James Jenkin
Mayor of Oxford 1881/2
James Jenkin (1827–1898) was baptised in St Peter-in-the-East Church, Oxford on 16 November 1825. Around the time of his birth his family name is always recorded as Jenkins, but it had settled to Jenkin by the middle of the century. He was the only son of the High Street tailor Gabriel Jenkin(s) and his wife Anne. His five sisters were also baptised at St Peter-in-the-East: Mary Anne (1825) Harriet (1831), Eliza (1833), Emma Adelaide (1835) and Fanny (1838).
James’s father Gabriel died at the age of 39 (before the baptism of his youngest child, Fanny) and was buried at St Peter-in-the-East Church on 1 April 1838. He was described as being of King Street, which is the part of the present Merton Street that runs up to the High: he may have had a shop on the site of the present Ruskin School of Drawing, and possibly took over the business of another tailor, Richard Dry.
At the time of the 1841 census, James and his five young sisters were living in St Peter-in-the-East parish with Mary Smith (publican of the Flying Horse, on the site of the present Eastgate Hotel) and the dressmaker Ann Smith. By the end of the decade James’s mother must have married a Mr Hoare, because James’s half-brother Alfred Edward Hoare was born in about 1850.
In 1851, when Jenkin was 23, he was still living in the parish of St Peter-in-the-East with his sister Harriet (20). They are described as a schoolmaster and schoolmistress and have three schoolboys aged 13 and 14 boarding with them.
Jenkins’s fortune changed when he married Caroline Hounslow at St Peter-in-the-East Church on 26 April 1859. She was the daughter of John Hounslow, who was a grocer and wine merchant at 68 High Street (the shop on the right of this postcard). Jenkin and his new wife moved in upstairs, and at the time of the 1861 he was still a teacher.
At some point between June 1862 and September 1863, Jenkin gave up teaching and took over the business from "the Radical grocer in High Street" (as Tuckwell describes Hounslow). By 1867 he had expanded into No. 67 (on the left of the postcard), which had also been occupied by the Hounslow family, and is listed in directories as a winemerchant as well as a grocer.
Jenkin and his wife Catherine baptised seven children at St Peter-in-the-East Church: George James (7 June 1861, died in infancy), Harriet Emily (18 June 1862), Walter Hounslow (24 September 1863), Herbert (18 April 1865), Sarah (18 November 1866), Kate (4 August 1869), and Caroline (25 March 1873).
At the time of the 1871 census James Jenkin (then aged 43) is described as a grocer employing three men and one boy. Living over the shop with him are his wife Caroline (37) and four of their children: Harriet (8), Herbert (5), Sarah (4), and Kate (1), plus a grocer’s shopman and two servants. Ten years later the family was much the same: Jenkin’s son Herbert (15) was still at school, and also living in the house was Jenkin’s half-brother, Alfred Edward Hoare, described as a grocer’s assistant. Later in 1881, Jenkin was elected Mayor of Oxford.
By 1891, Jenkin is described as a wine merchant as well as a grocer. He and Caroline were still living over the shop, and had two children at home: Herbert, now 25 and described as a grocer’s assistant, and Caroline, who was still at school at the advanced age of 18. The family now had a 16-year-old servant.
Because he was an Alderman when the new Town Hall was opened (1897), Jenkin’s head is carved in stone in the Council Chamber corridor (right). He was Chairman of the Oxford Board of Guardians for 24 years, from 1874 until his death.
Jenkin died at 68 High Street at the age of 70 and was buried at St Peter-in-the-East Church on 2 June 1898. His wife Caroline continued to live over the shop until her death at the age of 77 in 1912, while the grocery business was taken over by his only son, Herbert, who kept it going until 1923.
See also:
- Jackson’s Oxford Journal, 11 June 1898, pp. 2f, 5e (eulogy about his role on the Board of Guardians)
- 1841 Census: Oxford (St Peter in East), 891/16/5
- 1851 Census: Oxford (St Peter in East), 1728/12
- 1861 Census: Oxford (St Peter in East), 893/84
- 1871 Census: Oxford (St Peter in East), 1437/90
- 1881 Census: Oxford (St Peter in East), 1501/83
- 1891 Census: Oxford (St Peter in East), 1167/88