Today's Tangent - The Eccentric Prophetess Joanna Southcott

Joanna Southcott 1750-1814
"Eccentric Georgian Prophetess"

I am currently reading the autobiography of John Binns - whom you may remember from some of my previous posts, was involved in that formal duel with the Lycoming county Sheriff, held in Montandon, in 1805.  A political prisoner in England, Binns came to America and founded the Republican Argus, in Northumberland, Northumberland County Pa.  He is most known, outside of our area, for his ornate engraving of the Declaration of Independence.   It was his good friend Joseph Priestly who encouraged him to write his autobiography. 

In other words, lots of interesting things in this mans life.  Which is why it is taking me a VERY long time to read his autobiography...  nearly every chapter sends me off on a tangent of research.  And I haven't even gotten to the parts where he is in America, yet!

Today's tangent was his mention of Joanna Southcott -someone I had known little about, but is quite famous, and...  interesting.   Binns mention of Southcott was not the first time I've come across the name.  

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity… Spiritual revelations were conceded to England at that favoured period, as at this. Mrs. Southcott had recently attained her five-and-twentieth blessed birthday…" - A Tale Of Two Cities, by Dickens  

As the Londonist reported, " The average modern reader would not recognize the name of Mrs. Southcott, but at the time of writing, her name — and the mysterious box bearing it — were famous throughout London."

Southcott is also reference in the works of Lord Byron G.K. Chesterson, in a book by Neil Gaiman, in a Monty Python Sketch, in an episode of South Park, and she's even immortalized on a set of tarot cards.

For me, that explains why Binns, who left England for America before Southcott's "fame", made mention of her in his memoirs.  Of course he would still follow the story with interest...  here I am, more than 200 years later, attempting to follow the same story.  And it's not an easy one to follow, although it IS fascinating.

(Also, Binns was acquainted with  Richard Brothers, of whom he says " It  was  on  the  sandy  foundation  of  this  man,  and  his  reception  from  the  public,  that  Joanna  Southcote  built  up  her  pretensions  to divine inspirations")

Joanna Southcott [or Southcote] was born in Devonshire in 1750.  She became a servant girl "as soon as she was old enough to earn her own living", and a servant girl she remained for many years.

In 1814, the Caledonian Mercury ran an article titles "Some account of Joanna Southcott, The Pretended Prophetess.

Which lead to yet ANOTHER tangent...  the Caledonian Mercury was a newspaper in Edinburgh Scotland.  And it's printed in English, in 1814.  Although fortunate for me,   I found it odd, so I read a bit about the history of Scottish newspapers... and apparently this all stems from the 1707 Act of Union, from which time English was considered the standard for printed and legal communications in Scotland.

Back to Joanna - At the age of 35, she began writing "with tremendous vigor". Then in 1792, she claimed to hear the voice of God speaking to her.  From them on, she was a prolific prophetess, "however, her handwriting was indecipherable, so she had all of her work copied out. "

‘The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed with the Sun’ (1805), William Blake

In 1801, Southcott announced that she was the ‘woman clothed with the sun’, from Revelation 12:1-6.

12 Now a great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a garland of twelve stars. 2 Then being with child, she cried out in labor and in pain to give birth.

3 And another sign appeared in heaven: behold, a great, fiery red dragon having seven heads and ten horns, and seven diadems on his heads. 4 His tail drew a third of the stars of heaven and threw them to the earth. And the dragon stood before the woman who was ready to give birth, to devour her Child as soon as it was born. 5 She bore a male Child who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron. And her Child was caught up to God and His throne. 6 Then the woman fled into the wilderness, where she has a place prepared by God, that they should feed her there one thousand two hundred and sixty days.

Southcott's prophecies all centered on the second coming of Christ, and the following millennium of peace.

I have difficulty following the story from here, but it involved 7 "renowned" gentlemen, named The Seven Stars, inspecting her work, sealing her prophecies in a box only to be opened in the presence of 24 bishops at a time when the world was in crisis...  I think to get a full understanding of this, I'd have to actually read Southcott's writings - and I'm probably not going to do that.  

Binns wrote: "For many years preceding her arrival in London, she had been preaching, publishing, and proclaiming, through various parts of England, notices of her divine mission. In the sixty-fifth year of her age. Dr. Reese, and other medical men, believers in her mission, declared that she was then pregnant, and she, with never-failing confidence, insisted she would soon be the mother of the Messiah. The exact period at which she was to be confined she said had never been revealed to her. "

  She believed that she would give birth (at age 64, and a virgin to boot) to "Shiloh" - a necessary pre-cursor to the second coming of Christ.

