Thomas Jodrell Phillips

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".Other notable signatories of the 1848 letter to Lord John Russell included: Thomas Agar-Robartes, 1st Baron Robartes; Baden Powell; Charles Darwin; Erasmus Alvey Darwin; Thomas Henry Farrer, 1st Baron Farrer; Edmund Walker Head, eighth baronet; James Heywood; John Stevens Henslow; Edward Horsman; Joseph Kay; Peter John Locke King; Charles Lyell; George Nugent-Grenville, 2nd Baron Nugent; Bonamy Price; Nassau William Senior; Hensleigh Wedgwood; Sir Harry Verney, 2nd Baronet; and Henry Galgacus Redhead Yorke; 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 . By 1874, he was a subscriber and member of the council of the early Charity Organisation Society, serving as an 'additional member' rather than as a representative of a London district and frequently attended their weekly meetings. He was also a subscriber to, and lifetime governor of, the Metropolitan Free Hospital and wrote letters to the Pall Mall Gazette and Daily News in remonstrance at the dismissal of Dr. John Chapman for publicly criticising inadequate out-patient facilities there.

He was one of the subscribers to the refurbishment and redecoration of Trinity College Chapel, Cambridge that took place between 1871 and 1875. One of the chapel windows is attributed to him and the eight figures depicted include saints Thomas and Philip.

The Royal Commission on Scientific Instruction was established in 1870 and published eight successive reports from 1871 through to 1875. Phillips Jodrell appears to have been influenced by its emerging recommendations. In 1874 he granted an endowment of to University College, London to fund a Professorship of Science, with a further £500 for equipment. This endowment was acknowledged in the final report of the commission. A succession of academics have since held the title Jodrell Professor of Physiology and Jodrell Professor of Zoology and Comparative Anatomy.

In 1874, the Royal Commission's fourth report noted the problems encountered in funding botanical physiological studies at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew raised by the garden's director Joseph Dalton Hooker and recommended: Phillips Jodrell's concern for his own health and the term "simple-minded" may have been an early indication of deteriorating mental health for, by 1878, his second endowment to UCL for a professorship of Zoology, was referred to the Masters in Lunacy for oversight. He died in Blagdon near Bristol on 3 September 1889. Probate was conducted 14 December 1889 and his personal estate valued at . He was succeeded by his nephew, Henry Richard Tomkinson, who made a deed of gift to his nephew, Edward Cotton-Jodrell, the only son of his sister, Sophia Ann.