The funding for this research was provided by the Panacea Charitable Trust. I am incredibly grateful to the Trust for its support and generosity in providing access to its unique archive. As a postdoctoral researcher in the Faculty of Divinity at the University of Cambridge in 2010, I had the good fortune to be included as a member of a project entitled Spiritual Healing in Modern Context, led by Dr. Fraser Watts. The Modern Context Project was designed to examine the Panacea Society’s archive of twentieth-century documents related to its healing and to develop our understanding of the nature of modern religion using the sources available there. I had the privilege then of spending several years studying the Society’s healing letters—many of which were seeing the light of day for the first time since they had been neatly packed away nearly a hundred years earlier. Dr. Watts had been my Ph.D. supervisor at Cambridge, and, as a member of his team on the Modern Context Project, I continued to have the benefit of his enormous experience and insight. Many others contributed to the project as it progressed. I would like to record my gratitude to Samuli Siikavirta and Anna Porko, who provided working translations of a number of passages of Finnish prose on which my English quotations are based; to Kelly Stock and Nicola Swinburn for their assistance in the archive; and to Hazel Bird at Wordstich Editorial for her help proofing the manuscript.
A book of this nature depends to a very large extent on the archival sources on which it is able to draw. In having access to the Panacea Society’s archives, I have been able to work from a remarkable and unique collection of materials. The credit for uncovering the Panacea Society’s archive and making it available to academic study goes to Dr. Jane Shaw at the University of Oxford. Following her discovery of the archive in 2001, Dr. Shaw convened the Oxford Prophecy Project with Professor Christopher Rowland—also based at Oxford—in 2003. The Prophecy Project initiated the process of opening up the Panacea Society and its extraordinary archive. Thanks to the archival work of Dr. Philip Lockley1 and Dr. Shaw’s Octavia, Daughter of God: The Story of a Female Messiah and Her Followers (2011), which emerged from Dr. Shaw’s own work on the Society, the project that formed the basis of this book could build on a firm base in getting to grips with the archive—and with the Society’s healing in particular. On a day-to-day basis, much of the Trust’s activities are overseen by Mr. David McLynn. I am most grateful for his help and support as the project developed.
This book brings together a number of strands of research centered on the Panacea Society archive’s Healing Collection. Some elements have been previously presented, including in the following publications: “Heterodox Healing and Alternative Religion in the 20th Century: An English Spiritual Healing Practice in Finland,” published in the Yearbook of the Finnish Society of Church History for 2013 (Suomen kirkkohistoriallisen seuran vuosikirja 2013)—especially for the discussion of Finland in chapter 5. “Religious and Spiritual Mobility in Britain: The Panacea Society and Other Movements in the Twentieth Century,” in Contemporary British History 29 no. 2, published in 2015 by Taylor and Francis—especially for parts of the discussion in chapters 4 and 7. “A Southcottian Healing Panacea, 1924–2012,” in The History of a Modern Millennial Movement: The Southcottians, edited by J. Shaw and P. Lockley and published by I. B. Tauris in 2017—especially for parts of the discussion in chapters 1, 5, and 7.
In addition, I have presented elements of this research at several conferences, which have been helpful in testing and refining my approach to the project. I am grateful to have had the opportunity to present papers at the “Healing and Curing Medieval to Modern” conference at the University of Glasgow in August 2012; the Modern British History “Society, Culture, Politics and Religion” conference at the University of Edinburgh in June 2013; the Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion in November 2014 (two papers); and the International Network for the Study of War and Religion at the Modern World Annual Conference in July 2015.
Within the University of Cambridge, the Faculty of Divinity, Hughes Hall, and the University Library—not to mention the multitude of smaller libraries in Cambridge and elsewhere—have provided me with resources and contexts for an infinity of small and large interactions with students and academics across disciplines. These have been immensely valuable to me throughout this research, and I am most grateful to these institutions.
In the midst of years of research, my wife has been a constant source of support and encouragement. She holds all the important things together, and without her I doubt this book would have reached publication. Thank you, Emma.
Finally, the last member of the Society’s religious membership, and the last overseer of the healing, Mrs. Ruth Klein, passed away in 2012 while this project was in process. While my presence in the archive must have represented something of an intrusion into her daily life, in her kindness and willingness to help me understand the archive she was unfailingly considerate. Her dignity, thoughtfulness, and sense of duty remain present to me—it is only appropriate that this book is dedicated to her memory.