Leander Starr Jameson

Sir Leander Starr Jameson, 1st Baronet, (9 February 1853 – 26 November 1917), also known as Starr Jameson, was a British colonial politician, who was best known for his involvement in the ill-fated Jameson Raid.

Early life and family

He was born on 9 February 1853, the youngest of 12 children of Robert William Jameson (1805–1868), a Writer to the Signet, and Christian Pringle, daughter of Major-General Pringle of Symington House.

Leander Starr Jameson was born at Stranraer, Wigtownshire (now part of Dumfries and Galloway), a great-nephew of Robert Jameson, Regius Professor of Natural History at the University of Edinburgh. Fort's biography of Jameson notes that Starr's "chief Gamaliel, however, was a Professor Grant, a man of advanced age, who had been a pupil of his great-uncle, the Professor of Natural History at Edinburgh."

Robert William Jameson 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, he 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. Leander Starr Jameson went to the Godolphin School in Hammersmith, where he did well in both lessons and games prior to his university education.

Leander 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.