His name was registered as John Jenkins at his birth in 1850. However, later, when the Glasgow Herald included notices about the chess column in their weekend edition - the Glasgow Weekly Herald - they always referred to him as J. Jenkin.

His name appeared as John Jenkin in the 1879 publication of the Rules and Members of Glasgow CC.

The name variation turned up elsewhere, not just in relation to his chess activities, in which he had some success. He was Glasgow Chess Club champion in 1872, 1873, 1878 and 1882, and he took 1st place in the 1877 Counties Chess Association Championship in Birmingham.

By the summer of 1882 it is clear from newspaper reports that Jenkins was having business problems. His grocer's shop was listed for sale, and a sequestration notice appeared. A September 23 report showed that he had failed to appear for a court hearing (which would have been particularly embarrassing if he was to appear before his fellow Glasgow CC colleague Sheriff Spens). Walter Spens.

All of this would explain his resignation from his chess column at the Glasgow Weekly Herald by August 1882.

It appears that Jenkins left Glasgow, as he disappears from the chess scene. When his mother died in March 1883, her landlady was the informant.

No record of Jenkins' death has yet been found. The October 1890 issue of The Chess Monthly, p34, in an obituary of D.Y. Mills, referred to 'the late Mr J. Jenkin.'

At the moment he is 174. It's odd such a good player just disappears. Him being referred to as 'late.' and reading the down turn in his life is it possible to think of suicide and the Victorian attitude to it.

"...students of Victorian culture have had little idea of how Victorians confronted the problem of suicide. We know that they openly mourned death and sensationalized murder, but they seem to have deeply feared suicide and to have concealed it whenever possible. "