Mr Wroe's Virgins

by Jane Rogers

  I have broken off my connection with the Israelites, for Zion Ward is now adopted as their prophet. He claims to be the Shiloh himself, and spouts fire and brimstone upon the congregation every Sabbath. Elder Moses is his bully boy. When I spoke with Tobias he was less downcast than I expected; he tells me Zion Ward has a greater prize than Ashton on his mind, and will soon be off to London to win a great following there. Then the Ashton Israelites may settle back into a calmer state, ‘and those of us who have seen the truth’, he said, ‘will hold the reigns of the church in quiet peace, until our Prophet Wroe returns’.

  Mr Wroe … Yesterday I heard his voice in the shop. The low, close, sound of his voice, just on the edge of hearing. I looked up from the account book through a sudden blur of heat, expecting to see him on the other side of the counter. But Mr Wroe is departed on a mission to Australia. So I was told by Elder Tobias. I do not think much about him.

  The church is shrunken from its former size and state, for many left as a result of the scandal. The former Israelite draper, on Stamford Street, told me that on the afternoon of Mr Wroe’s escape no sound could be heard in that quarter of town, for the stropping of razors and snipping and shaving of beards.

  Of my former sisters in God, I see Joanna most frequently. It is still a struggle to overcome that sickening sense of – regret? guilt? I do not know what to call it – which rises in me at the sight of her; at the sense of my own failings as her sister and her friend. She seems to have put all that behind her, and works tirelessly for her Church of the Women, in which I wish her every success, for I am sure she will make as good a preacher as any man. Rebekah, they say, is to marry Samuel Walker, by whom she is with child. Surprising news, for I never guessed at any friendship between them.

  The spinners continue their strike and many hold great hopes of success. But fear of armed conflict grows daily; on January 1st the Fourth Foot paraded through Ashton and were taunted by 2,000 spinners. And at the end of that week Thomas Ashton, a millowner’s son, was murdered – shot, they say, by one of the spinners. I cannot guess what the outcome will be, but they remain firm in their cause. More generally, I see every reason to feel optimistic concerning the aspirations of the working people. Mr Owen tours the country now, speaking to vast crowds of supporters in the Union movement. In May there will be a National Cooperative Congress in Manchester, to which will be invited delegates from trades unions and labour exchanges around the country, besides those from cooperative trading societies. A wealth of issues unite us; universal suffrage, the taxes on knowledge, factory reform, poor wages and unemployment. And when we are united, as (I believe) a people can never have been before; why then, the world will be ours. And that spirit of communial help and sharing which proves (as poor Edward wrote) so difficult among our generation, will be simplicity itself, to children educated along the right principles.

  We stand, I truly believe, at the dawn of a New Age, in which human happiness shall increase a thousandfold, through its own agencies and exertions. There is a hymn which was printed in the last issue of the Cooperator, whose words summarize those sentiments of hope which I am coming to share:

  Mankind shall turn from competition’s strife

  To share the blessings of communial life.

  Justice shall triumph – leagued oppression fail –

  And Universal Happiness prevail!

  Joanna

  The foundation of a new church is paramount. Night and day I am beset by intimations of the end – it is close now. As my Lord has seen fit to punish me with physical and public humiliations, so through erosion of my happiness and self-interest I have come to a state where the grosser delusions fall from my eyes, and the inner truth becomes clear to my vision. I do not sleep, for at night the silence and darkness bring me closer in knowledge to His awful power, to the dread void that existed before His miraculous touch, and to the aching emptiness that must succeed, for those who cannot be saved. For what are these stories of hell fire, eternal punishment and the ingenious tortures of lesser devils, in comparison with the absence – the loss of hope – which must be attendant on knowing your exclusion from His presence is eternal?

  The lid of my consciousness has become thinner, thanks to my trials. I now begin to see beyond my former daily perceptions, of a closed material world. Gleams and flashes come to me: the close sense of great movement in the world just beyond our own, the sense of His Presence and Intention hovering, focused, above us – almost, I may say, like a cloud. Yes, like a cloud, which gathers slowly and thickens, blotting out the light of the sun with its intention, with the moist deposit for earth that it contains.

  Drop down dew, heavens, from above, and let the clouds rain down righteousness; let the earth be opened, and a Saviour spring to life.

  *

  The time is now. Praise Him, praise Him.

  Though we quake and quail and scarce know how to embrace a joy of such piercing and rapturous proportions – the time is now. He has breathed the germs of the end into our air, and none can escape. Throughout the streets of Ashton, people drop where they stand. Travellers’ reports show the contagion to be working with a similar effect in cities as far afield as Liverpool and Birmingham. They are calling it the Cholera: they may call it what they will, it is the agency of His plan. It is the rapid end of this sad, sinful, masculine world: it is the cleansing away of the old life, before His glorious new Dawn.

