He was born at Brompton in Middlesex in 1830, the eldest son of Richard and Mary Sankey (née Boys).
His father was a Church of England clergyman at Farnham in Surrey and Witney in Oxfordshire, and Sankey was educated at The King's School, Canterbury.
[1][2][3][4] Whilst still at school he played in a first-class cricket match for Cambridge University, playing against the Gentlemen of Kent at the St Lawrence Ground during the 1848 Canterbury Cricket Week,[4][5] probably as a late replacement for another player.
[1][2][7] He was chaplain at Pegli in Genoa from 1869 to 1872 before moving to Montreux in Switzerland where he was minister at St John's Anglican church between 1879 and 1907.
[8][9] Sankey wrote Prayers for Church Families and two catechism texts, Catechetical and Devotional Manual and Catechism of Old Testament History,[7][10] a text which was designed for use in Sunday Schools and was considered "second to none" by The Literary Churchman in 1858.