The Female Messiah of Suburbia

Tags

Albany Road, Bedford, British History, feminism, Joanna Southcott, Mable Barlthrop, Messiah Complex, Octavia, Panacea Society, Prophets

The Panacea Society, Albany Road, Bedford

On an ordinary English suburban street, in an ordinary English town, there lies an extraordinary secret….

Welcome to the world of the  mysterious Panacea Society…preparing the way for the second coming of Jesus in a very polite, practical and idiosyncratically British kind of way.

How an Edwardian Lady became The Female Messiah

Mabel Barltrop c1907 from the website of the Panacea Society

I recently found myself in Bedford for a week and curious as to what the sights of Bedford might be, I did a little research.  Suffice to say my interest was truly piqued when I discovered that only a few streets away from my hotel, just along the tree-lined river embankment, there was a very famous street.  A street on which a house had been purchased and decorated almost hundred years ago, for a very special guest – the son of God himself.  What’s more, there was a house a few doors away awaiting the return of the DAUGHTER of God.

Mabel Barlthrop- a name to conjure with: respectable, middle-class, stolid, genteel, church-going.  Not the kind of name you would associate with a Messianic religious cult.   But oh, how many secret passions lurk behind the twitching net curtains of respectable middle-class sensibility?

Mabel was born in 1866 in Surrey, and after a prim upper-middle class upbringing (involving contact with such luminaries of Victorian Society as Coventry Patmore, Millais and Ruskin) she left school to marry Arthur Henry Barltrop in 1889.  Barltrop was a Church of England Clergyman and Mabel, like a dutiful wife took a keen interest in his theological studies.  They had 4 children and lived happily for a time.  However, their happiness was not to last as Arthur had an undiagnosed brain tumor which lead to chronic ill-health.  Arthur’s fragile state of health affected Mabel and in 1906 she had a break-down and entered a nursing home – some say a lunatic asylum.  She was diagnosed with Melancholia and was noted as believing she was responsible for all of the ills of the world.  While she was recuperating her beloved husband had a stroke and died.  This must have been a very traumatic time for her.

A widow now, Mabel took up literary criticism to make ends meet and she and her aunt raised the children in their Bedford home on Albany Road.  Then came the The Great War (1914-1918) which left an indelible scar on the nation, a psychic scar that the survivors desperately looked to heal – it was a boom time for spiritualism and many felt that they were living at the ‘end of days’.  Almost no family was untouched by the war: Mabel herself lost her eldest son who was killed in Action in 1917.  Another tragedy that Mabel had to come to terms with and may have added to her need to come up with a solution to the suffering and tragedy she saw around her.

The Ladies of Letters and the Prophetess of the Visitation

Joanna Southcott by William Sharp [public domain via Wikimedia]

Between 1913 -1919 Mabel engaged in a correspondence with a group of similarly minded, genteel ladies on the topic of the writings and revelations of the English prophetess Joanna Southcott (1750 – 1814).

Joanna Southcott sits within the tradition of ‘The Visitation’ – the belief that since the 17th Century divine prophecies have been revealed to English prophets.  At the time of Mabel and her correspondence there were seven recognised prophets of the visitation – there would soon be an eighth.

Joanna was a farmer’s daughter born in Devon in 1750 and worked variously in domestic service, as a farm laborer, and as an upholsterer.  She was firmly working class and during her lifetime often defended the rights of the poor.  It was  in 1792  that she became convinced of her diving mission, seeing herself as the Bride of the Revelations.  She strongly identified with a female idea of the divine, her ‘voice’ spoke to her in 1804 emphasising that: “I will conquer in woman’s form.”

Joanna took her prophecies to London, and gathered quite a following, cannily charging anything from 12 Shillings to a Golden Guinea for the privilege of being ‘sealed’ into the elect 144,000.  She believed that Revelation would come to pass in 2004.