  The town is transformed overnight; shops and streets stand empty. All avoid crowds, for they say the contagion there spreads more rapidly. They are so ignorant of God’s designs that instead of rejoicing and welcoming the dissolution of the flesh which must precede the liberation of the spirit and the advent of the Second Kingdom, they attempt to hide. But the contagion finds them out; the disease that cures us of this life, it finds them all, it is borne on every wind, it sparkles in the air of every breath we take. Praise God, our atmosphere is so imbued with it there can be no successful avoidance.

  As I walked down Old Street this afternoon I saw a man approaching from the opposite direction, walking most unsteadily. While he was yet some distance from me he staggered against the wall, vomiting, leant there for a moment, then slipped to the ground. Advancing to assist him I discovered him to be in the last stages of the disease (which moves with such miraculous rapidity that many are dead within the first day of infection, and some indeed within an hour or two!) I knelt to rejoice with him at the passing of those last dreadful moments of mortal pain, and to remind him to keep his eyes fixed on that Promised Land so soon to open its gates to him. Before I had finished a cart came into view, already heaped with a number of bodies groaning, choking and calling out in whispering tones of the most acute distress – bound for the cholera hospital. The driver and his assistant jumped down and dragged my poor fellow to the cart – one holding him upright while the other removed his watch and a couple of guineas from his pocket, kindly explaining to me that such valuables were often mislaid at the cholera hospital, and he therefore took them into safekeeping.

  ‘Are you going to the hospital now?’

  ‘Where else would we be going with this lot, lady?’

  They made no objection to my climbing on to the back of the cart. I am reminded of God’s care in every detail, for the cholera hospital – the building where the souls of so many were and are to be released into the New Life – is none other than our Eastern Gatehouse, Samuel Lees’ old home. Thus Prophecy begins to be fulfilled.

  Within doors lay score upon score of the sick and dying, many (indeed, most of them) oblivious of their own good fortune and coming glory, but maybe sensing dumbly, like animals, their own unworthiness. In cracked and whispering voices they cried perpetually for water:

  ‘I thirst …’

  ‘Drink –’

  ‘Give me water!’

  ‘Thirst … thirst …’

  I have no need of Prophet or interpreter to tell me that this all-consuming, terrible thirst with which they burn, is the pass
ionate thirst for the refreshing streams of His forgiving love; that their parched souls cry out for the gentle and cleansing dew of His sweet absolution; that life itself is the fiery fever from which they struggle to escape, into the cool balm of His paradisical New Kingdom. I fetched a jug of water from the pump and took one of the pewter tankards from Samuel Lees’ dresser. Where he is gone I do not know, but there was no one in the building to attend to the needs of these poor creatures, whose bodies expelled putrid liquids from every orifice, and whose limbs seem to twitch and dance of themselves, in frenzied and violent attacks. I began to administer water, saying a brief prayer to each as I stopped, to give sorely needed refreshment to their desperate spirits. For is it not written. God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain, for the former things are passed away. Though the air was foul and the distress of many pitiable, yet I could scarcely suppress a song of joy, so happy was I to see His promised day arrive at last – and in my lifetime!

  *

  How long I have laboured here, bearing His message of forgiving love to all, I cannot tell. The floors are full; they heap new arrivals at the door, until the men can come to clear away the dead. So many – and so many – truly His ways are mysterious, and wonderful. He has fallen upon His people like the Reaper upon the corn.

  My own strength is flagging. Twice now searing pains in my belly have halted my progress. There seems to be – a thickness in the air – an odd glowing softness hanging about the flame of the lamp on the wall. I cannot tell. The ventilation is so poor – the heat in here is so extreme – modesty forbids that I remove any further layers of clothing but I am so drenched with perspiration I cannot –

  Dear God. Oh my dear God.

  I burn. Lord – Master – I burn with thirst. I cannot – the cup drops from my grasp – I find I must kneel here – beside this poor lifeless woman – I can not move.

  Oh Christ. My sweet Lord Jesus have mercy and pity.

  I thirst.

  Water.

  Oh I thirst, my throat is on fire.

  I am lying here. My face against her shoulder. Is it me that is coughing? There is a slow bitter liquid trickling from my lips across my cheek. Dear God I bless You. I bless this day, I praise His name. He calls us to the New Kingdom. The end of the world is here.

  Oh sweet Lord. The transforming pain. Melt, melt this stubborn body in the crucible of Thy love.

  Dear Lord. Its last act of worship – my body dances. Glory glory glory – each limb – Oh God – leaps – to His glory – to His glory – I dance. I come, oh Lord. I come to Thee.

  Historical Note

  Readers who are interested in the historical background might like to know more about the real John Wroe. He was born in Bradford, son of a woolcomber, in 1782. He is described by contemporaries as small, dark and hunchbacked. Before he became religious, he married and fathered three children. During an illness in 1819 he had visions which instructed him to join the Jewish faith; while attempting to do this he attended the Bradford Southcottian church led by George Turner, and became a member of this instead. Turner had taken over the northern leadership after the death of Joanna Southcott in 1814. At that time the Southcottians had about 100,000 members, mainly in Joanna’s native Devon, in London, and in the northern industrial towns. Joanna (like Wesley) hoped to remain within the fold of the Anglican church, but when she failed to persuade the bishops of the truth of her calling, she determined that the Southcottian church should become a rallying point for all denominations.

