CLARISSA MARY KIDGER NEWMAN (nee Tucker)
Clarissa was born in Kimberley on the 25th March 1886. She married Angus Miller Newman in Johannesburg on the 30th September 1911.
I clearly remember attending her 90th birthday at Stillwaters, the home of her son and daugher-in-law on the Nahoon River.
The Weekend Post recorded the event on 6/3/76:
She was first EL woman councillor - Post Reporter
EAST LONDON -
Mrs Clarissa Newman, the first woman to serve on the East London City Council, will celebrate her 90th birthday on March 25.
She attended and took part in the international women's convention in Grahamstown last year.
An honorary life president of the Child Welfare Society which she joined in 1922, Mrs Newman attends meetings regularly.
“I am very active and could still work if I had a car, but unfortunately since I had a heart attack some years ago they will not allow me to have a licence”, said Mrs Newman.
NCW
“I first joined Child Welfare in 1922, and we later established the clinic in Duncan Village Township which still exists today. It grew tremendously, but now the municipality administers it”, said Mrs Newman.
She was nominated to the East London City Council in 1931 by the National Council of Women, of which she was founder and the president of the Border branch.
“In those days there was no ward election system and a woman councillor was simply unheard of and something of a feat”, said Mrs Newman.
“I served on the council for eight years, and this week I received a kind letter from the Mayor, Mr J. Yasbek, expressing the council's appreciation of my years of service to the community and congratualting me on my coming birthday”.
Sport
A Border tennis player in her prime, Mrs Newman was also a keen hockey player and coach.
During the 1931 depression she organised groups of unemployed men who were existing on a benevolent grant of 35 shillings a month to reclaim the piece of land which is now Marina Glen.
“In 1936 I went to Yugoslavia to represent the NCW and was made first vice-president for South Africa by the international council, which was a big honour”, said Mrs Newman.
During the Second World War she served as a recruitment officer with the Women's Auxiliary Air Force and travelled extensively in the course of her work.
Writer
Born in Kimberley, the daughter of a diamond mine manager, Mrs Newman grew up in Johannesburg. In 1911 she married Mr Angus Newman and came to live in East London.
She had a daughter and a son, Mr “Nogs” Newman, who is the honorary British consul in the city.
Mrs Newman says she has given up knitting but still sews and reads a lot. She enjoys watching selected television programmes, still attends meetings og the NCW and is busy writing her memoirs.
She has completed the first book.
“I have been busy all my life, but the one big accomplishment which comes to my mind is the slum clearance we accomplished and the building of what is now the Milner housing estate,” Said Mrs Newman.
Duncan Village is a black district within the greater East London municipal area. It had a growing coloured population. At the time of this press article, apartheid was just reaching its peak in absolutist application, but at the time that the centre there was established the city council still had a more paternalistic outlook.
A care centre in the city is named after her.
Marina Glen developed into a pleasant tea-garden which was manned by various charity groups to raise funds. We were taken there as kids and enjoyed ice creams while vervet monkeys tried to pinch scones. The area had been a river, but its winding route meant that it did not flush out properly with the rains and was instead straightened out with the in-filled area becoming lawns. The project had been initiated to provide employment for demobbed out of work soldiers. Swings, slides and the Round Table run small train were later added nearby.
Marina Glen tea garden, on this ocassion advertising that the proceeds would go to the troops.
I remember Auntie Clarissa as my paternal grandmother's sister. They lived for a time in a shared flat in Southernwood, East London, quite near to where they had both had houses years before.
An obituary
When she died just a year later the Daily Dispatch ran an article on her. It covered much the same as the article above, but with a few added details.
In recognition of her services (in childcare), the organisation named their Belgravia creche after her.
Shortly after her 90th birthday last year, she was given the Rotary merit award for services to the city, by all four branches of the service club in East London.
Mrs Newman was born Clarissa Tucker in Kimberley. Her father was a diamond mine manager who later moved to the Transvaal and a farm outside the tent town of Johannesburg.
At the outbreak of the Anglo-Boer War, he abandoned his farm and brought his family to East London as refugees.
In 1911, Miss Tucker married Mr Angus Newman, and returned here to live.
At the time of her death she had completed the first book of her memoirs which she was writing for her son, Mr N. E. M. Newman, the retiring British Consul in East London, who was awarded the order of the British Empire in Queen Elizabeth's last Honours List, and her married daughter in Cape Town.
I have a typed copy of her memoirs, 74 pages of interesting memories. Not only family members, but anyone interested in local social history will find this of value.