Joanna attracted many followers, and made many prophecies that seemed to come true:  she is credited with predicting the death of Bishop Buller of Exeter in 1796, the crop failures and famines of 1799-1800 and the Napoleonic Wars.  She also had the disconcerting habit of sealing up her prophecies and posting them to churchmen so they could be tested at a future date.  Her most famous sealed prophetic writings relate to the near legendary ‘Joanna Southcott’s Box’ subject of much later rumour and speculation.

Charles Williams (active 1797-1850), Spirits at work- Joanna conceiving ie- blowing up Shiloh, 1814. Julie Mellby notes that the book Joanna has been reading is The Art of Humbugging, chapter one. Above her head is a bag labeled: Passports to Heaven, five shillings each or two for Seven.

Nevertheless she was not without her critics, and the eighteenth and early nineteenth century caricaturists could be savage.  Especially when Joanna at the age of 64 announced that she was carrying the new Messiah, Shiloh, the child mentioned in Genesis.  Frenzied preparations amongst her followers resulted in a fabulous silver gilt cradle being commissioned from Seddon’s (a rather swanky cabinet-maker at the time).  However, the fatal day came and went and no baby appeared…her loyal followers claimed the child was of spirit and had been taken up to heaven, but others thought she had finally gone to far with her flummery.  Heartbroken, exhausted and possibly suffering from Dropsy, Joanna died shortly after, probably about 27th December 1814 (although her followers appeared to have kept her body for a few days just in case the prophetess returned…she did not).

So it would seem that the legend of Joanna Southcott might die with her, but she had some very loyal adherents who kept her prophecies alive, and if legend is to be believed, guarded her box devotedly and handed it down generation after generation until it found it’s way into the hands of the Panacea Society.

Octavia and the Panacea Society

Swiftly deciding that she was the eighth prophet of the Visitation, Mabel Barlthrop changed her name to Octavia and from 1916 she began receiving daily divine messages at 5.30pm promptly.  By 1919 she was convinced that she was in fact Shiloh the divine daughter of God and the female Messiah, and that she must begin preparing for the second coming of the Son of God.

Being a genteel Edwardian lady she set about her task with clubbable gusto – appointing 12 female apostles and obtaining the real estate to set up the New Jerusalem on Albany Road, Bedford.  The enclosed gardens became the ‘Garden of Eden’ and the ‘Gathering of the Believers’ began.

The society which began as the Commune of the Holy Ghost and by 1926 had become the Panacea Society had set religious aims and tenets – one of which is of great interest.  Mabel believed that god was not a trinity but fourfold.  God the father and son, and God(dess) the mother and daughter.  Many of her followers were women, often war-widows, but because of this female doctrine and the concept that Octavia/Mabel was the Female Messiah the Society also appealed to the suffragettes  – as it seemed to be an attack on the old boys club of the Church of England.  The fact that it was also a largely female commune and entirely run by women – must have been quite refreshing at that time.

One of the Society’s main goals was to try to fulfill Joanna Southcott’s wish that her fabled box be opened in the presence of 24 Bishops of the Church of England at a time of dire national peril.  In the box would be the instruction manual for surviving Revelations.  With this Messianic mission the ladies set about taking out small ads in newspapers such as the Sunday Express.  These ads ran from into the 1960’s and even 1970’s:

“War, disease, crime and banditry, distress of nations and perplexity will increase until the Bishops open Joanna Southcott’s box.”

Church of England Bishops did not oblige and the box remained unopened.

Nevertheless the society flourished, with up to 70 mainly female members living in the commune in the 1930’s and thousands world-wide.  As part of Mabel’s healing ministry she would breathe on small water-soaked linen squares and post them all over the world – the cloths were believed to have healing qualities.  As the commune grew it became necessary for Mabel to set out some ground rules for polite living –  the worst of her upper middle class snobbery came out here and some of her rules could seem very elitist: such as members only being allowed to use the term napkin (‘serviette’ simply would not do!).

God’s house in Bedford

The Ark, Albany Road

One of the most notable quirks of this group was the very practical steps it took in relation to the second coming.  In a very property-owning and British kind of way, the society decided that God,  if/when he returns, would require a rather nice Victorian Villa in Bedford.   After all, most Brits at the time were convinced that God was of course British, so of course God would want to live in Bedford – so close to London, but near enough to the countryside…close to local amenities etc.

