page_title: Southcott family
section_title: Joanna Southcott
hierarchical_section_title: Southcott family / Notable people / Joanna Southcott
caption_attribution_description: English: A Correct View of the Superb Crib, presented to Joanna Southcott. Engraved from an actual Drawing of the Crib (or Cott) &amp; Published by John Fairburn, 2 Broadway, Blackfriars. 9th Sept. 1814
context_page_description: Southcott is a surname of a prominent family from Devon and Cornwall in England.
context_section_description: Joanna Southcott (1750–1814) was a religious prophetess. She was born in the hamlet of Taleford, baptised at Ottery St Mary, and raised in the village of Gittisham, all in Devon, England.
  At the age of 64 Southcott affirmed that she was pregnant and would be delivered of the new Messiah, the Shiloh of Genesis (49:10). The date of 19 October 1814 was that fixed for the birth, but Shiloh failed to appear, and it was given out that she was in a trance. She died not long after.
  The "Southcottian" movement did not end with her death in 1814. Her followers are said to have numbered over 100,000, but had declined greatly by the end of the 19th century. In 1844 a lady named Ann Essam left large sums of money for "printing, publishing and propagation of the sacred writings of Joanna Southcott".
  Southcott left a sealed wooden box of prophecies, usually known as Joanna Southcott's Box, with the instruction that it be opened only at a time of national crisis, and then only in the presence of all 24 bishops of the Church of England (there were only 24 at the time), who were to spend a fixed period of time beforehand studying Southcott's prophecies. Attempts were made to persuade the episcopate to open it during the Crimean War and again during the First World War. The box was supposedly opened in 1927, however Southcottians claimed that the box opened in 1927 was not the authentic one and continued to press for the true box to be opened. An advertising campaign on billboards and in British national newspapers such as the Sunday Express was run in the 1960s and 1970s by one prominent group of Southcottians, the Panacea Society in Bedford (formed 1920), to try to persuade the twenty-four bishops to have the box opened. The current state of the box is unknown.
  Southcott prophesied that the Day of Judgement would come in the year 2004, and her followers stated that if the contents of the box had not been studied beforehand, the world would have had to meet it unprepared.
caption: Joanna Southcott dicpicted above the crib of the Shiloh, the new Messiah
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