- John Jamison
Sir John Jamison (
1776 -29 June 1844 ) was anAustralia nphysician ,pastoralist ,banker ,politician , constitutional reformer and public figure.Thomas Jamison , his father, was an impressive person in his own right. A Northern Irishman, Thomas had arrived inNew South Wales , Australia, with theFirst Fleet in 1788, aboardHMS Sirius , as a surgeon's mate. Soon afterwards, Thomas was sent to the auxiliary British colony ofNorfolk Island , where he served as principal medical officer during the 1790s - while accumulating wealth on the side as a maritime trader. Then, in 1801, after taking leave in England, Thomas was promoted to the position of Surgeon-General of New South Wales due to his intelligence, administrative competence, driving ambition and gift for cultivating useful patrons in London. These qualities were inherited by Thomas' son John in even fuller measure.The future
John Jamison , knight of the realm, was born inCarrickfergus ,County Antrim ,Ireland in 1776. Like his father, he trained as a surgeon, joining theRoyal Navy in 1799. He served under AdmiralLord Horatio Nelson at theBattle of Trafalgar in 1805 aboard the "Agamemnon ". In 1806, he saw further action at the Battle ofSan Domingo on the same vessel which, incidentally, was Nelson's favourite warship. One year later, Jamison graduated as a physician fromEdinburgh University , earning a Doctorate of Medicine. While serving with the Royal Navy'sBaltic Fleet in 1807 - aboard the "Gorgon" - he was successful in treating an outbreak ofscurvey in the alliedSwedish Navy , and was made a knight of the Order ofGustavus Vasa by a grateful Swedish king. He was also knighted by Britain'sPrince Regent (afterwardsKing George IV ) in 1813, and appointed Inspector of Naval Hospitals and Fleets.Meanwhile, Thomas Jamison had died in
London - in 1811. Sir John succeeded to his father's property atJamisontown on theNepean River , west ofSydney . He arrived in Sydney on28 July 1814 , per the "Broxbornebury", to take up his patrimony. The following year, Sir John accompanied GovernorLachlan Macquarie on his official visitation to the Bathurst Plains, and had theJamison Valley in the Blue Mountains named in his honour by Macquarie. But two and a half years later, Sir John fell out of favour with the governor, who described him in a private dispatch as being "intriguing and discontented".Sir John was Australia's first titled gentleman and thus head of the fledgling country's social pecking order. He acquired allotments in the heart of Sydney, and accumulated vast tracts of land in the central-western and northern parts of New South Wales between 1814 and 1840. He was a founder of the
Bank of New South Wales in 1817, and established himself as one of the most prominent (and wealthiest) men in Australia, enjoying a reputation for lavish entertaining and hospitality atRegentville , his magnificent rural estate near the town of Penrith. In November 1824, he was included in the list of ten men recommended for a colonial council; but some 12 months later, Governor Brisbane withdrew the nomination on account of charges made by Sir John that female convicts had been sent to Emu Plains for immoral purposes. The charges were held to be baseless, and in September 1826 the new governor,Ralph Darling , was instructed that Sir John was not to be given any civil offices. Sir John made various attempts to get this embargo removed; but nearly four years later, the British colonial office continued to give him no satisfaction.Governor Darling in 1829 mentioned that Sir John was then President of the New South Wales Agricultural Society, "holding perhaps the largest stake in the country". In 1830, London's Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce awarded Sir John the large gold medal "for his successful method of extirpating the stumps of trees". Sir John also won various awards for his wine and other agricultural produce and took a keen, scientific interest in the natural history of the Sydney region. He was a committed
Freemason and a founding father of the New South Wales thoroughbred racing industry. Benevolent organisations benefited from Sir John's generosity, too, and in 1830 he helped establishSydney College - an important educational facility which gave rise to bothSydney Grammar School and theUniversity of Sydney . In 1831, Sir John was restored to the magistracy, and, in 1837, he was belatedly appointed a member of theLegislative Council of New South Wales. During the mid-1830s, Sir John held office as founder-president of the Australian Patriotic Association, which strove to liberalise the colony's political and legal institutions as Sydney evolved from a penal settlement into a thriving, mercantile port.Sir John established a cloth mill at Regentville in 1842 to supplement the estate's earnings from its vineyard, horse stud, dairy, orchard and collection of grazing paddocks for sheep and cattle. But Sir John suffered the loss of a large proportion of his fortune around this time due to the effects of a protracted drought and an economic depression, which had sent many of the colony's farmers and businessmen broke. He was omitted from the Legislative Council nominations in 1843 on account of his infirmities and comparatively advanced years. (Without doubt, Sir John's poor state of health had been accentuated by the hedonistic lifestyle that he had led since his arrival in New South Wales.) Sir John died at Regentville House on
29 June 1844 and was buried in St Stephen's churchyard, Penrith. His grave survives but Regentville House does not: the two-storey Georgian mansion, erected during 1823-1824, burned down in 1868.Jamison Street in Sydney's CBD, which was once the site of Sir John's town house, commemorates him - as does the Jamison Valley, Jamison County, Jamison Creek, Jamison High School, Jamison Park and a number of other localities in New South Wales.
Sir John fathered a number of illegitimate children by several mistresses. These mistresses included
Mary Griffiths - the daughter of Regentville's dairyman. Sir John married Mary a few months before his death, thus enabling her to be styled Lady Jamison. One of his children by Lady Jamison,Robert Thomas Jamison (1829-1878), was a Member of the Legislative Assembly of New South Wales from 1856 to 1860. Lady Jamison died atHunters Hill , Sydney in 1874, aged 74. She was interred inCamperdown Cemetery in the inner-Sydney suburb ofNewtown . Her grave, like Sir John's, is extant. Another of Sir John's mistresses was Catherine Cain(e), the convict 'housekeeper' assigned to him at his Sydney residence. Catherine gave birth to a daughter by Sir John,Harriet Eliza Jamison , in 1819. Harriet grew up to be a cultivated and pious young woman. In 1837, she married into the colonial establishment. Her husband wasWilliam John Gibbes (1815-1868) - a son of the Collector of Customs for New South Wales, ColonelJohn George Nathaniel Gibbes . The wedding took place at St James' Anglican Church, Sydney, in the presence of the governor. Harriet died in Sydney in 1896. [cite web
title =Mr Robert Thomas Jamison
work =Members of Parliament
publisher =Parliament of New South Wales
url =http://143.119.255.90/isysquery/dc66b0cd-c430-4759-8e4a-80662173f40a/2/doc
accessdate = 2007-02-09 ]Notes
References
*Dictionary of Australian Biography|First=John|Last=Jamison|Link=http://gutenberg.net.au/dictbiog/0-dict-biogI-K.html#jamison1
* "Australian Dictionary of Biography ", Volume 2, edited by Douglas Pike, Melbourne University Press, 1967, pages 10-13.
* "The Trafalgar Roll" by Colonel Robert Holden Mackenzie, Naval Institute Press,Annapolis , Maryland, USA, 1989, page 270.
* "Sir John Jamison in New South Wales, 1814-1844", by Dr Brian Fletcher," Journal of theRoyal Australian Historical Society ", Volume 65, Part 1, Sydney, June 1979.
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