  Wroe seems to have been responsible for coining the name Christian Israelites, although there were prophets before him (notably William Brothers) who suggested that the lost tribes of Israel were to be found in Britain. The task of the Christian Israelite church was to gather together the scattered tribes of Israel, in readiness for the end of the world, which was imminently expected. Church membership was open to all who agreed to obey Mosaic law and efforts were made to teach Hebrew to all church members, since this would be the common language in Heaven.

  Before settling in Ashton, Wroe travelled to Italy, Gibraltar, Spain, France and Austria, in a personal attempt to reconcile the Jewish and Roman Catholic churches. He was accepted as Prophet by the Ashton congregation in 1822, and it was revealed to him that Ashton was to be the New Jerusalem. The Sanctuary was built in 1825, at a cost of £9,500; a sumptuously furnished building with the star of Judah over the door. It later became the Star Cinema. Four gatehouses were built, one of which was used in the 1830s as the Ashton cholera hospital. It is currently in use as a pub.

  Church members seem to have been mainly artisans and tradespeople, with a few wealthy millowners and landowners, and a small proportion of labourers. Their strange clothes and beards, and their beautiful music, were the main characteristics noticed by outsiders. Wroe conducted public baptisms in the river Medlock, and was publicly circumcised. Many of his contemporaries thought him a complete fraud (‘He is the personification of ignorance and vulgarity … a most vile and immoral character, wholly ignorant of Joanna Southcott’s writings and mission’ wrote one W. B. Harrison) while others were convinced he was a genuine prophet. He made a number of strikingly accurate prophecies about mechanical inventions and politics – of which the following is my favourite:

  ‘Mr Wroe preached to a large congregation in a field … and said A light shall break forth out of this place where I stand, which shall enlighten the whole town, with a light also to enlighten the Gentiles. The prophecy was fulfilled in a practical manner by the erection of the Ashton Gasworks in the very field.’

  He also predicted a ‘grievous plague’ in Ashton, to follow his banishment – and the cholera arrived on cue. His journals and sermons were published by the Christian Israelite Press, and can be read in Tameside Local Studies Library.

  Wroe asked for seven virgins in 1830 and these were provided by church members. After he had been on a missionary tour with the women, two of them charged him with ‘indecency and things not fit to be spoken’. There was a trial, at which he was acquitted, but this was followed by a riot in Sanctuary, from which Wroe barely escaped with his life. He returned to Ashton the following Easter to take away the Israelite printing press on a wagon drawn by four black horses. Most of his career after this was passed in missionary tours to America (he had a following in California) and Australia (where the Christian Israelite church still survives). He died in Melbourne in 1863 on his fourth Australian tour. On his visits back to England he supervised the building of a mansion, Melbourne House, near Wakefield, paid for by his Australian supporters. Wroe’s descedants lived in Melbourne House until 1956; since then it has been used as an old people’s home.

  His successor, Zion Ward, became a crowd-pulling preacher in London, attracting large audiences to the Rotunda, where he declared himself to be the second Christ, and advocated Free Love. He was imprisoned for blasphemy in the 1840s.

  Although I have used the outer circumstances of Wroe’s life as a framework, I have invented his character. I intend no disrespect either to the memory of the real man, or to his present-day followers.

  Of the seven virgins given to Mr Wroe, there is no record at all – which made it possible for me to write about them.

  Because I didn’t know what material I was looking for until I found it, I have meandered through a lot of books about the early nineteenth century. Any historical errors are my own; for what I have got right, for inspiration and for insight, I owe a particular debt to the following:

  E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class

  J. F. C. Harrison, The Second Coming: Popular Millenarianism 1780–1850, and Robert Owen and the Owenites in Britain and America

  Barbara Taylor, Eve and the New Jerusalem; Socialism and Feminism in the Nineteenth Century

  Caroline Davidson, A Woman’s Work is Never Done: A History of Housework in the British Isles 1650–1950

&n
bsp; Helena Whitbread (ed.), I Know My Own Heart: The Diaries of Anne Lister 1791–1840

  Samuel Bamford, Passages in the Life of a Radical

  and to Tameside Local Studies Library.

  Thanks to the Society of Authors for their grant from the K. Blundell Trust. And thanks to Mike Harris for much useful criticism.

  Jane Rogers was born in London in 1952. She read English at Cambridge, followed by a post-graduate teaching certificate at Leicester University. She has worked in comprehensive schools, further education, and as Writing Fellow at Northern College, at Cambridge and at Sheffield Hallam University. She has paid several extended visits to Australia, where her family now live. She has also written TV drama, including the BBC adaption of Mr Wroe’s Virgins. She lives in Lancashire with her husband and two children.