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Joy Bausum – following in Jemima’s footsteps

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“I was impressed by her enthusiasm to take on any challenge and travel to any location in order to serve the Lord she loved,” wrote Russell Board, one of the directors of World Mission Ministries, about Joy Bausum following her death in Malaysia on August 18 2010, aged 26. That could certainly have been written about Joy’s great, great, great grandmother Jemima. Her career in the 19th century  began in south Kalimantan (Borneo) after the long voyage around Africa  and took her via Penang to Ningbo in China. It started when the Society for  Promoting Female Education in the East (SPFEE) received an application from “Miss Poppy school mistress from Maidenhead”.

Jemima was free to make her own decisions about where she lived and worked because her father, Jonathan Poppy, had died in January 1838, 29 days before her 20th birthday*. His will was not probated in Norfolk until November 1843 so it was likely that Jemima did not receive any of her inheritance until then.

She found a teaching post at Maidenhead and may have arrived in that busy brewery town  in time to see the first train cross Isambard Brunel’s magnificent bridge. Many had prophesied that the bridge, which crossed the River Thames in two great strides, each span being 128 ft (39m) wide,  would collapse when the wooden props were taken away! It still stands today like a memorial to how visionary ideas can be successfully accomplished. But could a young, single woman in the 19th century fulfil a visionary calling?

Jemima would have been aware that the SPFEE had made it possible for some to do so. By the end of 1838 the London committee had sent 13 women overseas. One of the first was the Englishwoman,  Eliza Thornton, who successfully set up girls’ schools in Jakarta (then Batavia) after arriving there in 1835.

In the society’s records no reason was given for the delay between receiving Jemima’s application and her beginning the mandatory probation period in May 1842.  It is likely, however, that between 1839 and 1842 she not only continued working as school teacher but had also built a strong relationship with a church for she needed good testimonials from both to be accepted by the SPFEE. Her referees had to assure the society that she had given evidence of real piety, and had maintained a temper and deportment consistent with her Christian character and profession. They were asked if she also “embraced opportunities for usefulness” by benefitting others such as by teaching at a Sunday School or visiting the sick. The society  wanted to be sure she was a good communicator; had good sense, judgement and prudence; was mild, courteous and humble; and evinced patience and perseverance.

Jemima had to convince the women who interviewed her that she had sound protestant doctrines and that she had the right reasons for wanting to be a missionary, besides showing that she was well equipped as a teacher. Following a successful interview Jemima began a period of probation at a British and Foreign School Society institution in London.

The SPFEE was careful to find a ship which was suitable for her as a single women to travel on, and (as with all their agents) would bring her home in the case of sickness or any unlooked-for emergency. But, like many mission agencies at that time, the SPFEE did not even think it necessary to prepare their candidates for living in a very different culture. Nor did the society research the location to which it decided to send Jemima.

All it had was a letter of invitation from a Swiss woman who had gone to work with Miss Thornton in 1838. Emma Cecilia Combe from Berne had initially been accepted by the Geneva Auxiliary Committee.  After Ms Combe married an American missionary, the Rev Frederick B Thomson,in December 1840 she continued superintending a girls’ school in Jakarta. But in February 1842 the Dutch colonial government insisted that she and her husband should join the American missionaries in southern Kalimantan. They moved to a compound deep in the forest – and it was from there that Mrs Thomson wrote to the SPFEE. Her life and death in Kalimantan would greatly affect Jemima.

Sources : The records of the SPFEE in the special collection at Birmingham University; the History of the Society for Promoting Female Education in the East published in London  in1847 by Edward Suter; and The Female Intelligencer published by the SPFEE.

I am very grateful to Dan Bausum and Dorothy Evans (Jemima’s great grand daughter) and to Margaret Troy for sharing information about Jemima

* In the family Bible of John George and Jemima Bausum there is a note that Jemima was born in Great Yarmouth, England, on February 17, 1818.

See also: A Charter for Girls’ Education and Eliza Thornton – a singular success

©P Land


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