Sir John Henry Kennaway 3rd Baronet CB, PC, DL (6 June 1837 – 6 September 1919) was an English Conservative Party politician, MP for East Devon and Honiton for nearly 40 years, Privy Counsellor in 1897, Father of the House of Commons 1908 – 1910.
Sir John Kennaway was an advocate of homeopathy, and was President and a Member of the Management Committtee of the Exeter Homeopathic Dispensary,
Sir John Kennaway was the brother in law of Dr. Edward Cronin, one of the founders of the Plymouth Brethren movement and a pioneer of homeopathy in England.
In 1852, Kennaway’s affection for homeopathy was satirized in a brief discussion of a Morning Post report on a recent London Homeopathic Hospital dinner by Punch Magazine entitled “The Game of Globules:”
“…following John Kennaway’s remarks, ponders the possibility that homeopathy, like astrology, will outlive the ridicule aimed at it….”
Sir John Kennaway was Member of Parliament (MP) for East Devon from 1870 to 1885, when the constituency was abolished by the Redistribution of Seats Act 1885. He was then MP for the new Honiton constituency from 1885 until the January 1910 general election.
Kennaway was made a Privy Counsellor in 1897, and from 1908 to 1910 he was Father of the House of Commons. In 1904 he was appointed as a member of the Royal Commission On Ecclesiastical Discipline, which reported in 1906, recommending the repeal of the Public Worship Regulation Act 1874.
He also served as President of the Church Missionary Society.
John Kennaway lived at Kennaway House in Sidmouth, which was built by his grandfather Sir John Kennaway, 1st Baronet (1758 – 1836), in 1805.
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