MB ChB Manch 1926, MD 1933; FCPath 1964.
Sandiford, known as 'Sandi', was educated at Manchester Grammar School and Owens College, where he was editor of Manchester University Medical Students Gazette and president of the Medical Students' Representative Council and the Students' Union. After qualifying, Sandiford held junior appointments at MRI and the City Isolation Hospital, Stoke-on-Trent. He then began a career in pathology as assistant in the Public Health Laboratory, Manchester. Sandiford was assistant director of the clinical laboratory at MRI. He was later director of Public Health Laboratories in Cairo and Birmingham, and was professor of bacteriology at the University of Baghdad before moving to Malaysia as professor of bacteriology at the University of Malaya in Kuala Lumpar. In the 1970s Sandiford retired and returned to Lancashire.