The scepter shall not depart from Judah,
Nor a lawgiver from between his feet,
Until Shiloh comes;
And to Him shall be the obedience of the people.
Genesis 49:10

"I long to know what she will produce - her being with child at 65 is indeed a miracle - but her getting any one to beget it - a greater.." Byron to John Murray, September 2 1814

Her followers presented her with elaborate gifts for the expected child, including a valuable crib and cup. 

The Panorama published a list,   "Specimens of presents lately made to Mrs. Southcott". The following is a selection:

• A superb Manger, fitted up as a Child's Crib, decorated with infinite taste, and made of the most costly materials, by Seddone and Co. with its draperies, hangings, etc. cost 300 pounds.
• A costly Mohair Mantle, a purple Robe, divers rich Frocks, Bibs, Caps, etc.
•  A magnificent gold Caudle Cup, ditto Pap Boat, and spoons, with a complete set of matchless China Caudle Cups, etc.
• Many dozens of rich Wines.
• A matchless Child's Coral, with golden bells.
•  Fourteen brilliant Diamond and other Rings, some with curious devices and pious mottos.

A Manger for Shiloh 

Presented to Southcott by her followers, on display in the Panacea Museum today

"To her credit, in the last days of her life in December 1814, Southcott instructed that all these gifts be returned to their donors. The 'cot' remains in the possession of the Panacea Society."

Joanna Southcott the prophetess exposing herself to three physicians in order to validate her pregnancy. Coloured etching by T. Rowlandson, 1814.

One physician who examined her "refused to make public his findings, explaining that they had been so extraordinary that if he did announce them he would be charged with falsifying and disbarred."

1814

In September of 1814, the Leeds Mercury included a statement from Dr Reece, who also examined Southcott, and declared she is undoubtedly pregnant. 

It is  surmised that Southcott was exhibiting Pseudocyesis - a condition where a body experiences all the symptoms of pregnancy, without being pregnant. This would not have been the first case - it's also believed that Mary Tudor, Queen of England (1516-1558) experienced Pseudocyesis. Although no one is certain what causes this - it's believed it is a psychological disorder and - " is believed to occur more frequently in cultures where undue importance is placed on a person’s ability to reproduce.  "

1814 Bristol Mirror

Anyway, Southcott died 10 months later, without having a baby.  Although some do say she died in childbirth.  Her followers hid her body for a day (or more?) believing she would be resurrected, so the exact date of her death is not proven.  A 1927 newspaper article reports that her instructions were to keep her body for 4 days without embalming, then at the end of the fourth day an operation was to be performed  to determine if she had not told the truth about her condition.

The same article reports that all physicians - including those among her followers - refused to perform that operation.  But she was buried with double mourning rites - to honor her, and the promised messiah.

And yet...  others report that there was an autopsy, showing her death to be caused by dropsy.  (dropsy is today referred to as edema - a swelling of fluid around the organs, which could be caused by heart failure, kidney failure, or cirrhosis of the liver)   

Also, some say that by September 1814, Joanna began to believe that "Now it all appears delusion" and that in fact she wondered if Satan had misled her for many years.

  Binns, in his memoir, wrote: "She died in London ; her death-bed was surrounded by many of her most devoted female followers, who were in hourly expectation, as she herself appears to have been, that a miracle would be wrought. The chill of death, however, came, and, according to a pamphlet then published, she declared that she certainly had been inspired, but whether by the Supreme Being or the Prince of Darkness, she was unable to say. That nothing might be wanting to cap the climax of this superstitious mania, even death did not cut down the hopes of her followers so close, but that they are still said to cherish the expectation that, though dead and buried, Joanna will, in some mysterious way, present to them the Messiah."

Alice Seymore (1857-1947) was a devoted follower of Southcott, and it was through her efforts that most of Southcott's books were republished.  In 1907, she was "visited by spirits who told her to write a life of Joanna Southcott".  That biography was published in 1909. 

Find the book by Seymore on Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/expressasforetol01soutuoft/page/n5/mode/2up

At the same time Seymore was writing a biography, a group of women were forming a society - "The Community Of the Holy Ghost", based on Southcott's teachings.  Mabel Bartrop, called Octavia, by her followers, was the widow of an English Clergyman.  She was instrumental in forming the community which later became the Panacea Society.  

As yet another side note, it appears that Seymore, and Bartrop, did not agree or get along at all.  However, neither one wanted to miss out on the opening of the box, so they put up with each other, in order to not be left out.

