He and his older brother Thomas Hodgkin were educated at home, partly by their father; John Stuart Mill was one of the few associates of their boyhood.
[1] John Hodgkin became a pupil of George Harrison, a Quaker conveyancer, of the school of Richard Preston and Peter Bellinger Brodie.
[4] Hodgkin rarely appeared in court except to uphold an opinion which he had given on a disputed question of title; and at the age of 43, after a serious illness, he retired from the legal profession, and devoted the remainder of his life to religious and philanthropic work.
[1] At the time of the Irish famine of 1845–6 Hodgkin assisted in the work of the relief committees established by Quakers in Dublin and London.
He also had a large share in the preparation of the Encumbered Estates Act (1849), a measure which, as he hoped, would remove some of the economic troubles under which Ireland was labouring.