Pioneer missionary who educated girls and fed bandits

 

Josephine Foss was known for her pioneering spirit and resoluteness.

PETALING JAYA: Jalan Foss is a relatively insignificant road in Pudu, Kuala Lumpur, but one with deep significance in the history of Malaysian education.

The road is named after Josephine Foss, an Anglican missionary who was co-founder of what was then Pudu English School in 1914, and its longest-serving head teacher

The school later became the Pudu English Secondary School (PESS) before being renamed SMK (P) Pudu in 1981.

Foss was known for her pioneering spirit and resoluteness in transforming a former tin mine and setting up one of the country’s rare Anglican mission schools.

Initially an assistant teacher at Pudu English School, she took charge in 1926 after the school’s forerunner Enid Gage-Brown died of kidney disease in London.

She navigated several challenges, including the threat of eviction due to an expiring lease and a government directive to relocate boys to a new school.

In recognition of her contributions to education, Foss received a royal honour in 1935, being made a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE).

The girls’ school had been housed in two shophouses in Pudu Road, operating on a shoestring budget to teach English to 14 poor pupils.

Foss’s tenacity prevailed when she secured a plot of former tin-mining land occupied by squatters, raised funds to develop the land and built a thriving school by the time the Japanese invaded Malaya.

Foss’s story took a turn during World War II when she was taken prisoner by Japanese soldiers in 1942, and endured internment for three years at Changi Prison in Singapore.

During the postwar Malayan Emergency, she played a crucial role in liaising between bandits, detainees and their families, according to a 1949 article in the Straits Times newspaper which praised Foss for her work.

“Miss Foss has been on many operations with troops and police, has fed handcuffed bandits and has talked with female criminals in the gaols,” it said. “Mostly, however, she has been doing liaison work between bandits and detainees, and their wives and children.”

Foss returned to England after the war, but only to come back to Malaya in 1954 to continue welfare work in the new villages in Perak and supervise the planning of a new co-educational school in Guntong New Village.

After dedicating most of her life to mission work and education, Foss died in July 1983, at the age of 96 in London.

SMK (P) Pudu continues to stand as a stalwart educational institution today, embodying the aspirations of its co-founder and the namesake of the street. Its alumni association, Pudu English Secondary School Old Girls Association, has been raising funds to complete a four-storey building so that the school can go single stream. - FMT