Christina Jamieson
in a Shetland jumper
in a Shetland jumper
Born30 June 1864
Sandness, Shetland
Died23 March 1942 (aged 77)
Nelson, New Zealand
OccupationWriter
NationalityBritish
Literary movementsuffragism, folklore

Christina Jamieson (1864–1942) was a British writer, playwright and suffragist known for her association with the Shetland Isles.

Life

Jameson was born to Robert and Barbara Jamieson on 30 June 1864 at Cruisdale, Sandness on the Mainland of Shetland. Her father was a schoolmaster in Sandness and that is the school that she attended. She had six siblings. She and her mother moved to the capital of Shetland, Lerwick, after her father died in 1899.[1]

She is known for helping to form the Shetland Women's Suffrage Society in 1909 which became associated with the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies. Despite living hundreds of miles from London she created a banner with Orkney artist Stanley Cursiter which she carried in national processions, including the Women's Coronation Procession on 21 June 1911, with a Miss Courtenay[2] (niece of Orcadian Women's Suffrage Society chair Mary Anne Baikie).[3] She wrote both fictional and factual items about the Shetlands, she also wrote about women's roles and in 1910 she wrote for The Shetland Times about the economic and emotional issues facing local women.[1] She had left-wing views which she shared with her nephew, Bertie.[4][better source needed]

During the First World War she served on Shetland's school board and led it temporarily.[1] She was the first woman in Shetland to serve on a public committee.[3]

In 1930 she founded the Shetland Folklore Society to help revive Shetland culture.[1] The society met to practise traditional dances. Men would meet at her home, Twageos House, to perform sword dances to local music.[5] She also spent time working to transcribe church records.[1]

Wrote an award-winning play in Shetland dialect “da dooble sprin” (sic) in a contest in Inverness (Aberdeen P + J 28th February 1935)

Published a short book on the Suffrage Movement “Sketch of votes for women movement”

In 1935 she was still suffering with asthma and she left the islands where she had spent her life, to emigrate to New Zealand in the hope of gaining some respite. She died in Nelson in New Zealand in 1942.[1]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f Brian Smith, ‘Jamieson, Christina (1864–1942)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 accessed 23 November 2017
  2. ^ "Scottish Federation". The Common Cause. 7 September 1911. p. 382.
  3. ^ a b Elizabeth Crawford (2 September 2003). The Women's Suffrage Movement: A Reference Guide 1866-1928. Routledge. pp. 303–. ISBN 1-135-43402-6.
  4. ^ "Shetland Museum and Archives: Jamiesons of Twagoes". Shetland Museum and Archives. Retrieved 17 August 2020.
  5. ^ "Sword dance photo". Shetland Museum and Archives. 1930. Retrieved 17 August 2020.
Categories