Joanna Southcott


Joanna Southcott , was a self-described religious prophetess from Devon, England. A "Southcottian" movement continued in various forms after her death.

Early life

Joanna Southcott was born in the hamlet of Taleford, baptised at Ottery St Mary, and raised in the village of Gittisham, all in Devon. Her father, William Southcott, ran a small farm. She did dairy work as a girl, and after the death of her mother, Hannah, went into service, first as a shop-girl in Honiton, then for a considerable time as a domestic servant in Exeter. She was eventually dismissed because a footman, whose attentions she rejected, claimed that she was "growing mad".

Self-revelation

Originally in the Church of England, in about 1792 she joined the Wesleyans in Exeter, Becoming persuaded that she possessed supernatural gifts, she wrote and dictated prophecies in rhyme, and then announced herself as the Woman of the Apocalypse spoken of in a prophetic passage of the Revelation.
Coming to London at the request of William Sharp, the engraver, Southcott began selling paper "seals of the Lord" at prices varying from twelve shillings to a guinea. The seals were supposed to ensure the holders' places among the 144,000 people who would be elected to eternal life.

The new Messiah and death

At the age of 64 Southcott affirmed that she was pregnant and would be delivered of the new Messiah, the Shiloh of Genesis. The date of 19 October 1814 was that fixed for the birth, but Shiloh failed to appear, and it was given out that she was in a trance.
She had a disorder which gave her the appearance of being pregnant and this fuelled her followers, who reached a number of around 100,000 in 1814, mainly in the London area.
Southcott died not long after. The official date of death was given as 27 December 1814, but it is likely that she died the previous day, as her followers retained her body for some time in the belief that she would be raised from the dead. They agreed to her burial only after the corpse began to decay.
She was buried at the Chapel of Ease at St John's Wood in January 1815.

Legacy

The "Southcottian" movement did not end with her death in 1814. Her followers are said to have numbered over 100,000, but had declined greatly by the end of the 19th century. In 1844 a lady named Ann Essam left large sums of money for "printing, publishing and propagation of the sacred writings of Joanna Southcott". The will was disputed in 1861 by her niece. Her grounds for doing so included that the writings were blasphemous and the bequest was contrary to the Statutes of Mortmain: the Court of Chancery refused to find the writings blasphemous but voided the bequest as contrary to the Statute of Mortmain.
In 1881 there was an enclave of her followers living in the Chatham area, east of London, who were distinguished by their long beards and good manners.
Southcott left a sealed wooden box of prophecies, usually known as Joanna Southcott's Box, with the instruction that it be opened only at a time of national crisis, and then only in the presence of all the 24 bishops of the Church of England at that time, who were to spend a fixed period beforehand studying Southcott's prophecies. Attempts were made to persuade the episcopate to open it during the Crimean War and again during the First World War. In 1927, the psychic researcher Harry Price claimed that he had come into possession of the box and arranged to have it opened in the presence of one reluctant prelate, the suffragan Bishop of Grantham. It was found to contain only a few oddments and unimportant papers, among them a lottery ticket and a horse-pistol. Price's claims to have had the true box have been disputed by historians and by followers of Southcott.
Southcottians, denying the authenticity of the box opened in 1927, continued to press for the true box to be opened. An advertising campaign on billboards and in British national newspapers such as the Sunday Express was run in the 1960s and 1970s by one prominent group of Southcottians, the Panacea Society in Bedford, to try to persuade the 24 bishops to have the box opened. The Society's slogan was: "War, disease, crime and banditry, distress of nations and perplexity will increase until the Bishops open Joanna Southcott's box." According to the Society, this true box is in their possession at a secret location for safekeeping, with its whereabouts to be disclosed only when a bishops' meeting has been arranged. Southcott prophesied that the Day of Judgement would come in the year 2004, and her followers stated that if the contents of the box had not been studied beforehand, the world would have had to meet it unprepared.
Charles Dickens refers to Mrs Southcott in his description of the year 1775 at the beginning of A Tale of Two Cities.

Works

Among her 60 publications may be mentioned: