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Dictionary of National Biography, 1912 supplement/Jenner-Fust, Herbert

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1529152Dictionary of National Biography, 1912 supplement, Volume 2 — Jenner-Fust, Herbert1912Philip Norman

JENNER-FUST, HERBERT (1806–1904), cricketer, born on 23 Feb. 1806 at 38 Sackville Street, Piccadilly, was eldest son and one of fourteen children of Sir Herbert Jenner, afterwards Jenner-Fust [q. v.], dean of arches, by his wife Elisabeth, daughter of Major-general Francis Lascelles. Two brothers, both in holy orders, played in the Cambridge University cricket eleven — Charles Herbert, the second son, and the eighth son, Henry Lasoelles Jenner, first bishop of Dunedin, from 1866 to 1871. Jenner after education at Eton from 1818 to 1823 spent a year at a private tutor's. Like his father before him, he matriculated in 1824 at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, where he gained a scholarship and afterwards a fellowship. In 1826 he was first in college examinations, and next year was third in the law honour list, graduating LL. B. in 1829 and proceeding LL.D. in 1835. Called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn in 1831 and admitted an advocate in the ecclesiastical court of Doctors' Commons in 1835, he practised there with success until 1857-8, when that court was abolished and its business transferred to Westminster. After residing successively at Beckenham, at Carshalton, and at Sidcup, he finally settled on the family property at Hill Court, Gloucestershire, in 1864, when he adopted the additional surname of Fust.

Jenner was best known as a cricketer. He was a member of the Eton eleven in 1822-3, and at Cambridge distinguished himself in more than one branch of the game. On 4 June 1827 he played as the captain of the Cambridge eleven in the first match between Oxford and Cambridge Universities, scoring forty-five runs in the single innings out of a total of ninety-two, and taking five wickets, among them that of Charles Wordsworth [q.v.], the Oxford captain, afterwards bishop of St. Andrews. A few weeks later he was one of the seventeen Gentlemen who defeated eleven Players. Thenceforth, until his retirement in 1836, he was prominent in almost all first-class cricket, appearing for the Gentlemen, for England, for Kent, and two or three times, in a friendly way without county qualifications, for Norfolk. He was an excellent batsman, and a successful underhand bowler, round-hand bowling from 1816 to 1828 being expressly forbidden. But Jenner chiefly shone as a wicket-keeper. In 1833 he was elected the annual president of the Marylebone cricket club at the early age of twenty-seven, and was from 1882 till death president of the West Kent cricket club.

After 1836 Jenner often took part in local matches, proving himself an admirable captain. In 1877 he was a prominent guest at the dinner in London which celebrated the jubilee of the Oxford and Cambridge match. In 1880, at the age of seventy-four, he played for his parish of Hill in a match against Rockhampton, scoring eleven (run out), and as bowler and wicket-keeper getting ten wickets, besides running out two. Outliving by nearly twelve years all players in the university match of 1827, he died at Hill Court on 30 July 1904, in his ninety-ninth year.

An oil portrait hangs in the pavilion at Lord's cricket ground.

In 1833 he married Maria Eleanora (d. 1891), third daughter of George Norman and sister of George Warde Norman [q. v.], and had issue Herbert, general inspector under the Local Government Board (1884-1906), and two daughters.

[Personal knowledge; Lillywhite's Cricket Scores and Biographies, i. 462; Hist. Kent County Cricket, 1907; Scores and Annals of the West Kent Cricket Club, 1897; Wisden's Cricketers' Almanack 1905.]