Dead tell tales
Isabella Macandrew Jamieson MBE c.1882 - 1964
Not many people have a kindergarten named after them, but the naming of Jamieson Kindergarten when it opened in 1959 in Storey Avenue was a fitting acknowledgment of the work Isabella Jamieson had done to establish kindergartens in Hamilton. At the opening, she was clearly as excited as the children – ‘‘her pride was intense’’.
Jamieson seems to have had a strong sense of her worth from an early age. When she was a young teenager back in Leith, Scotland, her mother taught her the correct way to fold the men’s Sunday clothes, anticipating Isabella would do it thereafter. But Isabella said she would do it only when she had time. As biographer Joyce Neill (Waikato
Times May 26 1973) stated, her mother accepted this expression of Isabella’s independent spirit and allowed her to think for herself and not necessarily follow the accepted role for girls. Isabella received teacher training at Church of Scotland Training College in Edinburgh, and after coming to Christchurch in 1908 taught at New Brighton and Heathcote Schools. She instituted teaching for special needs children and worked with them at the Normal School until her retirement.
Perhaps New Zealand’s progressive thinking regarding the franchise for women was what brought Jamieson to New Zealand. She became one of the significant movers, and at times president or secretary, of the National Council of Women. In 1931 she was a member of the Women’s Unemployment Committee and contributed to the Unemployment Amendment Bill with suggestions to foster home-grown industries and to increase the number of women employed in schools, hospitals and other institutions.
After her retirement in the late 1930s Jamieson spent two years in Europe, touring kindergartens and nursery schools, attending the International Council of Women’s conference in Edinburgh as representative of the National Council of Women, and the Countrywomen of the World convention in London.
In 1940 she shifted to Hamilton, living first at Tuhikaramea and then in Seddon Road. She had been involved with the kindergarten movement in Christchurch, and in Hamilton she supported the establishment of free kindergartens here. Earlier kindergartens established in the 1920s were private institutions, but despite the dedication of the women who ran them they did not last many years. The Hamilton branch of the NZ Free Kindergarten Association was established in 1945, with Miss Jamieson as president, a role she filled until 1962. By the end of 1959 there were seven kindergartens in Hamilton.
Jamieson Kindergarten had opened as Maeroa Free Kindergarten in 1954, in the Miro Street Methodist Church hall. After much fundraising (bottle drives, raffles, socials), the community was able to support the new building, designed by Hamiltonian Errol Care-Cottrell.
Jamieson was on the national executive of the Kindergarten Union. She also helped set up the ‘kindergarten of the air’ radio service in New Zealand. When on the Hamilton High School board she helped establish Sonning Hostel, and saw the school through its division into separate boys’ and girls’ schools in the 1950s. She was involved with the YWCA and the First Presbyterian Church in Frankton. Jamieson received an MBE in June 1959 for services to education.
Isabella Jamieson died aged 82 on June 6 1964 but the disposal of her ashes has not been recorded. She has a living memorial, the daily activities at Jamieson Kindergarten.
Note: Hamilton Libraries has two histories of the kindergarten movement.