The prophetess behind the superstition
believing in Joanna Southcote
Joanna Southcott (1750–1814; Chesterton spells the surname Southcote) claimed a prophetic vocation and acquired organized followers. Her announcement that she would bear Shiloh appeared in her Third Book of Wonders (1813); followers prepared for the birth in 1814. The original Dictionary of National Biography entry, paragraphs on Shiloh, records both these preparations and her death without the promised child. Chesterton's comparison reverses the modernist sneer at religious credulity: believing in oneself can be as unexamined as believing in a prophetess. But the same biography complicates the parallel. It says her followers' enthusiasm initially overbore her own doubts about a literal interpretation of her spiritual motherhood. Southcott is therefore a recognizable satirical example, not clean historical proof of uniformly absolute self-certainty. The older biography's hostile vocabulary should likewise be distinguished from its report of events.
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