Jewitt as the eldest son of Arthur and Mary Jewitt. His mother was the daughter of Jonathan Priestley of Dronfield and she gave birth to Arthur in Sheffield on 7 March 1772. At the age of fourteen he was apprenticed to his father, a cutler.
Jewitt had read largely from youth, and now opened a private school. In 1794 he became master of a school at Chesterfield, and after several removals and changes was master of the Kimberworth school from 1814 to 1818, when he retired from educational work and removed to Duffield near Derby. There he remained until 1838, when he joined some of his family at Headington, near Oxford.
He died at Headington on his birthday, 7 March 1852.
