¹ An interesting exception is J. and Banks, O., Feminism and Family Planning (Liverpool, 1964).Google Scholar

² This dearth is the more surprising in view of the appearance in 1955 of McGregor's, O.R. challenging bibliographical essay ‘The Social Position of Women in England’, British Journal of Sociology, VI (1955), 48–60.Google Scholar

³ In 1820 only 140 out of 1700 Sunday School teachers were women, but by 1862 there were at least as many women Sunday School teachers as men (The Revival, 11 September 1862).

⁴ Braithwaite, R., Life and Letters of the Rev. William Pennefather (London, 1878), p. 408.Google Scholar A detailed exposition of this point of view can be found in Collett, W.R., Women's Work in the Church (Norwich, 1863).Google Scholar

⁵ See for example O'Rorke, L.E., The Life of Catherine Marsh (London, 1917), pp. 188,Google Scholar 325, and Bullock, C., Lives Worth Living: Prebendary and Mrs Wightman(London, 1898), p. 42.Google Scholar

⁶ The Year Book of Women's Work, ed. H[ubbard], L.M. (London, 1875), p. 37,Google Scholar significantly includes in its chapter on ‘Domestic Employments’ a section on ‘Parish workers or mission ladies’ and ‘Parochial mission and Bible women’. The latter were ‘women of a lower class of intellectual attainments’.

⁷ Primarily because the denominations concerned came to condemn it. It lingered on among the Wesleyans until the 1830s, and did not decline among the Primitives and Bible Christians until the 1850s (see especially Swift, W.F., ‘The women itinerant preachers of early Methodism’, Wesley Historical Society Proceedings, XXVIII (1952), 89–94,Google Scholar and XXIX (1953), 76–83).

⁸ The only full-scale modern account is the work of a twentieth-century revivalist, Orr, J. Edwin, The Second Evangelical Awakening in Britain (London, 1949).Google Scholar

⁹ [Bird], Isabella, ‘Religious Revivals’, Quarterly Review, CVII (1860), 162.Google Scholar

¹⁰ Mrs Thistlethwayte's address on 24 June was heard by Gladstone, who was thereupon quite unwarrantably described as ‘giving the shield of his sanction to female preaching’ (Wesleyan Times, 9 July 1866, Revival, 5 July 1866).

¹¹ Jessie MacFarlane was brought up as a Presbyterian, but started preaching in Edinburgh in 1862 in response to the encouragement of Gordon Forlong (i819–1908), an Aberdeen advocate and Plymouth Brother extremely active as an evangelist in the east of Scotland between 1858 and 1862 (see Chief Men among the Brethren (ed. Pickering, H.),2nd ed. (London,[1932]), pp. 67–8).Google Scholar By October 1862 Forlong had convinced himself that female preaching was scriptural. Early in 1863 he published a pamphlet in Edinburgh in its defence, and the next year provoked a bitter controversy among the Presbyterian mission workers of Edinburgh on this subject by pushing Jessie MacFarlane, assisted by two other women, on to the platform of the larger Music Hall (which he had hired for evangelistic purposes), and later arranginga campaign in Edinburgh by Mrs William Bell. Jessie MacFarlane's fiancé broke off their engagement when she began this public work, whereupon she extended her activities first throughout eastern Scotland, then to the English Midlands, and finally to London. (She was one of the lady preachers at the Regent Street Polytechnic.) In 1869 she married a Dr Brodie and returned to Edinburgh. When she died in 1871 her fame warranted a shilling Life, by ‘H. I.G.’, with a preface by Michael Baxter, the husband of another well-known woman preacher, Elizabeth Baxter. References to Jessie MacFarlane are scattered throughout The Revival; Forlong's obituary of her appears in The Christian, 14 September 1871. (The title of The Revival was changed to The Christian on 3 February 1870.)

¹² ‘Nathaniel Wiseman’ (Ellis, J.J.), Elizabeth Baxter, Saint, Evangelist, Preacher, Teacher and Expositor (London, 1928), p. 70;Google ScholarGuinness, F.E., ‘She Spake of Him’: Recollections of the late Mrs Henry Dening (Bristol and London, [1872]), p. 6;Google ScholarBegbie, H., Life of William Booth (London, 1920), I, 122.Google Scholar

¹³ Daily News, 28 March 1865. The Revival frequently reprinted press reports in this vein—all the more freely, no doubt, because its avowed editorial policy was to dissociate revivalism from fanaticism and extravagance.

¹⁴ Geraldine Hooper, one of the most successful of these women, was brought up and remained an Anglican. She was encouraged to preach by W. Haslam, curate of Trinity Church, Bath (Haslam, W., ‘Yet not I’: or, More Years of My Ministry (London, [1882]), pp. 161–74),Google Scholar and by Grant of Arndilly, brother-in-law of Robert Aitken of Pendeen, the noted ‘ High Church Methodist’, whose circle also encouraged Elizabeth Baxter. She preached throughout the south, east and west of England (in the north she was unsuccessful) reputedly over 4,000 times, to audiences of up to 5,000, and was called by the Press the female Spurgeon. Her most admired addresses were separately reprinted as penny leaflets, like those of the male pulpit lions of the day, and on her death republished with some hymns she had composed as a memorial volume. She died in 1872 at the age of 31, when funeral sermons were preached in many Bath churches and a crowd of 10,000 was reported at her funeral. The Memoir of her published by Mrs Fanny Guinness, another well-known woman evangelist (who began preaching when she accompanied her husband on his renowned revival tours), went through two editions in a few months.