It is the mysterious box  that has gotten the most publicity over the years.  

Remember, back before the "pregnancy", Southcott had sealed up a box, which she said was full of her prophesies.  They were to be opened "Only in a time of  World Crisis", and only in the presence of the 24 bishops of the Church Of England.

Much quoted is Frank Branston: "In 1927 the box was sent to the National Laboratory of Psychical Research, where researcher Harry Price x-rayed it only to discover a horse pistol, a dice box, purse, several books, a lottery ticket and a night cap."  

It's said in one of the 1927 articles, that the box contained an antiquated flint lock pistol, aimed at the lid, and rigged up with ropes so that it would cause an explosion when the box was opened.

Another article stated that the gun was not loaded.

Also listed as contents of the box were: Paper and linen scraps, a purse, dice box, coins, and rings.   Not stacks of prophesies.  (Lottery ticket?? From what year?? No more tangents today, no more tangents today...)

However, there are then those who refute the entire 1927 report, and say Price's Box examination was no more than a publicity stunt to advertise his new National Laboratory for Psychical Research. 

1927

Harry Price was a British psychic researcher and author, who gained public prominence for his investigations into psychical phenomena and exposing fraudulent spiritualist mediums. He is best known for his well-publicized investigation of the purportedly haunted Borley Rectory in Essex, England. 

Apparently the full story of the box being x-rayed involved  him first having mediums tell him what they saw in the box, THEN the box was x-rayed, and all the mediums were proved wrong.

An author, who wrote a book about Southcott, claims the box was given to the British Museum, where it was opened, select papers placed in the library, and the box was then lost.  Another reporter contacted the British Museum, and the Curator told them that they had no record of that.

According to the Pancea Museum's website, they came in possession of the box in the 1950s.  A replica is displayed at the museum, and the actual box is in the private, secure, collection of the trust.  Maybe.  I simply cannot decipher what is true in ANY of this story.

Replica Box, on display at the museum

The box is referenced in the book Good Omens, by Terry Pratchet and Neil Gaiman.  "Part of the story revolves around a set of prophecies, boxed up and kept safe by multiple custodians over hundreds of years- these prophecies are written by a female prophet who was not taken seriously by many at the time of her writings. Interestingly, the novel is also about the End Times and the coming Apocalypse."

Much of what is written about Joanna Southcott is about as factual as the woman's own prophesies - making it difficult to separate fact from fiction.  In a 1924 Australian paper, it is reported that in 1874 a gunpowder explosion on a barge in Regents Canal shattered every gravestone near St John's woods, except that of Southcott.  Whether that is fact or fiction was just one too many tangents for me today.

So why do I find this all so fascinating?  Because all I ever heard, in my education,  was how women couldn't do anything.  They were subjugated, uneducated, completely dependent on men... women put in sanitoriums simply because their husbands were tired of them.  All true. In some cases.  But it is such a narrow view of history.  Just because some things happened, doesn't mean it was what everyone experienced.  We had a female doctor in Williamsport in the 1840s. A famous architect from Milton, in 1900.  And then there is the memoir of wealthy "Duke of Edgewood", George Higgins, casually telling a magazine that he was going to build another home but his wife said no.  

And, in 1814, there was a woman who formed her own cult following, had a false pregnancy, a possible hoax opening of her writings 100 years later, and people STILL wondering where that box is, and what is actually in it.  

It's a reminder that we should never let one story, and especially not one version of a story, define the entire narrative.  It's just never as simple as that - there are always many layers and variations.  

 There certainly are for THIS particular story.

Memorial stone to the Georgian prophetess Joanna Southcott, St John's Wood Churchyard. 

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FROM THE RECOLLECTIONS OF JOHN BINNS
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A few days after the day of the storm, I called on Richard Brothers. He then resided at Pentonville, near London. It was my first visit, and I had no introduction ; he received me civilly, and we had much conversation. He assured me, with all solemnity and placidity of manner, that the earthquake had, at his earnest and oft-repeated intercession, been, by the Almighty, postponed, and the destruction of London averted. No person but he and I were in his room, which was large and genteelly furnished. He had an elderly, respectable-looking woman as a servant, and an errand-boy. It was apparent that he was in the enjoyment of not only all the necessaries, but the comforts of life. Whence he derived means, I know not, unless it was from the sale of his prophecies, which had been extensive ; they were printed and sold in moderate-sized pamphlets. 

