Edward Jenkins (MP)

[2][4] Edward's uncles included David James Jenkins, the MP for Penryn and Falmouth, and Rev.

[5] He then moved to London, where he studied law with a conveyancer, Mr. Raymond,[5] and was called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn in the Michaelmas term, 1864.

[2] The review of Lord Bantam in The Times newspaper in 1872 describes a political novel telling the story of a young nobleman of radical politics who enters Parliament supporting a redistribution of land and power, but who promptly abandons his radicalism when he inherits his father's peerage and large estates.

[6] The reviewer denounces the book as a vehicle for "Red Republican opinions", and remarks that the author wants the reader to conclude that "the working classes need never expect to derive any permanent advancement from the Radical professions of young lords who have such a stake in the existing institutions of the country".

[6] Jenkins supported the campaigns of the Warwickshire agricultural trade unionist Joseph Arch, and his novel Little Hodge (1873) dealt with the plight of landless labourers in England.

He travelled in 1870 to Guiana on behalf of the English Benevolent Society, to "report of the condition of the coolies"[3] (i.e. indentured labourers).

[3] His duties in that role were clarified to the House of Commons of Canada in May 1874 by the Canadian Prime Minister Alexander Mackenzie, who said that Jenkins would have surveillance of the Canadian emigration business in London, would occasionally be asked to attend to other business of a confidential nature.