The late Ruth Klein the last surviving member of the religious community, is quoted as saying of the Ark on Bedford Road:

“We’ve had it completely refurbished, new carpets, curtains…you may well ask does God need a shower? He will have a radiant body, so I don’t think he will, but we’ve prepared it as a normal house anyway.”

The Society also kept Mabel’s house intact, just as she left it when she died in 1934. Even as the millennium came and went, surviving members till hoped that Octavia, the female Messiah would return.

The end…

After Mabel’s death in 1934,  the Panacea Society lasted but with dwindling membership until its last member, Ruth Klein died in 2012.  Although it is no longer a religious community, it’s multi-million pound assets mean that it still exists as a charity – it funds local Bedford charities for the poor as well as funding research into prophecy and Millenarianism.

Overall I think that Mabel was sincere in her beliefs, although they did get decidedly odd towards the end of her life (she thought her late husband was Jesus). Her mental break-down following the loss of her beloved husband; then the outbreak of war and the loss of her eldest son; simply must have had a significant impact on her mental state.  She seems to have had some of the symptoms of Messiah Complex – and at a time when people were desperate to cling to anything that made sense of the terrible events they had all recently lived through –  Mabel/Octavia tried to offer them some hope. So although she may have been a little deluded, and a bit of a snob, and very much an English Eccentric, a lot of what she did had a very positive impact, especially for the many women left alone and grieving after such a catastrophic war.  She also embraced the idea of the sacred feminine and a female godhead which challenged the accepted male oriented Church of England.

And what of Joanna Southcott’s Box?

Psychical researcher Harry Price

In 1927 the offices of Harry Price (of Borley Rectory fame) received a mysterious parcel.  The covering letter purported to be from a Devonshire gentleman who was leaving Britain for far off climes.  In disposing of his possessions he came across a walnut box left to him by an aged family retainer.  The Devonshire gentleman claimed that it was Joanna Southcott’s box.

Harry Price was a showman as well as a researcher and was keen to debunk the mysterious box and all things Southcottian.  He engaged a number of psychometry experts to sense what secrets lay hidden within.  He also wrote to a number of Bishops of the Church of England inviting them to the unveiling – and got a lot of snarky replies for his troubles!  Eventually, on 11 July 1927 at Hoare Hall in Westminster the box was revealed via X-ray (apparently some of the psychometry experts got quite a good feel for what was in the box).

X-ray of Joanna Southcott’s Box – Image, Harry Price Website

With massive press interest and boo’s and hisses from Southcottian’s (and possibly Panacean’s) the contents of the box was revealed.  It contained 56 items including:  a horse-pistol, a fob purse and coins, a dice box, ear-rings, a miniature, a selection of romantic fiction but not really anything apocalyptic.  Unless of course it contained lots of things to help you pass the time waiting for the apocalypse..?

Anyway, those who were skeptical sniggered at the believers, whilst the believers hissed at the skeptics and said that the box was a fake.  To this day, the Panacea Society state that the Joanna Southcott’s box is in a secret location in Bedford – awaiting the day of judgement.

Image from Raiders of the Lost Ark, Steven Spielberg

Sources

Harry Price Website: http://www.harrypricewebsite.co.uk/Famous%20Cases/southcottbyharryprice.htm
Mellby Julie L:  http://blogs.princeton.edu/graphicarts/2012/01/joanna_southcott_or_southcote.html
Panacea Society: http://www.panacea-society.org/
The Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/jun/03/octavia-daughter-of-god-review
The Telegraph: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/jun/03/octavia-daughter-of-god-review
Wikipedia:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joanna_Southcott
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panacea_Society

Dr Sex and The Electric Love Bed

Tags

British History, Celestial Bed, eighteenth century history, electricity, emma hamilton, Georgian Society, James Graham, medical history, sex therapy, temple of heath

James Brown, medical reformer, with James Graham just visible in a white suit in the background by John Kay 1786, National Portrait Gallery

A lot of people think  sex was invented in the 1960’s with it’s free-love, orgasms for all, and sex therapy…prior to that people simply pro-created out of a sense of duty.  How dull…..