At that time, I supposed his age to be about forty- five; I was three and twenty. He was not less than six feet high, of large and well-proportioned frame; his face was ashy pale; his features harmonious and pleasing; on one of his cheeks was a large, dark-colored mole; his manners were mild and winning ; his tone of voice soft, and his language persuasive and well-chosen. It was on the sandy foundation of this man, and his reception from the public, that Joanna Southcote built up her pretensions to divine inspirations, which I shall notice hereafter. 

I visited Brothers, occasionally, for some months ; he never availed himself of my repeated invitations to call on me; he never inquired as to my motives, objects, or circumstances; he al- ways received me with kindness, conversed freely, and, as I thought, unreservedly. At this distance of time — it is more than half a century since I last saw him — I think of him as a man without a wish to offend or injure; laboring under an hallucination of mind, and incapable of harboring a wish to impose himself upon the world for anything but what he really thought he was. I have sat with him for hours, listening to him with deep interest, regarding him as insane on the one subject, sane on all others, and intelligent on many. He had served in the British Navy, and attained the rank of a lieutenant. He died some years after. I last saw him in a lunatic asylum, where he had been confined by order of the British Government.

I never saw Joanna South cote, but I was intimately acquainted with a gentleman who frequently visited her. She first went to London in 1803; I finally left it early in 1801.

 For many years preceding her arrival in London, she had been preaching, publishing, and proclaiming, through various parts of England, notices of her divine mission. In the sixty-fifth year of her age. Dr. Reese, and other medical men, believers in her mission, declared that she was then pregnant, and she, with never-failing confidence, insisted she would soon be the mother of the Messiah. The exact period at which she was to be confined she said had never been revealed to her. 

Those who believed her to be what she said she was, furnished her money, with which she caused a small, but neat and rather elegant place of worship to be built and fitted up. They provided for her apartments furnished in handsome style. They also purchased for her superb baby linen, a silver cradle, with expensive bedding; a white silk bedquilt, with silver fringe, and all things else deemed suitable for the expected stranger. She thus lived, and was thus accredited and maintained, for several years, the faith of her followers continuing unshaken. The accounts published in England, concurred in stating that many hundreds believed her to be what she represented herself to be, even to the time of her death. 

She died in London ; her death-bed was surrounded by many of her most devoted female followers, who were in hourly expectation, as she herself appears to have been, that a miracle would be wrought. The chill of death, however, came, and, according to a pamphlet then published, she declared that she certainly had been inspired, but whether by the Supreme Being or the Prince of Darkness, she was unable to say. That nothing might be wanting to cap the climax of this superstitious mania, even death did not cut down the hopes of her followers so close, but that they are still said to cherish the expectation that, though dead and buried, Joanna will, in some mysterious way, present to them the Messiah.

 On the 28th of August, 1847, I copied the following article from a London paper: "The remains of the celebrated Joanna Southcote are deposited in the very pretty cemetery which is attached to St. John's Wood Chapel, near the Regent's Park."

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G.K. Chesterson mentions Southcott, and her "hysterical self belief", in his book Orthodoxy - which he described as a Spiritual Autobiography.  Chesterson also penned the Father Brown Series.  

"He there builds up a formidable dyke

     Between his own and others' intellect;

But Wordsworth's poem, and his followers, like

     Joanna Southcote's Shiloh, and her sect,

Are things which in this century don't strike

     The public mind,—so few are the elect;

And the new births of both their stale virginities

Have proved but dropsies, taken for divinities."

 Don Juan Canto III, stanza 95 by Lord Byron

In a Monty Python Sketch - The Epsom Furniture Race

Referred to in South Park  - Royal Pudding Episode

The Panacea Museum is located in Bedford, about an hour and a half north of London by Train. https://panaceamuseum.org/visiting/visitor-information

William Sharp the engraver had been impressed with Joanna Southcott's prophecies in Exeter in 1802 and had persuaded her to come to London where she settled in Paddington beginning the practice of 'sealing' the faithful. Although she had defaced with red paint Sharp's engraving of another prophet, Richard Brothers (shown as 'Prince of the Hebrews' with heavenly rays descending on his head, defaced impression in the NPG), he never lost faith in her divine mission and was one of the devoted followers who prepared the crib destined for her Shiloh or second Christ. His portrait shows her aged about 60, reading from the Bible open at Isaiah chapters 65-6 which describe the blessed state of the New Jerusalem. The engraving is lettered as 'from life', dated January 1812 and was published by her companion Jane Townley.

