According to the posthumous biography written by Edith Ellis (wife of sexologist Havelock Ellis), James Hinton was born in 1822, in Reading, England, outside of London. During his career as a physician, Hinton wrote widely on a variety of subjects, medical, physiological, and ethical.
Among his many publications was The Mystery of Pain: A Book for the Sorrowful in 1880. Hinton made an appeal for learning from unavoidable pain that was firmly rooted in a Christian understanding of the utility of suffering.