Sir Benjamin Charles Stephenson, GCH (1766 – 10 June 1839)[1] was a British courtier and government official in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.
[1] In 1803, he was appointed Deputy Judge Advocate of the South West District, and later served on a commission on military expenditure.
As Surveyor-General, in 1829, he commissioned Sir John Soane to design the New State Paper Office in Duke Street, east of London's St James's Park, as a purpose-built repository for national records in England (superseded in 1856 by Sir James Pennethorne's Public Record Office in Chancery Lane, and demolished in 1862).
[1] He married Marie Rivers in 1805,[1] and they had six daughters and two sons: William Henry (18 November 1811-1 March 1898) who became chairman of the Board of the Inland Revenue (1862-1877) and was private secretary to British Prime Minister Sir Robert Peel (1841-1846), and Frederick Charles Arthur (1821-1911) who became a prominent British Army officer.
[3][4] William Henry's son, also named Benjamin Charles Stephenson was a prominent English dramatist, lyricist and librettist.