Joanna was a coarse, common-place, and somewhat corpulent woman; she dressed in a plain, quaker-like garb, in a gown of Calimancoe, with a shawl and bonnet of drab colour. The three leading preachers in her chapel in Southwark (her great stronghold), were a Mr. Carpenter, who, after learning his business, set up as a prophet on his own account; a Mr. Foley, and a lath-render named Tozer. She had chapels also in Spitalfields, Greenwich, Twickenham, and Gravesend.
The scribblings in prose and verse of this illiterate creature, instead of being committed to the waste paper basket, were solemnly preserved and received as prophecies. Attacked at last with dropsy, her delusions assumed the following objectionable form: she prophesied, and Sharp and his fellow-disciples--some of whom were men of fair education--actually believed, that Christ was to be born again under the name of "Shiloh," and that she, Joanna, at the age of sixty-five, was to be the mother. The revelation which proclaimed the miraculous _accouchement_ was worded as follows: "This year [1814], in the sixty-fifth year of thy age, thou shalt have a son by the power of the Most High; which if they (the Hebrews) receive as their prophet, priest, and king, then I will restore them to their own land, and cast out the heathen for their sakes, as I cast out them when they cast out Me, by rejecting Me as their Saviour, Prince, and King, for which I said I was born, but not at that time to establish My kingdom."
One might have imagined that this gibberish would open the eyes of some at least of her votaries: their insane enthusiasm, on the contrary, increased. Joanna was absolutely inundated with the "freewill" offerings of the faithful--a costly cradle, white robes, pinafores, shoes of satin and worsted, flannel shirts, napkins, blankets, silver spoons, pap-boats, mugs, silver tea-pots, sugar-basins, tongs, and corals,--absolutely without number. The absurdity of the simpletons who sent these offerings was severely criticised, both in England and on the Continent; and by way apparently of answering her traducers, Joanna inserted an apostolical advertisement in the _Morning Chronicle_ of Thursday, 22nd September, 1814, and in the _Courier_ of Friday, 23rd, in which she stated that, in consequence of the false and malicious reports in circulation respecting herself, she was desirous of treating for "a spacious and ready-furnished house to be hired for three months, in which her _accouchement_ may take place in the presence of such competent witnesses as shall be appointed by proper authority to prove her character to the world." The appointed day--the 29th of October--however passed by, and the prophecy remained of course unfulfilled, although, in the manufacturing towns of the north, crowds of the faithful assembled to wait the arrival of the coaches, in expectation of tidings of the great manifestation. The satire entitled, _Delivering a Prophetess_ (in vol. 8 of "The Scourge"), has reference to the actual event which occurred on the 27th of December, 1814, when death relieved Joanna of her delusions and her dropsy; the wretched creature declaring on her deathbed that, "if she had been deceived, she had at all events been the sport of some spirit, good or evil." Joanna forms the subject of one of Rowlandson's caricatures of 1814, _Joanna Southcott, the Prophetess, Excommunicating the Bishops_, published by Tegg on the 20th of September, 1814. We shall also have to refer to her again when we treat of the caricatures of George Cruikshank.