Christina Jamieson

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

Christina Jamieson
in a Shetland jumper
Born30 June 1864
Sandness, Shetland
Died23 March 1942
Nelson, New Zealand
NationalityUnited Kingdom

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 teacher in Sandness and that is the school that she attended. She had seven[1] siblings. She and her mother moved to the capital of Shetland, Lerwick, after her father died in 1899.[2]

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 which she carried in various processions, including the coronation procession on 21 June 1911.[3] She wrote about women's roles and in 1910 she wrote for the Shetland Times about the economic and emotional issues facing local women.[2] She had socialist views which she shared with her nephew.[4]

During the first world war she served on Shetland's school board and led it temporarily.[2] She was the first woman in Shetland to serve on a public committee.[3]

In 1930 she founded a society to help revive Shetland culture. It was called the Shetland Folklore Society[2] and it met to practice traditional dances. Men would meet at her house, Twageos House, to perform dances with swords to music.[5] She also spent working to transcribe church records.[2] 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.[2]

References
  1. "Family of Robert Jamieson and Barbara Laurenson Laing".
  2. Brian Smith, ‘Jamieson, Christina (1864–1942)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 accessed 23 November 2017
  3. 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.
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