Robert Stanton

Robert Stanton (4 January 17933 May 1833) was a British businessman, a looking-glass maker and banker who served for two years as a Tory Member of Parliament for the former English parliamentary constituency of Penryn in Cornwall.

After failing as a banker he did not stand again for Parliament. In 1827 he was committed to King's Bench Prison for debt, and was released before he died.

Early life Born in 1793, Stanton was the eldest son of Robert Stanton, a looking-glass manufacturer, of Islington Green and Lombard Street. His mother was Eleanor, a daughter of John Mason, originally from Spilsby.

By 1794, Stanton's father was in business making looking-glasses in Lombard Street, until about 1815 with a partner called Wilcoxon, and later as a partner in a firm called "Wilcoxon, Stanton and Co." Stanton's mother died in 1809, leaving nine children.

In the ensuing by-election campaign, the press in Cornwall described Stanton as a banker from London, and according to his own later evidence he had embarked on that career a few months before. Standing as a Tory, he found himself up against a local candidate supported by the corporation of the borough. Polling went on for three days, 300 votes were cast, and Stanton won by six votes,

The House of Commons has no record of Stanton speaking in debates, but he voted against Catholic emancipation on 1 March 21 April, and 10 May 1825.

Debtors' prison

On 6 February 1827, Stanton was arrested on an action for a debt of £900 owed to a bank in Falmouth, money lent to him at the outset of his election campaign. On 10 February he was committed to the King's Bench Prison, but he was released on 20 February, having compromised to settle the debt at fourteen shillings in the pound. On the final day of the election, the marshal of the prison sent in troops, in the hope of preventing a chairing, and some men, including Stanton, found themselves in "close confinement".

Benjamin Robert Haydon,The Mock Election, 1827. The painter Benjamin Robert Haydon was himself in the prison for debt at the time and later painted two canvases to mark the occasion, Chairing the Member and The Mock Election. Stanton appears in the second, "attired in the quilt of his bed, and in a yellow turban... pointing, without looking at his opponent, with a sneer". Wearing a blue rosette on his turban, Stanton was one of three candidates, the others being the "Lord Mayor of King's Gate Prison", with a yellow and blue rosette, and an Irishman, Joseph Meredith, wearing a red rosette, who is being instructed in the art of boxing by Henry Hold, a well-known pugilist.