He came from a family among the Society of Friends from the days of George Fox. His grandfather, Thomas Sturge, was one of the founders of the British and Foreign Bible Society. George Sturge, one of his uncles, left £500,000 to charity, and another uncle, Thomas Sturge, was an intimate friend of Lord Macaulay. Both were active in the movement for the abolition of slavery, as was his relative Joseph Sturge. On his mother’s side, he was descended from a noble French family, and Count Emerie de St. Dalmas was his maternal grandfather, whose eldest son converted to the Protestant Christian faith, and was consequently prevented by the law of those times from inheriting his father’s title and estates.