Well, obviously that’s simply not true (Ok so, maybe the Victorian’s were a bit prudish, but hey, Victoria still managed to knock out nine children so Albert must have been keeping her amused between the sheets).

But what about bad sex? Or no sex? What about infertility? what did people do and where did they go for their sexual healing…?

Enter the eighteenth century’s answer to Dr Ruth:  The first Sex Therapy Superstar and all round crowd pleaser: ‘Doctor’ James Graham! Roy Porter acerbically described in the following terms:

“James Graham, former pedlar of health through sex-therapy and mudbaths, later founded the ‘New and True Christian Church, practiced Adamic nakedness, died insane.”(1)

Welcome to the world of the Prince of Quacks and keen imbiber of ether!

Formative Years

James Graham was born on 23 June 1745 in Edinburgh.  He was of humble origins but not so poor that he could not afford a good education.  He studied at the prestigious Edinburgh University. He left without a degree, however this far from unusual – neither did most of his contemporaries.  At first he tried his hand as an apothecary in Doncaster but a more adventurous spirit was calling him.  In 1770 he set off for America, where he spent the next five years.  It was in America that he came across the cutting edge of scientific discovery that was quite literally setting the world on fire:  electricity.

In Philadelphia Graham was introduced to electrical theory and practice by Ebenezer Kinnersley a close friend of Benjamin Franklin (also famous for his experiments in electricity).  With this new-found knowledge, the proverbial light-bulb (OK, slightly anachronistic imagery) went off in Graham’s brain.

Graham came to believe that electricity was the new panacea and this belief formed the basis for his future medical therapies, philosophy and, of course, his business ventures, he wrote:

“Electricity invigorates the whole body and remedies all physical defects.”

Graham believed that through magnetic and electric therapies, the very fabric of the human race could be improved upon and in improving individuals society as a whole would become more harmonious.

As the War of Independence swept through America, James Graham returned to England charged with these radical new scientific and medical  ideas and armed with an innate flair for self-promotion.

No publicity is bad publicity

Catherine Macauley, c1775, image by Robert Edge Pine

On return to England, in 1775,  he set up a fashionable practice in Bath, and began a vigorous advertising campaign in the form of leaflets and pamphlets advertising such things as “Effluvia, vapours and applications aetherial, magnetic or electric”. 

His biggest publicity coup however was in catching the most famous Blue-stocking of the day: Catherine Macaulay.  Catherine was unusual in being an eighteenth century woman famed for her intellect rather than who she was sleeping with.  This was soon to change.

Catherine was in her forties in poor health. James Graham, charming, charismatic and opportunist, soon inveigled his way into Catherine’s salon.   Despite her ill-health, Shortly after engaging James Graham as her physician she recovered her vitality enough to marry his 21-year-old brother!  Society was deliciously shocked by the events.  Although Catherine’s reputation was in ruins, Graham used the scandal to prove the efficacy of his methods:  after all he had transformed a frail middle-aged blue stocking into a rapacious cougar!  Banking on this to bolster his reputation he relocated to London within two weeks of the marriage.

London: Electric Ladyland and the Temple of Health

London 1780’s:

“Carriages drawing up to the door of this modern Phaphos, with crowds of gawping sparks, on each side, to discover who were the visitors, but the ladies’ faces were covered; all going incog.  At the door stood two gigantic porters with each a long staff with ornamental silver heads….and wearing superb liveries, with large gold-laced cocked hats, each was seven feet high, and retained to keep the entrance clear.”
Henry Angelo, Royal Fencing Master,  recollected of the biggest crowd pullers in London in 1780.

Sex, scandal and excess – welcome to James Graham’s Temple of Health and Hymen.

