No watches, no rings, no bangles, no charms or pendants adorn me and I’ve stoutly refused to insert bits of metal in various parts of my body.
As a consequence, I’m not a frequenter of jeweller’s shops. My one, and ultimately ill-fated, venture into such an establishment was 50 years ago when a young lady of my acquaintance suggested the purchase of an engagement ring. The engagement didn’t last and I suppose she should have given the ring back. Do jewellers give a refund on such tarnished items?
Jewellery came to mind when I window-shopped at Jamies Jewellers in Alexandra recently. The shops in Alexandra and Queenstown are believed to be the oldest consecutively family-owned jewellery business in the country and "Established 1866" is their battle cry.
For a historian 1866, or any year from the 19th century, is like a bugle call to an old war horse and I wanted to know more.
Glaswegian John Jamie, the great-great-grandfather of the present business owners, arrived in Dunedin in 1866 as a young man of 22 and began trading as an itinerant watchmaker. He boarded at the Caledonian Hotel on the corner of Hope and Carroll Sts (still standing as the old Rugby Hotel building), where in September a fellow boarder, bricklayer Joseph Carey, stole John’s bag containing "a set of watchmaker’s tools, a watch, portions of watches and other articles, of the value of £10 [about $1200 these days]".
Carey got six months’ hard labour and John decided to set up a shop in Balclutha in August 1887, taking over the building vacated by the Bank of Otago. Jamie was a fine singer and the life and soul of many convivial gatherings. In 1871 he moved to new premises opposite the Crown Hotel and joined the businessmen who had decided to close their shops each day at 7.30pm.
At the same time these friends persuaded him to stand for a seat on the Balclutha Borough Council and the Bruce Herald believed "the ratepayers have found the right man for the job", but he was beaten by baker Andrew Kilgour, who had gained some notoriety by introducing the town’s first baker’s cart, built especially by Cobb and Co, of Dunedin.
Flooding in 1874 prompted Jamie to run advertisements proclaiming his shop was "Established before the Flood!!!" and announcing that at Christmas he liked to rearrange his stock and make the premises "a wee bit braw like" ("braw" being Scots for "grand" or "splendid"). In 1875 he splashed out £99 ($15,000) on buying the old Bank of New Zealand building to re-erect it across the street, where he would also build a much-needed public hall to be called St John’s Hall.
Before demolishing the bank, he held a private dancing party to which "a good many junior bachelors responded and danced to the music of a piccolo, violin and kettledrum for a few hours with much spirit".
The new hall opened with a ball at which Jamie was MC and provided a well-received humorous speech. He also kerbed the footpath in front of the shop but his enthusiasm was not matched by his bank balance. By January 1876 he was bankrupt but was soon back in business in new premises, moving in June to Clinton.
A bout of typhoid fever laid him low but by 1883 he was a member of the Popotunoa Blackbirds, a "negro" minstrel group and, the following year, opened a shop in Gore but within a year was again filing for bankruptcy, but was soon discharged.
Jamie, probably with his son in the business, became a Gore identity, supporting local causes and issuing a challenge to George Gleeson to dance a sailor’s hornpipe with a stake of £5 providing "he gets a month to train in". He imported angler’s flies from Scotland and, as a temperance advocate, was happy to display in his window "a working model of the bibulous man who holds a bottle which he raises to his lips some 65 times to the minute and like those who are in the habit of repeating the dose as frequently, he has a habit of collapsing".
Jamie himself collapsed and died in 1889 at the age of 45, but his family have continued in the jewellery business and its name ensures that the colourful exploits of a pioneer are not forgotten.
Should a young lady once again pester me to buy an engagement ring, I will know where to go.
— Jim Sullivan is a writer from Patearoa.
