Description
Plymouth-born William Thomas Jinkin died in 1936 and left an estate worth millions in today’s terms, most of which he left in trust. That trust was tasked with creating accommodation for local ladies of a certain age and disposition, chiefly widows, spinsters and genteel women who faced difficult circumstances. The accommodation was to be free or cost neutral and the ladies were to live in these homes without having to worry unduly about their perhaps limited means.
Remarkably, over 80 years on, the Jinkin Trust continues to provide that service. Originally chaired by Charles Curtis, a local builders’ merchant and close personal friend of Jinkin, the Trust is now administered by Curtis’s grandson, Richard Oliver, who in turn succeeded his mother in the chair.
This book introduces us to WT Jinkin, who, in the late nineteenth century developed the business established by his father, Alderman Thomas Jinkin, into one of the most successful in the city. Between them the Jinkins played a significant role in late-Victorian Plymouth; in its development, its sanitation, its street surfacing and its railway connections.
