sir HENRY MORTON (1841–1904), explorer, administrator, author and journalist, was born at Denbigh on 29 June 1841. He was the son of John Rowlands of Llys, near Denbigh, and of Elizabeth Parry, the daughter of a small butcher and grazier of that town. The boy was baptised at Tremeirchion church in the name of John Rowlands. His father died in 1843; his paternal grandfather, a well-to-do farmer, declined to have anything to do with him, and he was left to the care of his mother's relatives.
His boyhood was hard and loveless. His mother, who had gone to service in London and afterwards married again, he seldom saw; and he was boarded out with an old couple who lived within the precincts of Denbigh Castle, his maternal uncles paying half-a-crown a week for his maintenance. In 1847 the weekly subsidy was withdrawn, and he was taken to St. Asaph workhouse. Here he spent nine years, exposed to the brutal tyranny of the workhouse schoolmaster, John Francis, a savage ruffian who ended his career in a lunatic asylum. He seems, however, to have taught his victims something. Young Rowlands read the Bible and the religious biographies and romances in the school library; and he also learnt a little geography, arithmetic, drawing, and singing, as well as gardening, tailoring, and joiner's work. His energy of character developed early. In May 1856 the boy wrested a rod from the hands of the brutal schoolmaster, and thrashed him soundly. Then he ran away from the workhouse, and took refuge with his Denbigh relatives. One of his cousins, the master of the National school at Brynford, employed him as a pupil teacher, and taught him some mathematics, Latin, and English grammar. Nine months later he was helping an aunt who kept a farm and inn near Tremeirchion, whence he passed to some other relatives, working-people in Liverpool. He got a place in a haberdasher's shop, and then at a butcher's till he shipped as a cabin-boy in the winter of 1859 on board an American packet bound for New Orleans.
He received no wages for the voyage, and stepped ashore, friendless and penniless. Walking along the streets of New Orleans in search of work, he attracted the notice of a kindly cotton-broker named Henry Stanley, who obtained a situation for him in a store. Mr. Stanley took to the boy from the first, made him free of his house, and eventually adopted him as his son, intending to prepare him for a mercantile career. John Rowlands, thenceforward and for the remainder of his life known by his benefactor's name, spent two happy
