Sir Leander Starr Jameson, 1st Baronet, also known as "Doctor Jim", "The Doctor" or "Lanner", was a British colonial politician who was best known for his involvement in the Jameson Raid.
Background
He was born on 9 February 1853, of the Jameson family of Edinburgh, the son of Robert William Jameson (1805–1868), a Writer to the Signet, and Christian Pringle, daughter of Major-General Pringle of Symington House. Robert William and Christian Jameson had twelve children, of whom Leander Starr was the youngest, born at Stranraer, Wigtownshire (now part of Dumfries and Galloway), in the south-west of Scotland, a great-nephew of Professor Robert Jameson, Regius Professor of Natural History at the University of Edinburgh. ."
Leander Starr Jameson's somewhat unusual name resulted from the fact that his father Robert William Jameson had been rescued from drowning on the morning of his birth by an American traveller, who fished him out of a canal or river with steep banks into which William had fallen while on a walk awaiting the birth of his son. The kindly stranger named "Leander Starr" was promptly made a godfather of the baby, who was named after him. His father, Robert William, started his career as an advocate in Edinburgh, and was Writer to the Signet, before becoming a playwright, published poet and editor of The Wigtownshire Free Press.
A radical and reformist, Robert William Jameson was the author of the dramatic poem Nimrod (1848) and Timoleon, a tragedy in five acts informed by the anti-slavery movement. Timoleon was performed at the Adelphi Theatre in Edinburgh in 1852, and ran to a second edition. In due course, the Jameson family moved to London, living in Chelsea and Kensington.
Education
Leander Starr Jameson went to the Godolphin School in Hammersmith, where he did well in both lessons and games prior to his university education.
L. S. Jameson was educated for the medical profession at University College Hospital, London, for which he passed his entrance examinations in January 1870. He distinguished himself as a medical student, becoming a Gold Medallist in materia medica. After qualifying as a doctor, he was made Resident Medical Officer at University College Hospital (M. R. C. S. 1875; M. D. 1877).
Career
He sailed for South Africa in 1878 and set up practice in Kimberley, where he met and became close friends with Cecil Rhodes, who wanted to establish a British colony stretching from the Cape of Good Hope to Cairo. Jameson performed several missions for Rhodes which eventually led to the founding of the colony of Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe).
The discovery of gold on the Witwatersrand had attracted large numbers of foreigners (mainly British) to Johannesburg, and these clamored for political rights to secure their economic interests. When their efforts failed, crisis followed crisis until some of them organized rifle clubs and threatened to use military force to ensure respect for their wishes.
Jameson, who had become administrator of Rhodesia, sympathized with the reformers. He believed that events in Johannesburg called for a military solution. In Rhodesia he had organized the company's police and volunteers into a fighting unit.
Some of the reformers, who included mining magnates and leaders in the business community, wanted Rhodes, then prime minister of the Cape Colony, to intervene and unite the Boer republics and the British colonies. They planned a revolt which, Jameson was led to believe, would be the signal for him to march into the Transvaal and overthrow the Boer government.
Differences on the wisdom of a military as against a political solution, the design of the flag, and other issues forced the reformers to reconsider their plans. They asked Jameson not to march on Johannesburg until they gave him the signal. He was impatient with their wavering, and on Dec. 29, 1895, he started on the march to Johannesburg with 470 mounted men. He had covered two-thirds of the journey when the British high commissioner ordered him not to enter Boer territory. Believing that the reformers would rebel on hearing that he was on Transvaal soil, he ignored the high commissioner's instructions. The Boers converged on him, and he surrendered at Doornkop on January 2, 1896.
After his arrest and release in Pretoria, Jameson returned to England, where he was tried for organizing an illegal expedition into the territory of a friendly state and sentenced to 15 months without hard labor. His health broke down in Holloway Prison. On his release he returned to South Africa, where he worked with Rhodes on the plan to link Cape Town and Cairo by telegraph.
Jameson's friends persuaded him that entering politics would enable him to accelerate movement toward union. He was elected to the Cape Parliament in 1900 and was prime minister from 1904 to 1908. He was made a baronet in 1911 and became chairman of the British South Africa Company in 1913. He died on November 26, 1917.
Politics
Despite the Raid, Jameson had a successful political life following the invasion, receiving many honours in later life. In 1903 Jameson was put forward as the leader of the Progressive (British) Party in the Cape Colony. When the party was successful he served as Prime Minister of the Cape Colony from 1904 to 1908. His government was unique in Cape history, as being the only Ministry to be composed exclusively of English politicians. During the Conference of Colonial Premiers held in London in March 1907, he was made a Privy Counsellor. He served as the leader of the Unionist Party (South Africa) from its founding in 1910 until 1912.
Personality
Jameson's persuasive character, what became known later as 'the Jameson charm', was described in some detail by Seymour Fort 1918, who writes of his restless, logical and sagacious temperament in this way:
". .. It was not his wont to talk at length, nor was he, unless exceptionally interested, a good listener. He was so logical and so quick to grasp a situation, that he would often cut short exposition by some forcible remark or personal raillery that would all too often quite disconcert the speaker.
Despite his adventurous career, mere reminiscences obviously bored him; he was always for movement, for some betterment of present or future conditions, and in discussion he was a master of the art of persuasion, unconsciously creating in those around him a latent desire to follow, if he would lead. The source of such persuasive influence eludes analysis, and, like the mystery of leadership, is probably more psychic than mental. In this latter respect, Jameson was splendidly equipped; he had greater power of concentration, of logical reasoning, and of rapid diagnosis, while on his lighter side he was brilliant in repartee and in the exercise of a badinage that was both cynical and personal. ..
". .. . He wrapped himself in cynicism as with a cloak, not only to protect himself against his own quick human sympathy, but to conceal the austere standard of duty and honour that he always set to himself. He was ever trying to hide from his friends his real attitude towards life, and the high estimate he placed upon accepted ethical values. .. He was essentially a patriot who sought for himself neither wealth, nor power, nor fame, nor leisure, nor even an easy anchorage for reflection. The wide sphere of his work and achievements, and the accepted dominion of his personality and his influence were both based upon his adherence to the principle of always subordinating personal considerations to the work in hand, upon the loyalty of his service to big ideals. His whole life seems to illustrate the truth of the saying that in self-regard and self-centredness there is no profit, and that only in sacrificing himself for impersonal aims can a man save his soul and benefit his fellow men. " A less flattering view is given in Antony Thomas's 'Rhodes'(1996), in which Jameson is portrayed as unscrupulous. '
Quotes from others about the person
Jameson's character seems to have inspired a degree of devotion from his contemporaries. Elizabeth Longford writes of him, "Whatever one felt about him or his projects when he was not there, one could not help falling for the man in his presence. .. . People attached themselves to Jameson with extraordinary fervour, the more extraordinary because he made no effort to feed it. He affected an attitude of tough cynicism towards life, literature and any articulate form of idealism, particularly towards the hero-worship which he himself excited . .. When he died The Times estimated that his astonishing personal hold over his followers had been equalled only by that of Parnell, the Irish patriot. "
Longford also notes that Rudyard Kipling wrote the poem If— with Leander Starr Jameson in mind as an inspiration for the characteristics he recommended young people to live by (notably Kipling's son, to whom the poem is addressed in the last lines). Longford writes, "Jameson was later to be the inspiration and hero of Rudyard Kipling's poem, If. .. ". Direct evidence that the poem If— was written about Jameson is available also in Rudyard Kipling's autobiography in which Kipling writes that If— was "drawn from Jameson's character. "
