John Jamison

Sir John Jamison (1776 – 29 June 1844) was an important Australian physician, pastoralist, banker, politician, constitutional reformer and public figure.

Sir John's parents were Thomas Jamison (1752/53-1811) and Thomas's wife Rebecca (1746-1838). Thomas Jamison was an impressive person in his own right. A Northern Irishman, he had arrived in New South Wales, Australia, with the First Fleet in 1788, aboard HMS Sirius, as a surgeon's mate. Soon afterwards, Thomas was sent to the auxiliary British colony of Norfolk 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's son John in even fuller measure.

The future John Jamison, knight of the realm, was born in Carrickfergus, County Antrim, Ireland in 1776. (For the rest of his life he would pronounce his surname "Jemison", in the Irish manner.) Like his father, he trained as a surgeon, joining the Royal Navy in 1799. He served under Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805 aboard the "Agamemnon". In 1806, he saw further action at the Battle of San Domingo on the same vessel which, incidentally, was Nelson's favourite warship. One year later, Jamison graduated as a physician from Edinburgh University, earning a Doctorate of Medicine.

While serving with the Royal Navy's Baltic Fleet in 1807 - aboard the hospital ship "Gorgon" - he was successful in treating an outbreak of scurvey in the allied Swedish Navy, and was made a knight of the Order of Gustavus Vasa by a grateful Swedish king. He was also knighted by Britain's Prince Regent (afterwards King George IV) in 1813, and subsequently appointed Inspector of Naval Hospitals and Fleets.

Meanwhile, Thomas Jamison had died in London - in 1811. Sir John succeeded to his father's property, which included land at Jamisontown on the Nepean River, west of Sydney. He arrived in Sydney on 28 July 1814, per the Broxbornebury, to take up his patrimony. The following year, Sir John accompanied Governor Lachlan Macquarie on his official visitation to the Bathurst Plains, and had the Jamison 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 free settler 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 at Regentville, 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 establish Sydney College - an important educational facility which gave rise to both Sydney Grammar School and the University of Sydney. In 1831, Sir John was restored to the magistracy, and, in 1837, he was belatedly appointed a member of the Legislative 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 at Hunters Hill, Sydney in 1874, aged 74. She was interred in Camperdown Cemetery in the inner-Sydney suburb of Newtown. 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 was William John Gibbes (1815-1868) - a son of the Collector of Customs for New South Wales, Colonel John George Nathaniel Gibbes (1787-1873). The wedding took place at St James' Anglican Church, Sydney, in the presence of the governor. Harriet died in Sydney in 1896.