Background
The son of John Hodgkin, he was born at Pentonville, London, on 11 March 1800.
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John Hodgkin
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His youth and middle life were passed at Tottenham. John Hodgkin became a pupil of George Harrison, a Quaker conveyancer, of the school of Richard Preston and Peter Bellinger Brodie. As a conveyancer Hodgkin was in the same tradition, which aimed at concision, at a time when legal documents were still often diffuse.
He obtained a large practice, but was best known as a teacher of the law.
His chambers had many pupils, with whom he read for an hour daily. They included Joseph Bevan Braithwaite, James Hope-Scott (who was also with William Plunkett of the Temple), and Frederick Prideaux.
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.
He visited Quaker congregations in Ireland, France, and America, and was for two years clerk to their yearly meeting.
He struggled long, but in the end unsuccessfully, to introduce improved methods of fishing among the seafaring population of the Claddagh near Galway. He also had a large share in the preparation of the Encumbered Estates Acting (1849), a measure which, as he hoped, would remove some of the economic troubles under which Ireland was labouring. The position of one of the judges of the court founded by this act was offered to him by Lord John Russell, but he declined lieutenant
Hodgkin moved at the age of 58 to Lewes, where he resided.
During the last ten or twelve years of his life he took an active part in the proceedings of the Social Science congress. He died at Bournemouth on 5 July 1875, aged 75.
Hodgkin was three times married, and left issue by each marriage. Their daughter Mariabella married Edward Fry.
Elizabeth married Alfred Waterhouse.
And the other son was John Eliot Hodgkin, engineer and antiquary.
