Early Life | Fleeming Jenkins (1833 -1885)
The only child of this union was Henry Charles Fleeming Jenkin, generally called Fleeming Jenkin, after Admiral Fleeming, one of his father's patrons. He was born on March 25, 1833, in a building of the Government near Dungeness, his father at that time being on the coastguard service. His versatility was evidently derived from his mother, who, owing to her husband's frequent absence at sea and his weaker character, had the principal share in the boy's earlier training.
Jenkin was fortunate in having an excellent education. His mother took him to the south of Scotland, where, chiefly at Barjarg, she taught him drawing among other things, and allowed him to ride his pony on the moors. He went to school at Jedburgh, and afterwards to the Edinburgh Academy, where he carried off many prizes. Among his schoolfellows were Clerk Maxwell and Peter Guthrie Tait, the friends of his mature life.
On the retirement of his father the family removed to Frankfort in 1847, partly from motives of economy and partly for the boy's instruction. Here Fleeming and his father spent a pleasant time together, sketching old castles, and observing the customs of the peasantry. Fleeming was precocious, and at thirteen had finished a romance of three hundred lines in heroic measure, a Scotch novel, and innumerable poetical fragments, none of which are now extant. He learned German in Frankfort ; and on the family migrating to Paris the following year, he studied French and mathematics under a certain M. Deluc. While here, Fleeming witnessed the outbreak of the Revolution of 1848, and heard the first shot. In a letter written to an old schoolfellow while the sound still rang in his ears, and his hand trembled with excitement, he gives a boyish account of the circumstances. The family were living in the Rue Caumartin, and on the evening of February 23 he and his father were taking a walk along the boulevards, which were illuminated for joy at the resignation of M. Guizot They passed the residence of the Foreign Minister, which was guarded with troops, and further on encountered a band of rioters marching along the street with torches and singing the Marseillaise. After them came a rabble of men and women of all sorts, rich and poor, some of them armed with sticks and sabres. They turned back with these; the boy delighted with the spectacle.
Excerpted from Heroes of the Telegraph by J. Munro, publication date 1891, digitized by Google, Public Domain USA . Online at archive.org
Drawing of the first ever aerial tramway or telpher, designed and engineered by Fleeming Jenkin. It was installed in Glynde in Sussex in 1885 to transport clay, and was finished after Jenkin's death.
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Henry Charles Fleeming Jenkin FRS FRSE LLD (/ˈflɛmɪŋ/; 25 March 1833 – 12 June 1885) was Regius Professor of Engineering at the University of Edinburgh, remarkable for his versatility. Known to the world as the inventor of the cable car or telpherage, he was an electrician and cable engineer, economist, lecturer, linguist, critic, actor, dramatist and artist.
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