Author: Jones, Jenkin
Biography:
JONES, Jenkin (1770-1856: ancestry.com)
Born 24 May 1770, he was baptised 10 June at St James, Piccadilly, the youngest of the three boys of a wealthy jeweler and goldsmith, Jenkin Jones, of Park Place, Westminster, and his wife, Elizabeth (Scutt) Jones. He was admitted in 1778 to Westminster School, where his brothers Benjamin Scutt Jones and Nathaniel Jones also were educated. In 1812, in a church in the Irish diocese of Cork and Ross, he married Hellen Hastie (b 1789) of Cork. Their son, Jenkin, followed him into the navy. How he became a naval surgeon is unknown, but he is recorded in that capacity aboard HMS Marlborough in 1790. On 4 June 1798, he was gazetted lieutenant in the royal navy. He was surgeon aboard HMS Atlas on duty in the West Indies from Jan. 1805 to Sept. 1806. He was an officer, though not the surgeon, aboard the 60-gun warship HMS Newcastle when it arrived at St Helena in June 1817. In the following year, he graduated M.D. from Glasgow University. Jones was a member of the Society for Promoting Natural History and an honorary life governor of the Humane Society (he wrote The Philanthropist to benefit the latter organization). He was able to dedicate Pros and Cons for Cupid and Hymen to Viscount Melville because Melville’s private secretary was his uncle, William Cabell. Several Old Westminsters subscribed to his Hobby Horses (1797 or 1798): MP Henry, Lord Gage; Francis Russell, Duke of Bedford; Francis Osborne, Duke of Leeds; Lord Paget, Marquess of Anglesey; and Lord John Russell, Duke of Bedford. It was probably through the Russell family that he made the acquaintance of Harriet Ponsonby, Countess of Bessborough and her sister, Georgianna Cavendish, and of the Duchess of Devonshire and her close friend, Lady Elizabeth Foster. He also garnered subscriptions from Francis Robson, acting governor of St Helena, and his family; from General Sir Robert Abercrombie, commander-in-chief at Bombay; and from astronomer and mathematician Dr James Dinwiddie of Bengal. He died at his residence, 51 Russell Square, Brighton, on 9 Mar. 1856. (ancestry.com 7 Dec. 2023; Westminster School Archive online 7 Dec. 2023; PROB 11/2230/145; Medical Times and Gazette 12 [1856], 299; GM 61 [1856], 438; Roll of Graduates of the University of Glasgow [1898], 299) JC