Thomas Jodrell Phillips Jodrell (4 October 1807 – 3 September 1889) was a nineteenth-century barrister, land-owner and philanthropist.
Family
Thomas Jodrell Phillips was born 4 October 1807 in Manchester, and was baptised at St Peter's Church (since demolished) on 9 November. His father, Shakespear Philips (1772–1855), of Barlow Hall, Lancashire, was a land-owner. His mother, Harriet (1780–1844), was the daughter of John Bower Jodrell, of Yeardsley, Cheshire, and Shallcross, Derbyshire.
He had three siblings that survived beyond infancy. His elder brother, Harry Shakespear Phillips, born 1805, pursued a military career, mostly with the 53rd Foot where two of his maternal uncles had served. Harry joined as an officer on a purchased commission achieving the rank of Lieutenant Colonel and was made Companion of the Order of the Bath. He saw action at Aliwal and Sobraon in 1846. Their eldest sister, Hannah Sophia, born 1802, married Revd. Henry Tomkinson in 1823 and whose eldest daughter, Sophia Ann, became the wife of George Cotton. The youngest sister, Frances Maria, did not marry.
Education
After attending school in Macclesfield he entered Trinity College, Cambridge in 1825 aged 18 and became a Scholar in 1827. In the summer of that year he spent the holidays in the Lake District as part of party from Cambridge with friends Charles Wordsworth and William Tyrrell. He continued his studies becoming B.A. (12th Wrangler and 2nd Classic) 1829. He was made a Fellow of Trinity in 1830, awarded M.A in 1832 and called to the bar in the Inner Temple on 20 November 1835.
He appears to have become a member of the Athenaeum Club before being called to the bar and retained membership for many years thereafter. He is recorded as one of the initial supporters of the formation of the Statistical Society in 1833, chaired by Robert Malthus, and gave the Athenaeum Club as his address.
Legal career
In both the 1841 and 1851 census he was resident in chambers in New Square, London, adjacent to Lincoln's Inn Fields, in the parish of Saint Clement Danes, London, along with many neighbouring barristers and, on both occasions, dwelling with Henry Edgar Austen, a nephew of Jane Austen. During this period he wrote Reports of cases argued and determined in the High court of chancery during the time of Lord Chancellor Lyndhurst : with a few during the time of Lord Chancellor Cottenham, volume 47 of English Reports. Whilst a practising barrister, his interests were clearly broader than those of his immediate profession and drew on his time at Trinity. In July 1848 he was one of 224 alumni of Oxford and Cambridge Universities, all signatories of a letter to Lord John Russell, then Prime Minister, requesting he advise Queen Victoria to "...issue Her Royal Commission of Inquiry into the best methods of securing the improvement of the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge". Royal commissions on Oxford and Cambridge Universities were subsequently established in 1850 and reported in 1852.
Inheritances and philanthropy
His brother, Harry Shakespear, died in 1849, unmarried and without issue, about the same time as having sold out of his commission and retired. Their father, Shakespear Phillips, died in 1855 and Thomas therefore inherited much of his estate.
By the 1861 census, living in High Street, Cotterstock, unmarried and with a domestic staff of six, he described himself as a "Landed proprietor and fundholder".
His maternal uncles all died without issue and thus on 4 June 1868, at the age of 61, Thomas became the main beneficiary of the Jodrell estate. In accordance with the conditions of the will, Thomas assumed the surname and arms of Jodrell, by Royal Licence, on 29 June 1868. His legal experience was brought to bear as he established his right to the income from the sale of timber from his newly acquired estates in Cheshire and Derbyshire against apportionment to other beneficiaries of the will. According to the 1883 edition of The Great Landowners of Great Britain and Ireland his estates measured in Cheshire and in Derbyshire and were valued at .