England’s Lost Eden: Adventures in a Victorian Utopia. Philip Hoare

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СКАЧАТЬ sir,’ she replied.

      ‘Both males and females?’ inquired Mr Corrance.

      ‘Both, sir.’

      ‘Men, women and children, I suppose?’ prompted Jewesson.

      ‘Yes, sir.’

      This sounded decidedly immoral, so Mr Hill stepped in, acting on behalf of the Girlingites: ‘I suppose it was only a brotherly and sisterly expression of affection?’

      ‘That’s all,’ said Mrs Spall.

      ‘You don’t rush into just anyone’s arms – it is only the members of the congregation?’

      ‘It’s a salutation, I suppose,’ remarked the Reverend Pooley.

      ‘Just so, sir,’ said Mr Hill.

      Mary Ann was as much on trial here as any of her potential assailants. ‘The members of this sect were led by a woman,’ Jewesson was reported as saying, ‘of whom, without imputing anything wrong to her, he might say that it was to be regretted she should leave her husband and children, and put herself forward in the way she did, creating as she must necessarily do so, a disturbance wherever she went.’ Thus Mary Ann was portrayed as a troublemaker, a woman who, by her very sex, sought to disturb the status quo. Jewesson went on to claim that his clients had gone to the service as potential converts, ‘and the confusion which took place was not caused by them or anyone connected with them’. It was a lame excuse. Hill said his client was willing to drop the charges if his expenses – and the fine – were paid there and then; and in an extraordinary intervention which to some seemed to compromise the impartiality of the Bench, Mr Corrance himself advanced the required sum for the defendants.

      

      A legal resolution had been reached, but the wider question of the Girlingites and their freedom to worship remained. The Woodbridge Reporter may have been a local paper, but it reported on national issues: ‘the Rights of Women’; ‘Spirit Rapping Extraordinary in Woodbridge’ (which turned out to be a skit advertising alcohol); Primitive Methodism; the vaccination debate; and emigration, ‘a subject uppermost in men’s minds now’. Disturbing events across the Channel – the ‘Literary, Scientific, and Artistic Communists’ in the Paris Commune – sat alongside reports of riots in Dublin and an apocalyptic editorial on cholera, ‘the most destructive of human diseases’, whose invasion no ‘“streak of silver sea”’ could prevent. Amid such signs and wonders – as if plague and famine might yet sweep the land, just as the sea could break its defences – the appearance of a local prophetess was of more than a little interest; especially when her crusade provoked a riot at the Mechanics’ Institute in Woodbridge.

      Mechanics’ institutes were established in the 1820s as educational centres for artisans. Often used for lectures on sectarian beliefs and spiritualism, they provided the working man with ‘an opportunity to ride the wave of the new pseudo-sciences’. On 2 May 1871, the Reporter noted that ‘some printed handbills circulated in the town announced that Mrs Girling would preach the Gospel in the Lecture Hall, on Tuesday evening, at half-past seven’. Such advance publicity ensured that the hall was packed, with a crowd of one hundred clamouring for admission, and ‘a great number who went were not prompted with the desire of hearing the Gospel preached …’ Mr Joseph Cullingford attempted to address the crowd, ‘but was frequently interrupted. Mrs Girling stood on the centre of the platform, and by her side was … a Miss Folkard from Parham.’ While many were still trying to get in – some by forcing the door – others were trying to get out, overcome by the heat and noise inside. It was the first indication of a mass reaction to the Girlingite gospel: a frightening spectacle to some; to others, rather farcical. Mr Cullingford tried to leave the hall, but as he did so the door was suddenly locked, leaving his coat tails trapped and the unfortunate man ‘subject to the rude remarks of the roughs for some time’ while he banged on the door unheard, such was the furore within.

      Meanwhile, Mary Ann had begun to speak. She told the audience that she lived at 58 Victoria Street, London Road, Ipswich, at which point a voice piped up, ‘Where is your husband?’, to roars of laughter. Mary Ann replied that she had his permission to speak the Word of God. Indeed, on the night of that year’s census, Mrs Girling was not at home with her husband, her seventeen-year-old daughter Mary Jane, now a dressmaker, and her son William, just fifteen but, like his father, already employed in the iron works. Instead she was roaming Suffolk – not preaching, but practising, as she declared. She was about to read from the Book of Revelations when a loud noise was heard outside and the door burst open, releasing Mr Cullingford’s coat. ‘Outsiders rushed in, insiders rushed out, jostling with each other, and a little fresh air was obtained by this indecorous breach. With some difficulty the door was shut and locked, but the interruption continued.’ Mary Ann said she’d been in worse places in Ipswich, but had never experienced such a disturbance. This merely made matters worse.

      ‘Where’s Osborne?’ went up another shout.

      ‘Are you going to mesmerise us?’

      ‘Sit down!’

      ‘Go home!’

      ‘Look out, Osborne! no harm sleeping with a saint.’

      The hall-keeper tried to eject some of the troublemakers, but his efforts only resulted in an increase in the riot, ‘and the noise and disturbance that ensued were indescribable. A stone was thrown through one of the back windows and nearly hit a person on the head.’

      At this point it was decided that it would be better to call off the entire service. The gas was turned out, and in the darkness Mary Ann made her escape through a rear exit, running across the fields towards Bredfield. In the meantime the police finally arrived, in the shape of Superintendent Fitzgerald and three or four officers. They cleared out the remaining roughs, who then went to the nearby Sun Inn where they thought the Girlingites had sought refuge, and where they ‘saluted Mr Banyard with a handful of slush, which they threw into his face, and the doors were kept shut two hours’. Mr Phillips, the local magistrate, was sent for, and the Reporter concluded that ‘Such a disgraceful riot has not occurred in Woodbridge for a very long time. We are informed that proceedings will be taken against some of the parties concerned in it.’

      It seemed Suffolk had joined battle with Mary Ann’s blasphemy; but what appeared to be a popular uprising was more likely organised by disgruntled squires determined to rid the county of such unsettling influences. While Phillips blamed Mrs Girling for the uproar and called for police intervention, Superintendent Fitzgerald said that as he understood the meeting ‘was for religious controversy, he did not think he had any right to interfere nor to send any of his men so long as personal violence was not resorted to, nor any injury to property done’. Girlingism was to become the focus for contemporary concerns about religious freedom, pursued with a ferocity which was a legacy of the English Revolution. In the Reporter, ‘A Lover of Fair Play’ bemoaned ‘a lot of blackguards being encouraged to injure our property and howl down free discussion’, and thought it ‘very unseemly, to say the least [that] a Magistrate could … advance the money to pay the fine of one of those worthies to prevent him from going to prison. I can only hope he is in the habit of showing the same sympathy when a poor wretch is about to be sent to gaol for killing a partridge or a hare … Mrs Girling and her friends will not be silenced by mud and riot and brawling’; СКАЧАТЬ