On the death of Fleeming Jenkin, his family and friends determined to publish a selection of his various papers; by way of introduction, the following pages were drawn up; and the whole, forming two considerable volumes, has been issued in England.  In the States, it has not been thought advisable to reproduce the whole; and the memoir appearing alone, shorn of that other matter which was at once its occasion and its justification, so large an account of a man so little known may seem to a stran

The Jenkins of Stowting—Fleeming’s grandfather—Mrs. Buckner’s fortune—Fleeming’s father; goes to sea; at St. Helena; meets King Tom; service in the West Indies; end of his career—The Campbell-Jacksons—Fleeming’s mother—Fleeming’s uncle John. In the reign of Henry VIII., a family of the name of Jenkin, claiming to come from York, and bearing the arms of Jenkin ap Philip of St. Melans, are found reputably settled in the county of Kent.  Persons of strong genealogical pinion pass from William Jenki

Birth and Childhood—Edinburgh—Frankfort-on-the-Main—Paris—The Revolution of 1848—The Insurrection—Flight to Italy—Sympathy with Italy—The Insurrection in Genoa—A Student in Genoa—The Lad and his Mother. Henry Charles Fleeming Jenkin (Fleeming, pronounced Flemming, to his friends and family) was born in a Government building on the coast of Kent, near Dungeness, where his father was serving at the time in the Coastguard, on March 25, 1833, and named after Admiral Fleeming, one of his father’s pro

Return to England—Fleeming at Fairbairn’s—Experience in a Strike—Dr. Bell and Greek Architecture—The Gaskells—Fleeming at Greenwich—The Austins—Fleeming and the Austins—His Engagement—Fleeming and Sir W. Thomson. In 1851, the year of Aunt Anna’s death, the family left Genoa and came to Manchester, where Fleeming was entered in Fairbairn’s works as an apprentice.  From the palaces and Alps, the Mole, the blue Mediterranean, the humming lanes and the bright theatres of Genoa, he fell—and he was sh

Fleeming’s Marriage—His Married Life—Professional Difficulties—Life at Claygate—Illness of Mrs. F. Jenkin; and of Fleeming—Appointment to the Chair at Edinburgh. On Saturday, Feb. 26, 1859, profiting by a holiday of four days, Fleeming was married to Miss Austin at Northiam: a place connected not only with his own family but with that of his bride as well.  By Tuesday morning, he was at work again, fitting out cableships at Birkenhead.  Of the walk from his lodgings to the works, I find a graphi

‘Birkenhead: April 18, 1858. ‘Well, you should know, Mr. — having a contract to lay down a submarine telegraph from Sardinia to Africa failed three times in the attempt.  The distance from land to land is about 140 miles.  On the first occasion, after proceeding some 70 miles, he had to cut the cable—the cause I forget; he tried again, same result; then picked up about 20 miles of the lost cable, spliced on a new piece, and very nearly got across that time, but ran short of cable, and when but a

I have given this cruise nearly in full.  From the notes, unhappily imperfect, of two others, I will take only specimens; for in all there are features of similarity and it is possible to have too much even of submarine telegraphy and the romance of engineering.  And first from the cruise of 1859 in the Greek Islands and to Alexandria, take a few traits, incidents and pictures. ‘May 10, 1859. ‘We had a fair wind and we did very well, seeing a little bit of Cerig or Cythera, and lots of turtle-do

The next extracts, and I am sorry to say the last, are from Fleeming’s letters of 1860, when he was back at Bona and Spartivento and for the first time at the head of an expedition.  Unhappily these letters are not only the last, but the series is quite imperfect; and this is the more to be lamented as he had now begun to use a pen more skilfully, and in the following notes there is at times a touch of real distinction in the manner. ‘Cagliari: October 5, 1860. ‘All Tuesday I spent examining wha

And now I am quite at an end of journal keeping; diaries and diary letters being things of youth which Fleeming had at length outgrown.  But one or two more fragments from his correspondence may be taken, and first this brief sketch of the laying of the Norderney cable; mainly interesting as showing under what defects of strength and in what extremities of pain, this cheerful man must at times continue to go about his work. ‘I slept on board 29th September having arranged everything to start by

