Inside this box are prophecies, to be read only in a time of national crisis, for a fixed period of time, in the presence of twenty four bishops of the Anglican Church. Its followers have protected it for two centuries, as they wait for their version of the End Times.

——————–
In 1903, one Grace Kimmins set up the Heritage Craft School in Sussex “under the banner of the ‘Guild of the Brave Poor Things’. The Heritage Craft Schools and Hospitals for Cripples believed that disabled children could not be trained to their full capacity in city slums and so set up residential schools in the country. The Guild motto was ‘Happy in My Lot.’

That is even more Pythonesque than the South Australian ‘Home for Incurables’.

The story come from a site dedicated to British utopian experiments between 1325 and 1945, by Chris Coates, who seems to be indefatigable.

There are dozens, many of which are wonderful. The Panacea Society, for instance, is in Bedfordshire.

I like the description from the Bedfordshire Times and Citizen 16th April 1998, mostly because of its small-minded cliches:

“WHEN Mabel Barltrop was released from a lunatic asylum in the 1920s she decided to settle in Bedford.

Along with thousands of others in that credulous era, she venerated a 17th century prophetess called Joanna Southcott and was convinced of her imminent return. [actually she was active in the first few years of the nineteenth century].

Charismatic and highly strung, she persuaded a group of ‘Southcottians’ to hand over all their worldly goods to her, with which she bought a compound of houses and a mansion on Castle Road and founded the Panacea Society.

Journalist Val Lewis, who has written a book about the society, explained: “Barltrop exerted enormous pressure on members to join and then made them hand over all their wealth and possessions to the society.

“The Panacea Society is very sinister. Its members are enormously secretive and allow no strangers into their closed world.”

The Panaceans’ only direct contact with the world is via adverts they regularly place in national newspapers calling on 24 bishops of the Church Of England to open ‘Joanna’s Box’. [we will come to their actual contact with the real world later].

Like the Ark of the Covenant to the Jews, Joanna’s Box, containing prophecies about the end of the world and the birth of Shiloh [a figure in Genesis] as well as news of other up-and-coming millennial events, is the Panaceans’ main article of faith.

So far the bishops have been slow in coming forward, and until they do the Panacea Society claims to have the box ready and waiting in a secret hiding place in their compound.

Mrs Lewis said: “They use the box and its supposed secrets as a way of perpetuating their mystery and keeping adherents keen, but the fact is, the box has already been opened.”

She says she has a letter that is evidence that the box was opened earlier this century and its contents were found to be, puffing it mildly, “tat”.

She says the papers it contained are filed in the British Library and that the box is being kept in a huge storeroom along with piles of other junk, in London. She said: “I have a letter in which they admit they haven’t got it.”

This may be a bit disingenuous. According to Wikipedia, the Bishop of Grantham did consent to oversea an opening of the box in 1927, when it was found to contain some old papers, “a lottery ticket and a horse pistol”. But the Panaceans claim it wasn’t the right box, which they have hidden away, at a “secret location.”

“What they have got is a huge ornamental cot, which Mrs Lewis says the Panaceans borrowed from Salford Museum and still have yet to return. [The cot has a specific function in the climactic ritual].

It is kept in The Haven, the huge 20-room mansion on the corner of Castle Road and Newnham Road, which Panaceans believe will be Earth’s control centre when Shiloh is born in 2004 and the world as we know it comes to an end.

Mrs Lewis said: “At the moment it stands empty, though apparently it is stuffed with antiques.

“Other houses in the compound are kept empty but are finished and tidied every day.”

“They are said to be housing the spirits of dead Panacea Society members.” [The houses, by the way, are kept cleaned and ready for the bishops, who are supposed to "save us all from crime and banditry'].

“I have also been told that there is a chapel with a huge stained glass window showing Joanna holding the child Shiloh.”

Mrs Lewis was unable to penetrate the weird world beyond the walls of the compound, but gained an idea of the Panacea Society’s beliefs from former members and other groups around the country who venerate Joanna Southcott.

She said: “The feeling was that the only person good enough to have given birth to a divinely chosen body pure enough to contain Shiloh’s spirit was Princess Diana.

“Joanna Southcott prophesied that: ‘There must come a second Eve to bring the Godhead to Manhood to perfect likeness’ which modern Southcottians interpret as referring to Diana.”

Mrs Lewis was unable to penetrate the world of the Panacea Society, but 20 years ago local historian Andrew Underwood succeeded in his quest.

He made notes which he promised would not be released until the next century.

He said: “The Panaceans are now all getting very old and they should really be left in peace.

“I don’t think they are sinister, they just have some very misguided beliefs.”

The Panacea Society has always refused to speak to the press, but their number can be found in the phone book.

A voice I spoke to, when I gave them a call, said: “We don’t wish to reply to the claims of this author. “We are quite used to people saying bad things about us.”

It will be interesting to see what happens in the year 2004″.

That was written in 1996. Of course, by 2004, an imperfect Diana was dead, and the Panaceans had run into a very secular enemy – the tax department \. It ordered them to sell many assets, or lose their charitable status. It turns out they own a lot of land, and the society is worth about twenty million pounds. They do, however, support local charities, many of a medical nature.

The Panaceans must have recruited another generation, since this particular branch of the Southcottians is now nearly a century old. It has its own website, showing the spiffy surroundings, and a rather touching healing method, involving squares of sanctified linen sent to the suffering at no cost.

The box pops up in the bizarre story of Harry Price, a psychic investigator who used the National Laboratory for Psychic Research in the 1920’s. In one of the accounts he published, the box was said to have arrived in the lab with a provenance which did not include the Panaceans. He “psychogrammatised it” with psychics who guessed the contents, had it X-rayed and then prised it open in the presence of the aforementioned bishop. He found the horsepistol and the various etcs with it.

An alternative and more believable account of the box’s past is provided at the Joanna Southcott website, which also has the above photograph. We are talking about two different boxes, of course.

The Panacea Society is but one small fragment of the English utopian movement. Ramage, who found the whole thing, was particularly touched with the Cloisters at Letchfield. This is beyond description – you have to read it for yourself.

” At its dedication ceremony in January 1907, founder Miss Annie Jane Lawrence dedicated The Cloisters
`To the unity, eternal reality, through all diverse, temporary and fragmentary seemings, the perfect inviolable whole, wherein sin and pain and death are not, and all contradictions are reconciled, all discords resolved, I dedicate this building, confident that, through progressive recognition of this unity, mankind will ascend to a full, harmonious and joyful expression of life, in soul, body and social organisation.’”

Via Boynton.

This entry was posted on Friday, September 22nd, 2006 at 11:08 pm and is filed under history, strangely compelling. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.