Catherine Ethel Jackson served for 36 years as a Methodist missionary in Malaya.

She began her missionary career as the principal of the Lady Treacher Girls’ School in Taiping, Perak in 1902. It was her first station under the Women’s Foreign Missionary Society after travelling from Indiana in the United States.^[1]

The Treacher Methodist Girls' School (TMGS) as it is now known started life as the Government Girls’ School in 1889 in a wooden building with eight students. The school owed its existence to Lady Treacher (wife of the sixth British Resident of Perak Sir William Hood Treacher) who had it in her heart to establish a girls’ school and later, played a role in the school’s coming under the care of Methodist missionaries.

In 1899, the Methodist Mission took over the running of the school from the Perak government and Mrs Mary Carr Curtis, wife of a Methodist missionary from Penang, became the first principal. At that time, the school had 28 students. In 1902, the school was renamed Lady Treacher Girls’ School in honour of Lady Treacher’s pioneering work. It was renamed Treacher Methodist Girls’ School in 1957.

Catherine Jackson took over from Miss Mary Cody as principal in 1902. The enrolment grew to 41 and a hostel which had been built that year and initially housed only three girls had 25 students by 1903. Although Miss K. E. Toll became the principal in 1905, Miss Jackson was the missionary in charge until 1910.

Apart from the increasing enrolment, the school succeeded in preparing six girls for the Standard Six examinations for the first time in 1908.

Early on, when she became principal, Jackson learnt the Fujian (Hokkien) dialect which was the dominant dialect spoken in Penang and Taiping. Her teacher was a Methodist worker named Chong Gian who had come from Singapore (where Fujian was also commonly spoken) in 1903 to start a work among the Chinese in Taiping. Chong held services in the front room of a shop house and Jackson conducted Bible study there for the young Chinese men who spoke English. 

At the same time, there was a young Chinese girl named Lim Ong Neo (known later as Catherine Lim) who was a boarder at the school. Jackson taught Lim to read Chinese outside school hours and Lim, in turn, taught a class of younger girls Chinese and also conducted Sunday evening service with the same girls. Later, when Jackson returned to the United States, Lim went with her and gained an M.A. from Columbia University. She went on to teach at the Chinese University in Amoy, China before eventually settling in Singapore.

In addition to being principal of Lady Treacher Girls’ School in Taiping, Jackson was often required to be in Penang because Miss Ellis, who was in charge of the Women's Foreign Missionary Society’s work there, was unwell, which eventually led to Ellis' return to the U.S. This meant that Jackson had to take charge of the society’s work in both Penang and Taiping in 1903. She was often consulted by preachers and congregation members and became, in essence, the unofficial district missionary in Taiping.

Aside from Taiping, Jackson also served in Penang in 1907. From 1920, she served in Singapore in the Methodist Girls’ School (MGS), the Eveland (Women’s) Training School, Singapore churches and, in 1936, as principal of the (renamed) Eveland Seminary.

She retired in 1937 but chose to stay on in Singapore and lodged with Catherine Lim who was by then teaching at a Chinese high school in Singapore. Choosing not to return was against the rules of the WFMS and, as such, Jackson did not receive a pension from the mission body. 

The Japanese Occupation

As a result of her decision to remain in Singapore, Jackson faced the prospect of internment when the Japanese occupied Singapore during World War II. She registered with the police and was given permission to live outside the prison camp as she was regarded as harmless. She would meet secretly with church members who visited her at her home. However, on December 6, 1943, she was interned in the prison camp along with some Eurasians. In May 1944, she was moved to the Sime Road Camp. Her health and memory deteriorated and she was admitted to hospital in July 1944.

She died less than a year after being interned. A footnote in the book Beyond Words: The Remarkable Story of Paul and Nathalie Means, mentions that “The Methodist missionary, Miss Catherine Jackson, died on 14 November 1944, in one of the Singapore camps, and the internment was conducted by Rev. Hobart Amstutz at the Bidadari Cemetery.”^[2] (However, on February 2, 1945, the New York Times reported her death from a heart ailment on November 14, 1944 in “Sumatra Prison Camp”.)^[3]

Jackson had left her home town in Indiana in 1902 and, for over 40 years, she regarded this part of the world as her home and the people, especially the Fujian Chinese, as her people. From her initial years as a missionary, she endeavoured to master the Fujian dialect and continued her ministry amongst the Fujian Chinese until the very end.

In November 2001, former Bishop Ho Chee Sin of the Methodist Church of Singapore conducted a “Service of death and resurrection” at the Bidadari Cemetery as a memorial for nine Methodist missionaries, all of whom died while they were resident in Singapore, including the Reverend William E. Horley and Catherine Jackson. Their cremated ashes were placed in The Garden of Remembrance at Choa Chu Kang Cemetery in Singapore.^[4]