Joseph Jekyll

Who is Joseph Jekyll?

Joseph Jekyll FRS was a British Member of Parliament for Calne, Wiltshire.

He was the eldest son of Capt. Edward Jekyll, R.N., of Haverfordwest and educated at Westminster School and Christ Church, Oxford, where he was awarded BA in 1774 and MA in 1777. He trained for the law at Lincoln's Inn from 1769 and was called to the bar in 1778.

He was elected in 1790 a Fellow of the Royal Society as "a Gentleman conversant in various Branches of Literature".

He was made Bencher at the Inner Temple in 1805, reader in 1814 and treasurer in 1816. He was appointed solicitor-general to the Prince of Wales and made King's Counsel in 1805.

In 1787 he was elected Member of Parliament for Calne, a seat he held until 1816, after which he resigned by accepting the notional crown appointment as Steward of the Chiltern Hundreds.

He died in London in 1837. He had married in 1801 Maria, the daughter of MP Hans Sloane, with whom he had two sons.