He attended King's College School, Wimbledon from 1842 to 1848, and entered St Bartholomew's Hospital as a student during the 1849/50 session.

Jones qualified MRCS (Member of the Royal College of Surgeons) in 1852 and practised medicine as a general practitioner (GP) until 1869 when he changed tack and became a full-time writer on games and sport.

[1] Jones became widely known as "Cavendish"[a] and wrote extensively in The Field, the world's original country and fieldsports magazine, which was founded in 1853.

As "Cavendish" he also wrote on billiards, lawn tennis and croquet, and contributed articles on whist and other table games to the ninth edition (1889) of the Encyclopædia Britannica.

The only tournament of the inaugural 1877 Wimbledon Championship was the Gentlemen's Singles, which was won from a field of 22 competitors by Spencer Gore, an old Harrovian rackets player.