Well known Yorkshire Naturalist. After leaving school he joined the staff of Hull Municipal Museum where he developed a particular interest in entomology. Studied at the Technical College in the evenings and took London University degrees in both Arts and Science. He gave courses of lectures to school children before joining the Forces in 1916.  After the War he was assigned to the Hull Education Committee as a lecturer in Nature Study when he organised excursions to places in the neighbourhood, and this led in 1929 to a full-time position as a Lecturer at the Technical College. Joined the local Geological Society and the Scientific and Field Naturalists Club, and was Chairman of the Coleoptera and Arachnida Committee of the Yorkshire Naturalists Union.

Stainforth's obituary by G.B Walsh in Annual Report of the Yorkshire Philosophical Society, 1944, 7-8 (includes portrait photograph), states that he publisherd many papers and notes in the Society's Transactions including a list of East Yorkshire Coleoptera and an account of Yorkshire Donacines. Of this last group Walsh notes that 'even so late as last October' he showed a display of the Yorkshire species 'of which he had made a special study as regards life-history'. Walsh also makes clear that the Coleoptera were his particular interest 'and in company with is family and especially his son, he had traveled in France, Spain and Switzerland, collecting specimens'.

Simms (1968) records a collection of 10,000 British insects, mostly Coleoptera mainly from East Anglia, in the Yorkshire Museum acquired in 1944. An earlier extensive collection deposited in the Hull Museum is referred to in the Annual report of the Yorkshire Philosophical Society, 1944, as being destroyed by enemy action in 1943. This account also mentions that during the final stages of his terminal illness 'he expressed the wish to Mrs. Stainforth that his collections should be divided between our own and the Hull Museum. Realising that the piecemeal distribution of so much undetermined and understudied material between the two institutions would seriously reduce the scientific value of the collection and moreover defeat the intentions of Stainforth, the Hon. Curator [Walter Douglas Hincks] sought and obtained permission for the whole of the material to come to our museum. An arrangement was made with the sanction and approval of the Keeper, with Mr Fay, The Director of the Hull Museums, whereby a duplicate set of the Stainforth material, together with such other duplicates as we could spare, would be provided as soon as the material could be adequately studied, for the rehabilitation of the Hull Museum’s collections. The Stainforth collection was received during August, in many small and large boxes roughly computed to contain some 10,000 specimens. Most of these are Coleoptera including some valuable and interesting species together with some material in other orders, the whole being particularly important on account of the proportion of Yorkshire specimens.' I am grateful to Adam Parker for bringing  Stainforth to my attention and for this reference. He reports the current situation that Stainforth’s collection 'has been split and some is certainly damaged'.   (MD 12/21)