Joanna’s Box

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XVII, Issue 177, 12 July 1927, Page 5

Joanna’s Box

“ Not Illuminating ”

Opened at Church House CLAIMS OF RELIGIOUS SECT THE WRONG BOX. [By Cable —Press lean. — Copyright.) (Received T2, 1,45 p.m > London, July 11. The mysterious box belonging to the prophetess Joanna Southcott, which hag been sealed for 113 years, was opened in the Cnurch House, Westminster, in the presence of Bishop Grantham, who described it as not illuminating. The first object found wag a book dated 1796 entitled “Surprises of Love, or an Adventure in Greenwich Park.”

The other contents were a dice box, an old pistol, a pair of earrings, coins and sundry books. The only one requiring study was a diary for the year 1715 with written notes. Followers of Joanna, who were present, ridiculed the whole proceedings. They admitted that tfie box wag hers but denied that it was the box containing the plan for the salvation of England, which, they claim, is in a secret hiding place and will only be opened in the presence of 24 bishops.—(A. and N.Z.)

The mysterious box which Joanna Southcott sealed up in 1814 has been X-rayed at the National Laboratory of Psychical Research. Joanna Southcott was a Devonshire servant girl who astounded England at the beginning of the 19th century by claiming that she was about to become the mother of the Messiah. She attracted thousands of followers, most of whom lost faith in her when she died without becoming a mother. The box was handed by Joanna to a Mrs. Rebecca Morgan, who passed it on to her children. One of these, dying in 1925. gave it to his master, who. on leaving for the Argentine, gave the box to the Laboratory. The moral of the Joanna Southcott box is that when anything is proclaimed as secret and important for a long time hundreds of people will be found to believe that some great revelation is locked up in the mystery, and that it is a social crime to keep this wonderful pronouncement hidden from the people. So it happens that a century after the Southcott religion appeared to be dying it becomes revived in London with greater force than ever. It is time to open the box, if only to show the meagre material on which Joanna built up her fame. The conditions laid down by herself, when she sealed the box. were that it should be opened only at a time of national crisis and at the request and in the presence of a bench of Bishops.

The first of these conditions has never been difficult to realise. The war certainly brought about a national crisis, as also did the General Strike. As to the bench of Bishops, Joanna may have reckoned that, as her box would stand as a perpetual challenge to the bishops, and one which was beneath their dignity to accept, her cult would continue and grow with the years. Something of the sort may happen if the bubble be not now pricked.

One bishop .at least has promised to attend, and it is to be hoped that a sufficient number will give their assent to the proceedings so as to prevent all cavil when the box is opened. Joanna did not stipulate that the bishops should have faith in her doctrine, or any special in. terest in her revelations.

The box is now on view, by favour of the authorities of the National Laboratory or Psychical ResearchWhen seen there, a commonplace little mahogany casket like a workbox, measuring a foot by nine inches, it was being “psychometrised” by various people who are supposed to have occult powers, either derived from the communication of spirits or else given to them as a special faculty of “sensing” things. Most of the people so endowed are professional mediums, the majority of these being women—always the emotional and imaginative sex. They were noticeably cautious. Two great pundits of the Spiritualist world were content to say that they felt a disturbing atmosphere of heat and oppression. A lady medium declared that she sensed “war,” and another still more eminent in occult circles announced that she saw many things, but that she could not, at this stage, enter into details.

A HEAVY HORSE PISTOL. Joanna knew nothing of X-rays. She was really an illiterate Devonshire servant girl whose mind became obsessed by certain Scripture texts till she imagined that she was the woman described in Revelations. “And she being with child cried, travailing in birth, and pained to be delivered.” The fact that Joanna was deceived about her condition put a check upon her disciples for a time, but a religion once started is always difficult to kill, and it is said that there are still in the world 30,000 adherents of the Joanna Southcott doctrine. To return to the X-rays, however. The developed plates showed a remarkable collection of objects ; rings, coins, a bag of some sort, and a heavy horse pistol, primed and cocked, while stray hooks and little wires, which became revealed in the plate suggested to the imaginative that when the hox was op<ried the pistol would be fired. Unfortunately, if the revelations of the box turn out to be deceptive, the faithful have still a reply. They sav that the hox at the Laboratory of Psychical Research is a hox sealed by Joanna, hut not The Box, the box which she specially commended to posterity.