Thomas Edward Knowles Stansfield

Thomas Edward Knowles Stansfield, CBE (1862 – 19 February 1939) was a British pathologist of mental illnesses and medical officer. The son of a leather merchant from Todmorden, Stansfield trained in Medicine at the University of Edinburgh and graduated (MB) in 1889 with an interest in pathology. Shortly afterwards he took up a junior position at London County Council's Banstead Asylum, where he set about improving working practices and establishing a laboratory. He rose quickly through the ranks, and was appointed Senior Assistant Medical Officer at the new Claybury Asylum in 1893. Five years later, he was transferred to Bexley Mental Hospital as Superintendent, serving there until he retired in 1921.

Inspired by German and American examples, he successfully asked the council to construct a system of villas at Bexley, advocated the separate treatment of acute and chronic cases, and introduced parole-style rewards for 'industrious' patients. Like some of his earlier administrative innovations, villas became popular and inspired similar designs elsewhere. Stansfield also served in the Royal Army Medical Corps during World War I, and as a consultant on nervous diseases to the Eastern Command. Although he was appointed a CBE in the 1919 Birthday Honours for his war work, historians have drawn attention to his scepticism about shell shock, his attitudes towards eugenics and heredity, and his potentially misogynistic views about medical officers marrying. He nonetheless married twice, settling with his first wife at a house in Wimbledon where he enjoyed tending to the gardens; after her death, he married a second time in 1929 and moved to a villa in Sanremo, Italy, where he lived out his retirement.