Daily Gleaner, August 20, 1993
An
avid cricket lover who grew up in a Moravian environment, Ivan Stewart
Lloyd was born on June 6, 1903 at Hatfield in Manchester . . . the third son
of six sons and
two daughters to Jethro Amaziah Lloyd, an
outstanding
educator in primary education from
1896 to 1935 and his wife Frances Rose
(nee Monteith), a farmer's daughter. He was
educated St. John's College in
Kingston,
then abroad at the College of Liberal
Arts & Sciences, Illinois
University,
College of
the City of New York, Royal College of
Edinburgh and
Howard University where he
became President of the Caribbean Students'
Association.
Returning
to Jamaica as a qualified Medical
Practitioner in the early 1930's,
Dr. Lloyd
first started his work in Kingston, then
was later transferred to
Claremont in St.
Ann as a Government Medical Officer in
1933. This was the
move that was to
merge his destiny with the people of
St. Ann as the
Government post officially
lasted for seven years and in 1940 he
resigned
and went into private practice, the
year before he married Eunice Louise
Scott,
a farmer's daughter. It was this role
of not just an outstanding doctor
who
played a significant role in the elimination
of yaws in the parish, but
also one
who truly endeared himself to the humble,
rural people by his
generosity in medical
care as well as in other ways of
uplifting their quality
of life
which really set the stage for Ivan
Lloyd to become one of the most
loved
and most eminent persons ever to seek
public office in
Jamaica.
He
had followed in his father's footsteps by
becoming a member of the
newly-formed
People's National Party and when what would
be the final
national elections for the
island's Legislative Council were held in
1942,
Ivan Lloyd was overwhelmingly elected
the Member for the parish of St. Ann,
thus becoming the first person connected to
the fledgling PNP to elected to
any
kind of public office.
But that initial role would be short-lived.
On October 27, 1944 Jamaica was granted
a New Constitution with Universal
Adult
Suffrage and a House of Representatives
with 32 seats, and the
political system as Lloyd's older colleagues in the Council
knew it, ceased
to exist.
Contesting
the East St. Ann seat for the PNP in the first general election on
December 14, 1944, Ivan Lloyd
hardly made it a contest between himself
and his three opponents. He polled 10,635
votes (69.2 per cent) and drubbed
the
JLP's Gilbert
Laing by 9,245 votes, the highest majority
island-wide!
though his final qualification was from the University of Illinois.
Daily Gleaner, September 14, 1934
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