An amateur, he won the FA Cup with Old Etonians in 1882 and made one appearance for England in 1882 playing as a goalkeeper, before serving as a Member of Parliament for Cambridge University from 1906 to 1926.

The youngest son of Sir Christopher Rawlinson, a former Chief Justice of Madras, John Rawlinson was born in New Alresford, Hampshire and educated at Twyford School, and Eton College, before going up to Trinity College, Cambridge where he won a Cambridge University football "Blue" in 1882 and 1883.

[2] He continued to play for the Old Etonians whilst at university, helping them reach three successive FA Cup finals from 1881 to 1883, losing out 3–0 to Old Carthusians in 1881 and going down to a surprise 2–1 defeat to Blackburn Olympic in 1883.

He was co-author with his father of "Rawlinson's Municipal Corporations' Acts" (1883), which became a standard work on the local government laws and went into ten editions.

[6] Rawlinson died on 14 January 1926, unmarried,[2] at his chambers in 5 Crown Office Row, Temple, London, after ten days' illness with pleurisy[6] aged 65, and was buried at Brookwood Cemetery, Woking, Surrey.