An expert at creating publicity and marketing his ideas, Graham chose the Adam brother’s uber-fashionable development the Adelphi for the site of his first Temple of Health and Hymen, also called ‘Templum Aesculpium Sacrum’.  Already much talked because the development had nearly ruined the Adam brothers, it already boasted famous residents, the addition of a highly salacious medical/scientific establishment created an immediate buzz.

Emma Hamilton by George Romney

The Temple soon attracted crowds of the curious, bustling to see the elaborate scientific implements, the ornate and luxurious interiors, the sexy young ‘goddesses’ (Emma Hamilton, Lord Nelson’s future mistress, briefly caused a sensation as the Goddess  Vestina during her short sojourn in the Temple).

For the price of 2 guinea’s you could even attend one of the  scandalously frank sex talks that James Graham delivered nightly, such as his ‘Lecture on Generation’ which recommended genital hygiene and marital sex, whilst condemning masturbation and the use of prostitutes.  Mind you he did think it was OK for the married ladies to look at dirty mags…(aka erotica).  At the lectures the audience would be treated to music, poetry, fireworks and dance, and as an added bonus you also got a free electric shock thrown into deal (the padding of the chairs had conductors concealed in them!) – so you could quite literally come out shocked rigid!

If you had the reddies, you could really buy into his ideas: the scantily clad nymphs sold patrons Graham’s Electrical Ether, Nervous Aetherial Balsam or Imperial Pills for a guinea or so each; and if you were really rich, you could enjoy some of the electro-therapy equipment itself:  elaborate multi-seater thrones and crowns designed to give light electric shock’s to the patient to cure impotency or barrenness.

Roll up Roll up for the amazing Medico, Magnetico, Musico, electrical bed!

Or to give it its formal title:  The Great Celestial State Bed.  The centre piece, star turn of James Graham’s second Temple of Health and Hymen based in Shomberg House and opened on the 26th June 1781.

Georgiana Duchess of Devonshire by Joshua Reynolds

Graham teased the public with pamphlets and soon had the crowd flocking to his new temple.  Duchesses vied with famous courtesans, politicians rubbed shoulders with bricklayers, old Roue’s like the Earl of Sandwich cast their jaundiced eye over the exotic and luxurious interiors.  Acidic commentators like Horace Walpole decried James Graham as a quack.

But James Graham was much more than a quack, he used scientific advances to great visual effect, taking much inspiration from famous theatrical designer Philippe De Loutherbourg and his innovative stage lighting techniques and use of automatons.

A visit to the temple would plunge the visitor into,as Peter Otto describes it:

“A multi-media show [that] combined drama, medicine, science, metaphysics, religion, music, sex and even politics” (2)

Clearly, there is too much there to cover in this post!  So let’s get to the main feature – the Great Celestial State Bed as it seems to embody quite a few of the themes that Otto identifies.

A description is in order I think, I have read various descriptions of the bed, Lydia Syson in her book Doctor of Love provides a great description, however first I will let James Graham describe his crowning glory in his own words:

The Celestial Bed

“forty pillars of brilliant glass, of great strength and of the most exquisite workmanship, in regard to shape cutting and engraving…[and] an abundance of the electrical fire..”

Syson goes into further detail:  the bed had a vast dome above it which contained exotic perfumes and a dash of ether just to get the occupants into the mood.  Music also played from the bed, organ pipes were integrated into it and the music was regulated by the pace and vigour of the nookie going on beneath the canopy!

The dome also had inlaid mirrors, reflecting the couple rolling in the rich bedclothes atop a tilting mattress stuffed with oats, spices and stallion hair and stuffed with 1500lbs of magnets to prevent impotency and aid conception (well a simple feather mattress would have been redolent of effete luxury).  Graham was not alone in using magnets in relation to sex therapy, they had long been connected with love and sex.  The magnets were said to ‘jolt’ the couple as they copulated, however Kate Williams notes that it was probably one of the ‘goddesses’ hidden away and frantically pumping away on a lever (rather a parallel of events in the bed…)

As if this was not enough, the bed was loaded with other diversions and adornments:  Atop the dome where Cupid and Psyche, Hymen watching over them with an electric crown in one hand and torch in the other.  Inside were caged turtle doves, automata (a creepy pastoral show with nymphs, brides and bridegrooms entering the temple of hymen).  And all topped off with an electric message, reading “Be fruitful, multiply and replenish the earth”

Sounds terrifying!  But for £50 a night (close to £3,500 in today’s money) you would want to make the most of it.    James sold it as:

“to insure the removal of barrenness…but likewise, improve, exalt and invigorate the bodily, and through them, the mental facilities of the human species.”

