Followers 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. Her religious teaching is still practised today by two groups: the
Christian Israelite Church and the
House of David.
Joanna Southcott's Box 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. (Since 1870, the number of bishops has increased beyond the 24
Lords Spiritual, by the
creation of new dioceses and the reintroduction of
suffragan bishops.) 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,
John Hine, then 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. by
Mabel Barltrop's Panacea Society in June and July 1932 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." From 1957 the Society claimed 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. They had obtained their box on 27 May 1957 from the widow of Cecil Kaye Jowett. In July 2001 the Panacea society allowed a photo of their box to be published. With the death of the last member of the society in 2012 their box was transferred to the Panacea Charitable Trust. The box shown in the
Panacea Museum,
Bedford is understood to be a meticulous replica for display purposes. 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.
In Popular Culture Charles Dickens refers to Southcott in a description of the year 1775 at the beginning of
A Tale of Two Cities. Theologian
John Henry Cardinal Newman uses “Joanna Southcote was a messenger from heaven” as a slightly less extreme case than the “heathen fancy that
Enceladus lies under Etna” when discussing how a mind comes to certitude in his 1870 work
An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent. Author
G. K. Chesterton refers to Southcott in his 1908 book
Orthodoxy, "Believing utterly in one’s self is a hysterical and superstitious belief like believing in Joanna Southcote". ==Works==