Alexander Gordon, in an otherwise sympathetic article in the Dictionary of National Biography, says 'Joanna's portrait has a cunning expression' but this is surely only due to the eyes being turned towards the spectator. Letters in the NPG archive from followers of Joanna Southcott protest at the unfair prejudice of writers in various dictionaries and encyclopaedias and the word 'impostor' in frequent use, even on the NPG tablet; this was altered in 1913 at the urgent request of Holdsworth and Miss Alice Seymour, editors of The Express leaflets which expound the life and prophecies of Joanna Southcott.

The last member of the Panacea Society died in 2012.  The Society was then renamed the Panacea Charitable Trust, and a museum was opened. 

Southcott was not the first or the only one to pronounce this theological position. As Barbara Taylor points out, the announcement of a female Messiah was something of a “persistent heresy” among turn-of-the-century millenarians.

Mabel Barltrop,"Octavia", believed the spirit of Shiloh (the baby that Joanna did not have) passed to her.  Others have made wider claims — that the true box was opened in Carlisle in the 1920s, and that the Shiloh has returned and is now occupying the body of Prince William.

"Southcott was generally ignored by the established church; so to spread her prophecies she published her first book, The Strange Effects of Faith (1801?) and went on to publish 65 books and circulated many manuscripts and letters containing copies of her communications. Very few writings have survived in her own hand. She often met with ridicule during her lifetime, and afterwards has often been relegated to the lunatic fringe of cult leaders, but Southcott managed to attract over one hundred thousand followers from all walks of life. Even after her death in 1814, in a failed attempt to give birth to "Shiloh" (the Second Christ), the Southcottian movement continued. Today, a descendant group of followers, the Panacea Society of Bedford, England, has in its possession a large (circa 156 lbs.) "Box of Sealed Writings" of Southcott, to be opened only in the presence of 24 Bishops of the Church of England." https://findingaids.library.upenn.edu/records/PRIN_MUDD_C0755

Joanna Southcott's Box of Sealed Prophecies by Alan Brown https://amzn.to/46xMdZs 

Satan's Mistress: The Extraordinary Story of the 18th Century Fanatic Joanna Southcott and Her Lifelong Battle with the Devil by Val Lewis https://amzn.to/4qntcQG

Leeds Mercury, 1814

Matthew Niblett’s recent intellectual biography of Southcott, Prophecy and the Politics of Salvation in Late Georgian England: The Theology and Apocalyptic Vision of Joanna Southcott (London: I. B. Tauris, 2015), offers a heretofore unexplored perspective on her as a thinker and theologian rather than a charismatic fanatic and madwoman.

James Hopkins, in A Woman to Deliver Her People: Joanna Southcott and English Millenarianism in an Era of Revolution (Austin: U of Texas P, 1982) asserts a “conservative” figure for her lifetime publications at 108,000, also acknowledging that numerous copies were copied out by hand among believers, potentially making the number of readers much higher, 84–85. For some comparison, the poems of Walter Scott, whom William St. Clair calls the most widely sold poet of the period “by far”, reached 200,000 printed copies (for all poems) by 1836, four years after his death.

Orianne Smith, Romantic Women Writers, Revolution, and Prophecy: Rebellious Daughters, 1786–1826 (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2013), 67. Smith particularly describes Southcott’s impact on women and the working class.

Kevin Binfield, “The French, the ‘Long-wished-for Revolution,’ and the Just War in Joanna Southcott, in Rebellious Hearts: British Women Writers and the French Revolution, ed. Adriana Craciun and Kari Lokke (Albany: SUNY P, 2001), 150.

“Joanna Southcott and the Strange Effects of Printing: Publishing Prophecies in the Early Nineteenth Century”, History of Religions 55.1 (2015): 65–88.

In Romantic Liars: Obscure Women Who Became Impostors and Challenged an Empire (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2006), Debbie Lee claims, “Joanna found a remarkable language to talk about her identity by intertwining strands of rural superstition, religious radicalism, and her own sexual history” (39). Lee’s book provides a cultural biography of Southcott rather than a reading of her work, and her position on Southcott’s veracity is announced in her title.

Susan Juster, “Mystical Pregnancy and Holy Bleeding: Visionary Experience in Early Modern Britain and America”, The William and Mary Quarterly 57.2 (2000): 249–88, as well as Doomsayers, 239–71

 Tarot card shown is influenced by the strange history of Joanna Southcott, and is from the Ofgraveconcern Industrial Sublime Tarot 1760 - 1848. An original Tarot deck inspired by the Enlightenment and the early Victorian period.