Thomas Jewell Bennett

Sir Thomas Jewell Bennett CIE (16 May 1852 in Wisbech – 16 January 1925 in Hans Place, London) was a British journalist and Conservative Party politician. He is most notable as an editor of The Times of India, as well as its principal proprietor. He was also the Member of Parliament (MP) for the Sevenoaks constituency (in Kent, England) from 1918 to 1923.

Bennett was the son of John Thomas Jewell who was a first cousin of the English composer William Sterndale Bennett. He took up the career of journalism and became assistant editor of the Western Daily Press in Bristol, after which he was a leader writer at The Standard. In 1884 he went out to Bombay in British India, where for eight years he was an associate editor of the Bombay Gazette. He was later both editor and principal proprietor of the Times of India. He left India in 1901, when 3,000 Guzerat farmers presented him with an address thanking him for supporting their grievances. In 1902 he was awarded the silver medal of the Society of Arts for an article on the British in the Persian Gulf and became a Fellow of the University of Bombay.

He contested the Brigg constituency unsuccessfully in 1910 before being elected for Sevenoaks in 1918. He was a member of the Select Committee on India in 1919. He also represented the Diocese of Rochester in the National Assembly of the Church of England.

He married Elena Brook-Jones who also died in 1925