The aristocracy flocked to it, desperate for legitimate heirs.  After 5 and a half years of marriage with no heir to show for it, Georgiana Duchess of Devonshire may well have taken a tumble in the famous bed.

Gaudy and vulgar, and slightly scary as the bed sounds today, in the eighteenth century it embodied cutting edge science and medical theory and it was the acme of technological advancement. The ingenious mechanic Thomas Denton was involved in the creation of the bed (Denton famously viewed some automatons which were on display, decided he could do better, and promptly made a speaking automata and later a drawing one which astounded all who saw them).

The lights go out

Fashion is fickle, and publicity can be cruel – Graham became the butt of satire and innuendo in the popular press and in the theatres.  It can’t have helped his already dubious reputation to note that many prostitutes advertised their use of the ‘Grahamite method’ of sex.  So, despite James Graham’s stratospheric success, his fame and fortune lasted only a couple of years.  Soon both temples were in financial difficulty and by 1784 he was forced to sell his possessions.  He returned to Edinburgh, and became ever more eccentric.  He seems to have developed a Messiah Complex – founding a new religion (he was its only convert).  He eventually renounced his electric therapies in favour of mud and extreme calory counting.  He was partial to giving lectures buried up to his neck in soil, and wearing vests made of turf.  He even did a spell in the Edinburgh Tollbooth after giving one of his saucy sex lectures to the staid and respectable Edinburgh worthies.

Yet in a time of social unrest – Britain was in fear of invasion following Spain and France joining with the Patriots in the American War of Independence and the capital was reeling after the chaos and violence of the Gordon Riots – James Graham offered people the chance to glimpse an idealistic alternative.  And and he gave that very commercial society the chance to buy into it.  He offered a slightly hedonistic opportunity to achieve an almost religious transcendence through sex and he wanted patrons to leave his temple feeling empowered and invigorated.

Many of his theories were not to far removed from contemporary medical advice (and compared to a blood-letting, his methods offered enjoyment). Although some of his sexual theories relied on standard chauvenistic Male/Active/good  female/passive/corruptible dualisms he did hold relatively progressive views on women’s education, nutrition and hygiene.

His reputation as a quack seems to have stemmed from his expert use of self-promotion and marketing.  Syson notes that in the eighteenth century Quackery was identified primarily by use of self-promotion and geographic mobility rather than actual survival rates of patients.  One would imagine that most of James Graham’s patients not only survived, but came out of the procedure with a smile on their face – no wonder the other doctors hated him!

Wellcome Institute Collection

Notes

1) Roy Porter, ‘English Society in the Eighteenth Century’ (p182)
2) Otto, Peter, http://www.erudit.org/revue/ron/2001/v/n23/005991ar.html

Sources

Cruickshank, Dan, ‘The Secret History of Georgian London’, Windmill, 2010
Foreman, Amanda, ‘Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire’, Flamingo, 1999
http://www.general-anaesthesia.com/images/james-graham.html James Graham,
Otto, Peter, http://www.erudit.org/revue/ron/2001/v/n23/005991ar.html
Porter, Roy, ‘English Society in the 18th Century’, Penguin, 1990
http://quackscharlatansandfakers.wordpress.com/2011/10/05/hello-world/ James Graham, Quack?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Graham_%28sexologist%29
Syson, Lydia, 2008, ‘Doctor of Love: James Graham and his Celestial Bed’, Alma Books (Kindle Edition)
Williams, Kate, ‘England’s Mistress’, Arrow Books, 2007