Pip’s Patch

For Joy Bausum‘s great, great, great grandmother, Jemima Poppy,  there were good times and bad in Penang. Today the Burmah Road Gospel Hall can trace its history back to her work in Penang:

John George Bausum wanted a wife who was as dedicated to mission work as he was – and he certainly found that in Jemima. And yet again she proved she was a survivor.

After their wedding in Singapore on May 23 1848 they returned to the LMS mission in Penang. The LMS gave approval for them to continue using the mission in exchange for taking care of the buildings, as had originally been agreed with John George and Maria. The buildings provided them with accommodation as well as space for the boys’ and girls’ schools. John George also bought an adjacent property so that the girls’ school could be extended.

Besides supervising two boys’ schools John George was very busy with his evangelistic and pastoral work which included training some young local men to help in the ministry. Meanwhile the Bausum family was growing: Mary Elizabeth was born in October 1849; George Frederick in November 1850; William Henry in January 1852; Samuel Gottlieb in July 1853; and Louisa May in March 1855.

The main problem for John George and Jemima was financing their work. As John George had gone out as an independent missionary he had looked for other ways of making a regular income and so had bought a plot of land on which to grow nutmegs and fruit. This, however, was not as productive as he had hoped. By early 1849 the girls’ school was failing to attract sufficient support and John George was considering joining a large mission. But he could not fully agree with the doctrines of the Church of England and the Free Church of Scotland decided to send its own minister. In 1852 he did receive public contributions towards the rebuilding of one of the boys’ schools but still went into debt.

There was worse to come. In April 1854 John George wrote in the family Bible: “Our dear Samuel Gottlieb departed this life on the 19th between the hours of 8 & 9 P.M. of the Malignant effluent small pox, which was conveid (sic) to him through the Vaccine matter the 30th of March, and which made their appearance on the 8th day after vaccination.” On March 1855 he  had to record another death as little Louisa Jane survived for just six days after her birth. The doctor called it the “nine days disease” and stated that it was generally fatal.

Then, on August 1 1855, Jemima wrote: “My dear Husband departed this life after but one night’s fevering having sat up all the previous night with a dying member of his church.” He had collapsed on her shoulder. Shortly afterwards lawyer Jonas D Vaughan wrote to the LMS that John George suffered excruciating pain at the end and an autopsy had revealed that one of the principle arteries of his heart had ruptured.

Jemima then found herself in the midst of a financial nightmare. As it took so long to exchange letters between Penang and London there still had not been a satisfactory conclusion as to John George inheriting (via Maria) a building that Samuel Dyer had bought in Penang. If she could have sold that Jemima could have reduced some of the debt she had inherited.  With John George dead some subscribers stopped giving funds but the Chinese Evangelisation Society (CES) continued to support two young local evangelists. Jemima had to give up one of the boys’ school but believed she could supervise that at the Penang mission along with the girls’ school and the church if the LMS agreed to the same leasing agreement as it had had with John George.

She wrote to the LMS in December 1855: “You could naturally ask what my plans are for the future – I can scarcely say that I have any at all, only my great desire is that this work should not be abandoned.” The hope of someone being sent to help with the work, along with the support of local Christian staff, kept her going. She was however suffering from enlarged tonsils which had meant that for three months she had been almost silent. There was little hope of recovery until her tonsils were removed, she said. Her main concern was for her children. She explained that they were at the age when maternal teaching was most needed but she could bestow it upon them in very limited degree because she had to keep her power of speech for the school work. She felt trapped as she couldn’t fight or retire. She added: “But I do not forget that it is the Lord’s doing, and it is well.”

By July 1856 she gave up waiting for the Power of Attorney she needed from the LMS for the house Samuel Dyer bought. She told the LMS: “I am about to leave Penang for Ningbo  for the sake of my children and being myself greatly in need of a change. I am and have been for the last month unable to speak above a whisper without much pain on account of swollen tonsils.”

She had managed to make sure their work would continue and had secured a teacher for the girls’ school. “I shall leave with many regrets but it seems the call of duty,” she wrote, adding that her agent would deal with the Power of Attorney. And she had won her battle to make sure their mission work would continue.

By 1859 both the girls’ and the boys’ school were under the auspices of the CES and there was a congregation of 20 local Christians at the church. The Society for Promoting Female Education in the East (SPFEE), which had obviously continued supporting the girls’ school after Jemima left,  was informed that there were “18 Chinese, 10 Burmese, four Malays, three Arminians, one Siamese, one Kling, and one European” and that three of the students had been baptised that year.  A local Christian woman was teaching embroidery and there was a Chinese Christian cook. Two older ladies kept discipline and one of the older girls was an excellent monitor. The school was supported by the sale of fancy goods which were sent by the SPFEE auxiliary committees in London, Geneva and Dublin.

The property that John George bought for an extension to the girls’ school meant that, when the LMS sold its mission buildings in 1870, some Brethren missionaries still had a base in Penang. Jemima’s heirs were delighted that a mission chapel was later built on that site and from that grew the Burmah Road Gospel Hall.

But why did Jemima go to Ningbo in China? The answer to that lay with the teenage daughters of Maria Dyer Bausum and an indomitable, very determined little woman called Mary Ann Aldersey.

Sources include:

Incoming letters to the London Missionary Society, in the Archives of the Council for World Mission, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.

Female Missionary Intelligencer, published by SPFEE 1850s

A Brief History of Noncomformist Protestantism in Penang and the Mission House at 35 Farquhar Street,  Submission to The Penang Story, Volume 2, by Jean DeBernardi.

Dorothy Lord Bausum Evans He Led all the Way, Xulon Press 2007 – I am especially grateful to Mrs Evans for sharing the information in the Bausum’s family Bible.

See also http://www.penang-traveltips.com/farquhar-street-mission-house-and-chapel.htm