User:Queen of Hearts/Drafts/Robert F. Stanton

Robert Field Stanton (December 25, 1869 – ) was an American judge and politician who served as commissioner of the Baltimore Police Department from 1938 to 1943.

Early life
Robert Field Stanton was born December 25, 1869, on a farm near Granite, Maryland, one of five children. His family moved to Baltimore while he was a child, growing up in West Baltimore. After graduating from No. 21 Primary School and No. 21 Grammar School in Baltimore, he enrolled at Baltimore City College, however, he dropped out after four years, needing five to graduate. Inspired by a family physician, Stanton contemplated a career in medicine, however, he was convinced by a friend, who was in then-state senator and future U.S. Senator Isidor Rayner's office, to pursue a legal career.

Legal career
Stanton began his legal career as a clerk in the office of lawyer Charles E. Wilcox, where he gained an interest in law, beginning to read the works of English jurist William Blackstone. He enrolled at the University of Maryland School of Law, completing his three-year course there in two years.

After graduating from the University of Maryland School of Law, Stanton maintained a private practice, unsuccessfully running for the Supreme Bench of Baltimore as a Republican in 1911. In 1912, Governor of Maryland Phillips Lee Goldsborough appointed Stanton as counsel for the Baltimore Board of Police Commissioners, the predecessor to the modern commissioner of the Baltimore Police Department, which at the time consisted of Morris Ames Soper, Daniel C. Ammidon, and Alfred S. Niles.

In January 1916, following the death of judge Thomas Ireland Elliott, Goldsborough appointed Stanton to the Supreme Bench to fill Elliott's vacancy. In May 1917, a letter, signed by 500 lawyers, including several Supreme Bench officials and Democrats, convinced Stanton to run for a full 15-year term, which he won. Following the expiration of his term, he was appointed by Albert Ritchie, the Democratic Governor of Maryland, to rejoin the Supreme Bench until the next election in November 1934, in which he was elected for another 15-year term.

Personal life
Stanton married Mary Wallace Huber, a widow, in 1912.