The New Student's Reference Work/Jameson, Leander Starr

Jame′son, Leander Starr, best known as the leader of a rash and ill-considered raid into the South African Republic (Transvaal) in 1895, was born at Edinburgh in 1853, and educated as a doctor of medicine (London, 1877). From 1891 to 1895 he was administrator of Rhodesia; but on invading Transvaal with 600 men upon his own responsibility during the Uitlander agitations, he was captured by the Boers; and sentenced by the British government to 10 months’ imprisonment. He afterwards served in the Boer War with the British forces, became a member of the Cape Colony Parliament and director of the De Beers Company and the British South African Company; and in 1904 he became premier of Cape Colony. In 1908 he resigned, the Dutch having outvoted his party.