After education at the grammar schools of Woodbridge and Botesdale, he was apprenticed to his father in August 1845; but matriculated at Pembroke College, Oxford, on 22 June 1848, where among his undergraduate friends were the future novelists Henry Kingsley and Arthur Locker.
[1] After years of poor health, which brought his work to an end, Jeaffreson died on 2 February 1901 at his house in Maida Vale, and was buried in Paddington Old Cemetery, Willesden Lane.
[1] Jeaffreson initially wrote novels, publishing Crewe Rise in 1854 and next year Hinchbrook, which ran as a serial in Fraser's Magazine.
During the next thirty years a long series of orthodox three-volume novels followed; Live it Down (1863) and Not Dead Yet (1864) were well received on publication.
Novels and Novelists from Elizabeth to Victoria (1858), compiled at the British Museum, opened up a popularising vein that became Jeaffreson's main work, leading to:[1] On the recommendation of Hepworth Dixon, Jeaffreson collaborated with William Pole on the authorised biography of Robert Stephenson (1864, 2 vols.).
Apart from private collections, he dealt with the archives of the cities and boroughs of Chester, Leicester, Pontefract, Barnstaple, Plymouth, Ipswich, Wisbech, Great Yarmouth, Eye, Southampton, and King's Lynn, as well as of the West Riding and North Riding of Yorkshire and the county of Essex.
[1] His other main works were:[1] Jeaffreson married Arabella Ellen, only surviving daughter of William Eccles, F.R.C.S., on 2 October 1860, at the church of St Sepulchre-without-Newgate, Holborn.