Hallowe’en (All Hallow’s Evening) falls on 31 October. This is the night before All Hallows’ Day (or All Saints’ Day) on 1 November. The next day marks All Souls Day on 2 November. Thus, Hallowe’en marks the beginning of Hallowmas season (or Allhallowtide), a three-day period in the Western liturgical calendar that is dedicated to remembering the dead. Those remembered by the Church include saints, martyrs, and faithful Christians.
As genealogists, we remember the dead each time we research our family history. Not all our late ancestors were saints – or even Christians, faithful or otherwise. Yet, this time of year can spark deeper feelings about our departed loved ones, including those whom we never knew.
At the Society of Genealogists, we have a number of collections associated specifically with death and mourning. We featured our Memorial Card Collection a few months ago and recently launched a genealogical challenge for members to tell us what you have discovered after looking at the cards. To take part, just select a memorial card that interests you from the online collection. You do not have to be related to the individual concerned. It may be that you have a connection to where the person lived, a one-name study, or an occupation. Or you may simply find something of interest. We will add information that you find to our online database and publish some of the stories in the Genealogists’ Magazine. The Society reserves the right to edit submissions to fit our styles and purposes. We cannot guarantee that all stories will be published, but we would be interested to see what can be found. Please email all submissions to MemberServices@sog.org.uk.
Recently our volunteers made a surprising discovery in our Great Card Index. They found a ‘passport to heaven’ for a man named Charles Billinge. He was hoping to bypass the guarantee of his safe passage through the pearly gates – without having to worry about being a ‘faithful Christian’.
Billinge received his passport to Heaven in 1803. Telingly, the Index entry describes his ‘passport’ as having been ‘signed by the impostor Joanna Southcott’.
The Great Card Index is replete in treasures like this. One of our many precious and unique collections, the index dates back to the early years of the Society. In September 1910, the year before our foundation, George Sherwood published in his periodical The Pedigree Register an article entitled ‘Proposals for a Society of Genealogists’. It suggested a reference library be created in central London to house amongst other things, ‘A great consolidated index in one alphabet, on slips, on the card index system’.
By the end of 1911, 12-13,000 cards had been received and the proposal was made that every time an index was created, the cards left after it had been typed up should be sorted into the Great Card Index. By 1931 almost 3 million cards had been created. In 1932, cards for some names had been removed to be typed up and copies were offered to members for 3d per 100 slips. These typed sheets have been bound into 20 green volumes and the head cards for the appropriate surnames show where this has been done. The major sources used in its compilation were parish registers, marriage licences (notably those of the Bishop of London 1700-1780), probate records, Monumental Inscriptions (especially ‘Memorials of the dead in Ireland’), obituaries, Chancery records, subscription lists, deeds and so on.
The geographical spread is primarily Britain but it includes references from all over the English- speaking world from the Norman Conquest to the 19th century. It is especially rich in material relating to the 18th century. Hundreds of members contributed to the index over the years, including The Reverend Thomas Dale (1870-1937), W. P. Haskett-Smith, O. G. Kapp, the Reverend Dr. C. Moor, Colonel G. F. Newport-Tinley, Lieut. Colonel Henry Phipps (d. 1949), and Frederick Snell (1872-1914).
We are delighted to report that our volunteers are currently preparing the Great Card Index for digitisation on Sog Data Online.
The mysterious Passport to Heaven is connected to the development of an unusual religious organisation dating from the end of the 18th century. The organisation centred on Joanna Southcott, a self-proclaimed religious prophetess, who had been born in Devon in 1750 and grew up there on a dairy farm. After working in domestic service, she became increasingly religious, she converted from Anglicanism to the Wesleyans around 1792. She believed herself to have supernatural gifts and that she was the Woman of the Apocalypse, spoken of in ‘The Woman and the Dragon’ passage in Revelation 12:1–6.
12 A great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head.
2 She was pregnant and cried out in pain as she was about to give birth.
3 Then another sign appeared in heaven: an enormous red dragon with seven heads and ten horns and seven crowns on its heads.
4 Its tail swept a third of the stars out of the sky and flung them to the earth. The dragon stood in front of the woman who was about to give birth, so that it might devour her child the moment he was born.
5 She gave birth to a son, a male child, who ‘will rule all the nations with an iron scepter.’ And her child was snatched up to God and to his throne.
6 The woman fled into the wilderness to a place prepared for her by God, where she might be taken care of for 1,260 days.
William Sharp, an engraver in London, asked Southcott to move to the capital. There she began selling the ‘passports’ or ‘seals of the Lord’, which she claimed guaranteed the holder a place among the 144,000 people elected to eternal life.
Following her death in 1814, Southcott’s body was retained by her followers who believed she would be reincarnated. However, after her decidedly carnal body began to decay, she was buried at the Chapel of Ease at St John’s Wood early in 1815. Despite the lack of reincarnation and this apparent disproof of Joanna’s claims, the ‘Southcottian’ movement continued (albeit in far smaller numbers) into the early 20th century.
After her surviving parent Pamela passed away in 1866, at 30 years of age, Mary Jane was seemingly unable to live independently. Although she had ten siblings, most had either left Wiltshire or died by this date.
The 1871 census reveals that Mary Jane (here “Jane Ashley”) went to live in Brighton with milkman Peter Parsons (c1829-1899) and his wife, Ann, who was Mary Jane’s fourth eldest sibling. For this year, the disability questions on the census were extended to include “imbeciles”, “idiots”, and “lunatics”. This census entry identifies Mary Jane as an “Idiot”. The language used in this period is regarded as offensive today. Idiocy was used at this time to describe someone with an intellectual disability who was seen as having a mental age of fewer than three years old.
The following passage from the 1871 Census Report entitled “Causes of idiocy”, gives some insight into how 36-year-old Mary Jane would have been viewed at the time:
The principal causes of idiocy and imbecility are spoken of by those who have studied the subject as distinctly recognised; they are connected with physical or mental weakness, or with abnormal conditions, either the fault or the misfortune of parents. Residence in deep valleys, damp and unwholesome climate, crowded dwellings or other unhealthy conditions, intermarriages among a limited number of families, and more especially where weakness of brain already exists,—these, are allowed to be predisposing causes, and as they are obviously within human control, the hope may be entertained that the extent of this affliction may be limited in the future.
The report also explains that the number of “idiots” may be higher than recorded as a result of, “the natural sensitiveness of persons who would desire to conceal the fact of idiocy in their families, we have no means of knowing; but such a feeling is no doubt likely to exist among those who look upon mental infirmity as humiliating rather than as one of the many physical evils which afflict humanity.”
It appears that Mary Jane continued to live with her sister Ann; they were recorded together on the subsequent censuses of 1881 and 1891. Some time after this, following decades of living within her family, Mary Jane was moved to Wiltshire County Lunatic Asylum in her birthplace of Devizes. She was recorded there on the census of 1901. Her sister Ann died three years later in Brighton in 1904. Mary Jane died four years after that on 2 October 1911 in the asylum in Devizes.
Sadly, the beliefs around Mary Jane’s condition, such as describing a mental disability as “physical evil”, as evinced by the 1871 census report, were pervasive throughout 19th and 20th-century Britain. Thanks to the work of UDHM, we are better placed to challenge these harmful and inaccurate representations and explore the lives of our disabled ancestors with informed compassion and understanding.
Sources
- Great Card Index; Collection of the Society of Genealogists
- Wikipedia entry for Joanna Southcott https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joanna_Southcott
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