Of the 1869 cruise in the Great Eastern , I give what I am able; only sorry it is no more, for the sake of the ship itself, already almost a legend even to the generation that saw it launched. ‘ June 17, 1869.—Here are the names of our staff in whom I expect you to be interested, as future Great Eastern stories may be full of them: Theophilus Smith, a man of Latimer Clark’s; Leslie C. Hill, my prizeman at University College; Lord Sackville Cecil; King, one of the Thomsonian Kings; Laws, goes for

And here to make an end are a few random bits about the cruise to Pernambuco:— ‘ Plymouth , June 21, 1873.—I have been down to the sea-shore and smelt the salt sea and like it; and I have seen the Hooper pointing her great bow sea-ward, while light smoke rises from her funnels telling that the fires are being lighted; and sorry as I am to be without you, something inside me answers to the call to be off and doing. ‘ Lalla Rookh .  Plymouth , June 22.—We have been a little cruise in the yacht ove

In Edinburgh, for a considerable time, Fleeming’s family, to three generations, was united: Mr. and Mrs. Austin at Hailes, Captain and Mrs. Jenkin in the suburb of Merchiston, Fleeming himself in the city.  It is not every family that could risk with safety such close interdomestic dealings; but in this also Fleeming was particularly favoured.  Even the two extremes, Mr. Austin and the Captain, drew together.  It is pleasant to find that each of the old gentlemen set a high value on the good loo

Fleeming was all his life a lover of the play and all that belonged to it.  Dramatic literature he knew fully.  He was one of the not very numerous people who can read a play: a knack, the fruit of much knowledge and some imagination, comparable to that of reading score.  Few men better understood the artificial principles on which a play is good or bad; few more unaffectedly enjoyed a piece of any merit of construction.  His own play was conceived with a double design; for he had long been fill

It did not matter why he entered upon any study or employment, whether for amusement like the Greek tailoring or the Highland reels, whether from a desire to serve the public as with his sanitary work, or in the view of benefiting poorer men as with his labours for technical education, he ‘pitched into it’ (as he would have said himself) with the same headlong zest.  I give in the Appendix a letter from Colonel Fergusson, which tells fully the nature of the sanitary work and of Fleeming’s part a

It was as a student that I first knew Fleeming, as one of that modest number of young men who sat under his ministrations in a soul-chilling class-room at the top of the University buildings.  His presence was against him as a professor: no one, least of all students, would have been moved to respect him at first sight: rather short in stature, markedly plain, boyishly young in manner, cocking his head like a terrier with every mark of the most engaging vivacity and readiness to be pleased, full

He spoke four languages with freedom, not even English with any marked propriety.  What he uttered was not so much well said, as excellently acted: so we may hear every day the inexpressive language of a poorly-written drama assume character and colour in the hands of a good player.  No man had more of the vis comica in private life; he played no character on the stage, as he could play himself among his friends.  It was one of his special charms; now when the voice is silent and the face still,

Mrs. Jenkin’s Illness—Captain Jenkin—The Golden Wedding—Death of Uncle John—Death of Mr. and Mrs. Austin—Illness and Death of the Captain—Death of Mrs. Jenkin—Effect on Fleeming—Telpherage—The End. And now I must resume my narrative for that melancholy business that concludes all human histories.  In January of the year 1875, while Fleeming’s sky was still unclouded, he was reading Smiles.  ‘I read my engineers’ lives steadily,’ he writes, ‘but find biographies depressing.  I suspect one reason

In the beginning of the year 1859 my former colleague (the first British University Professor of Engineering), Lewis Gordon, at that time deeply engaged in the then new work of cable making and cable laying, came to Glasgow to see apparatus for testing submarine cables and signalling through them, which I had been preparing for practical use on the first Atlantic cable, and which had actually done service upon it, during the six weeks of its successful working between Valencia and Newfoundland. 

It was, I believe, during the autumn of 1877 that there came to Fleeming Jenkin the first inkling of an idea, not the least in importance of the many that emanated from that fertile brain, which, with singular rapidity, took root, and under his careful fostering expanded into a scheme the fruits of which have been of the utmost value to his fellow-citizens and others. The phrase which afterwards suggested itself, and came into use, ‘Healthy houses,’ expresses very happily the drift of this schem