Joanna was born at Gettisham, in Devonshire.
Her parents were in the farming line, and members of the Established Church. She herself was in service or in industrious employment, “without,” writes her biographer, “any other symptom of a disordered intellect than that she was attached to the Methodists.” Nevertheless, it was Mr. Pomeroy, the clergyman whose church she attended at Exeter, who appears to have encouraged her to print her prophecies and to assume spiritual gifts. The books which she sent into the world were written partly in rhyme, all the verse and the greater part of the prose being delivered in the character of the Almighty. Her discourses were nothing else than a mere rhapsody of texts—vulgar dreams and vulgar interpretations. Her fame spread, and seven wise men from different parts of the country, the seven stars, came to believe in her. Among the early believers were three clergymen, one of them a man of fashion, fortune, and noble family. As her followers supplied her with money and treated her with great reverence, the more extravagant were her assertions and the loftier her claims. The scheme of redemption was completed in her. If the tree of knowledge was violated by Eve, the tree of life was reserved for Joanna. Her greatest triumph was a conflict with
the devil, which lasted a week. According to her own account the devil had the worst of it. She gave him ten words for one, and allowed him no time to speak. Very ungallantly, at the termination of the dispute he remarked no man could tame a woman’s tongue; he said the sands of an hour-glass did not run faster. It was better to dispute with a thousand men than one woman. After this dispute Joanna is said—and her followers believed it—to have fasted forty days.
Shortly after commencing her mission, she published the following declaration:—
“I, Joanna Southcott, am clearly convinced that my calling is of God, and my writings are indited by His Spirit, as it is impossible that any spirit but an all-wise God that is wondrous in working, wondrous in wisdom, wondrous in power, wondrous in truth, could have brought round such mysteries so full of truth as in my writings; so I am clear in whom I believed, that all my writings came from the Spirit of the Most High God.
“Joanna Southcott.”
One of her means of making money and increasing her influence was the sealing of such as signed their names to a declaration intimating a desire for Christ’s
kingdom to be established upon earth, and the destruction of that of the devil. Whoever signed his or her name received a sealed letter containing these words:—“The sealed of the Lord the elect. Precious man’s redemption to inherit the tree of life, to be made heirs of God and joint-heirs with Jesus Christ.” To this document Joanna’s name was appended. In December, 1813, she declared her pregnancy, and prophesied that she should have a son that year by the power of the Most High. Her followers now increased rapidly, and chapels were opened for promulgating her doctrines. As the time drew nigh presents of all descriptions, it was said, came in unasked. There was a magnificent cot for the expected Messiah, manufactured by Seddons. All the articles used on such occasions—as laced caps, bibs, robes, papboats, caudle cups, &c.,—were lavishly supplied; and when it appeared that the poor woman had died, asking pardon for her late blasphemous doctrines and past sins, the delusion was still kept up, and her followers believed that she would reappear. It was only after a post-mortem examination that the fiction of a miraculous conception was dispelled. Joanna was sixty years old at the time of her death, and was
buried privately in Marylebone Upper Burying-ground, near Kilburn.
The present leader is John Whatmore, formerly a smith, but who has been led in a marvellous way, according to his own confession, to believe in Joanna. He is an open-air preacher, and may be met with in London Fields, Somers Town, and elsewhere pursuing his calling, which apparently is not very lucrative. He has two boards joined together, on which some unintelligible jargon is printed, which he calls his two sticks. These he holds up to view, at the same time calling out, “Britannia! Ephraim! Judah!” Then he commences his oration, a strange medley of Scripture and nonsense. According to him the world is in the worst possible way; and the devil has a fine time of it. The present commercial system of society by no means meets with Whatmore’s approval. The poor are rotting off, and woe to them to whom such a catastrophe is due. There are many disciples, he tells us; but fear of this world and a false sense of shame prevent them from declaring themselves. There must be some, otherwise the man could not get a living. His library seems to consist chiefly, if not exclusively, of the New Testament and his own absurd hand-bills, which a printer supplies him with
on the chance of his selling them. In answer to my inquiry as to where he attended when not preaching himself, his reply was that he sometimes went to the Agricultural Hall; but they were not advanced enough for him, and so he falls back on himself, and goes about to do what he thinks is—or at any rate what he says he thinks is—the Lord’s work. There is no bounce about him. He is apparently a muddle-headed, well-meaning mystic; about as mad or sane as others of his way of thinking. That he is wretchedly poor, that he is ignorant, that his language to ordinary folks seems simply unintelligible, perhaps in certain quarters may be accepted as signs of his Divine commission. At any rate, he is a representative man. If he is ignorant and talks nonsense, what must be the ignorance and the nonsense existing in those who listen to him? How dense must be the ignorance, how crass the nonsense cherished in his hearers! It may be asked, and this is a question I put to the religious public, is not the manifestation of such religious folly a reproach to our age? If the Church had done its duty, would such a folly have been possible?