Joanna Southcott

Joanna Southcott (or Southcote; April 1750 – 26 December 1814) was a British self-described religious prophetess from Devon. A "Southcottian" movement continued in various forms after her death; its eighth prophet, Mabel Barltrop, died in 1934.

Early life
Joanna Southcott was born in the hamlet of Taleford, Devonshire, baptised at Ottery St Mary, and raised in the village of Gittisham. Her father, William Southcott (died 1802), ran a small farm. She did dairy work as a girl, and after the death of her mother, Hannah, she 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, she joined the Wesleyans in Exeter in about 1792. She became persuaded that she had supernatural gifts and wrote and dictated prophecies in rhyme. She then announced herself as the Woman of the Apocalypse, spoken of in a prophetic passage of the Revelation (12:1–6).

Southcott came to London at the request of William Sharp, an engraver, and began selling paper "seals of the Lord" at prices varying from twelve shillings to a guinea. The seals were supposed to ensure a holder's place among the 144,000 people ostensibly elected to eternal life.

The new Messiah and death
At the age of 64, Southcott claimed she was pregnant with the new Messiah, the Shiloh of Genesis (49:10). 19 October 1814 was the planned delivery date, but Shiloh failed to appear, and it was given out that she was in a trance. Southcott had a disorder that made her appear pregnant and this fuelled her followers, who numbered about 100,000 by 1814, mainly in the London area.

Southcott died not long after this. Her 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, although her followers had declined greatly in number by the end of that century. In 1844 one 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 on grounds 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, acknowledging that it broke the Statutes 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 casket of prophecies, usually known as Joanna Southcott's Box, with instructions to open it only at a time of national crisis and in the presence of all 24 current bishops of the Church of England, who were to spend a fixed period beforehand studying her prophecies. Attempts were made to persuade the episcopate to open it in the Crimean War and again in the First World War. In 1927, the psychic researcher Harry Price claimed to have 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 were disputed by historians and by Southcott followers.

Southcottians who denied the authenticity of the box that was opened in 1927 continued to press for the true box to be opened. A campaign on billboards and in national newspapers such as the Sunday Express was run in the 1960s and 1970s by a prominent group of Southcottians, the Panacea Society in Bedford (formed in 1920), to try to persuade the 24 bishops to have the box opened, claiming: "War, disease, crime and banditry, distress of nations and perplexity will increase until the Bishops open Joanna Southcott's box." The Society claims to hold this true box 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 Southcott in a description of the year 1775 at the beginning of A Tale of Two Cities.

Her religious teaching is still practised today by two groups: the Christian Israelite Church and the House of David.

Works
Among her 60 publications may be mentioned:
 * The Book of Wonders (1813–1814)
 * Prophecies announcing the birth of the Prince of Peace, extracted from the works of Joanna Southcott to which are added a few remarks thereon, made by herself, ed. Ann Underwood. London: 1814
 * Joanna Southcott: A dispute between the woman and the powers of darkness (1802) New York; Woodstock: Poole 1995. ISBN 1-85477-194-9. Facsimile
 * Prophecies announcing the birth of the Prince of Peace, extracted from the works of Joanna Southcott to which are added a few remarks thereon, made by herself, ed. Ann Underwood. London: 1814
 * Joanna Southcott: A dispute between the woman and the powers of darkness (1802) New York; Woodstock: Poole 1995. ISBN 1-85477-194-9. Facsimile