Servant Woman's Box

To the Archbishops and Bishops of the Church of England:

We, the undersigned, and 28,757 others, do petition the Bishops of the Church of England, that 24 of their number do send for and open Joanna Southcott's Box of Sealed Manuscripts, as we are of the opinion that anything purporting to be a Divine Revelation laid up for the world at this critical period should be examined by the Heads of the Church. . .

Right Reverend Bishops who are willing to accede to this Petition are requested to communicate with The Honorary Secretary, The Panacea Society, Bedford.

This document, a full-page advertisement in the London Daily Telegraph and Morning Post, was the latest manifestation of a religious eccentricity which has mildly amused the Church of England for 150 years. Joanna Southcott (1750-1814) was a pious British servant woman who, like many another simple mind, came a cropper in the mysteries of the Book of Revelation.

Convinced that she was the mystic woman of the Apocalypse, "clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars," she voiced and wrote reams of prophecies, some of them in doggerel. At 64 Joanna Southcott announced she was pregnant, by the "Lamb," of a Messiah. Ten days after her child was due, she died, leaving her followers a box of writings which, she declared, should be opened in time of national crisis, in the presence of four-and-twenty bishops.

Most active Southcott group today is the Panacea Society, founded some 20 years ago, which claims to cure "Cancer . . . Consumption . . . Mental Anxiety . . . Faults of Disposition ... the Tribulations and Perplexity that will precede the Coming of the Lord," by means of "Water and the Spirit." The Panacea Society claims that the 156-lb. box in its possession is the only true Joanna Southcott box.

In 1928, in the presence of one good-humored bishop, a small box, alleged to be Joanna Southcott's, was opened, found to contain miscellaneous objects. This box, according to the Panacea Society, was spurious. The society is confident that eventually 24 bishops will gather around the real box, and miracles will then pop. But to the society's recent petition the Church of England's bishops made no reply.

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