¹⁵ Begbie, op. cit. I, 370; F. de Booth-Tucker, L., Life of Catherine Booth (London, [1893]),I, 266,Google Scholar 386; II, 63.

¹⁶ Press reports frequently noticed their freedom from fierce denunciations and threats of hell-fire (e.g. Daily News, 28 March 1865).

¹⁷ Revival, 23 January 1868. Miss J. L. Armstrong made her reputation in eastern Scotland. In December 1866 she published a sixpenny pamphlet, A Plea for Modern Prophetesses, and soon after came to London. She followed Catherine Booth at the Eyre Arms Assembly Rooms, St John's Wood, where she was much less successful and soon had financial difficulties. In 1868 she was soliciting invitations to preach ‘anywhere in Great Britain or America’ in The Revival.

¹⁸ Revival, 7 September 1865, and on C. Booth, Begbie, op. cit. I, 395.

¹⁹ Miss Robinson had her own chapel in Norwich (ironically, it had previously been occupied by that pioneer of the revival of monasticism ‘Father Ignatius’, Joseph Leycester Lyne), as did Octavia Jary in Harpley, near Reedham. Geraldine Hooper after her marriage raised £2,300 by subscription to build St James's Hall in Bath (Revival, 28 January 1868, Christian, 28 July and 19 May 1870). In 1867 Catherine Booth refused the offer of‘ a deputation of gentlemen’ to build her a chapel in St John's Wood (Booth-Tucker, op. cit. I, 417).

²⁰ See, for example, Revival, 14 July and 3 November 1864. She and her escort were once summoned for obstruction in Swansea (ibid. 25 August 1864).

²¹ Cf. Revival, 5 January 1865 and 19 December 1867, Daily News, 28 March 1865, Wood, J., The Story of the Evangelisation Society (London, [1907]), p. 20,Google Scholar Begbie, op. cit. I, 423 and Booth-Tucker, op. cit. 1, 394.

²² Stark, W., The Sociology of Religion. A Study of Christendom, vol. II, Sectarian Religion (London, 1967), p. 41,Google Scholar argues thus in general terms when considering the predominance of women in religious sects.

²³ Cf. Howson, J.S., Deaconesses; or, The Official Help of Women in Parochial Work and in Charitable Institutions (London, 1862).Google Scholar Unsympathetic Press comments frequently suggested that the best cure for ‘preaching propensities’ was ‘a good husband’.

²⁴ See Morgan, G.E., A Veteran in Revival. R. C. Morgan, His Life and Times (2nd ed., London, 1931), p. 73;Google Scholar and Wood, op. cit. p. 5.

²⁵ Finney, C.G., Lectures on Revivals of Religion, introd. W. G. McLoughlin, Jr. (Harvard, 1960), p. 181.CrossRefGoogle Scholar The first English edition of these Lectures appeared in 1840. Catherine Booth already deeply admired them in 1853 (Begbie, op. cit. I, 175). Although he promoted separate female prayer meetings, Finney never allowed female preaching in mixed meetings, nor even female praying in mixed prayer meetings, although he allowed one or two exceptions to this ban at Oberlin College (Fletcher, R.S., History of Oberlin College (Oberlin, Ohio, 1943), p. 293).Google Scholar

²⁶ R. C. Morgan, editor and publisher of The Revival, deplored the restriction of the, Polytechnic services to ‘lady preaching’ for this reason (Revival, 5 July 1866).

²⁷ Cf. Smith, T.L., Revivalism and Social Reform in Mid-Nineteenth Century America (New York and Nashville, Tennessee, 1957),Google Scholar chaps, v, vii and ix.

²⁸ Among the most important were Eyre, John, Full Sanctification Realised (London, 1849);Google ScholarArthur, William, The Tongue of Fire (London 1856);Google Scholar Phoebe Palmer, The Way of Holiness (reprinted in England in 1856 from the 34th American ed.) and Faith and its Effects (reprinted in England in 1856 from the 22nd American ed.); Thomas Upham, The Life of Faith (reprinted from the American ed. in London and Liverpool, 1859); and William Boardman, The Higher Christian Life (reprinted from the American ed. in Edinburgh and London, 1859).

²⁹ Cf. Warfield, B.B., Perfectionism (New York, 1931), II, 58;Google Scholar and Lindstrom, H., Wesley and Sanctification (Stockholm, 1946), p. 120.Google Scholar

³⁰ Booth-Tucker, op. cit. 1, 254–5. Although Catherine Booth was always strongly attracted by holiness teaching and her first child was named after the early Methodist ‘apostle of holiness’ William Bramwell, she did not receive her‘ second blessing’ until February 1861, after which she preached ‘ full consecration’ strenuously (ibid. I, 43, 271–3; Begbie, op. cit. 1, 289).

³¹ Upon the whole this was the influential R. C. Morgan's view (cf. Booth-Tucker, op. cit. 1, 382 and Revival, 20 November 1862 and 31 August 1865).

³² As in Booth, C., Female Ministry: or, Women's Right to Preach the Gospel, reprinted in her Papers on Practical Religion (London, 1878), pp. 95–123.Google Scholar Her pamphlet was first published at the end of 1859 (Booth-Tucker, op. cit. I, 251). Many of the numerous pamphlets on female preaching advertised between 1864 and 1866 have unfortunately proved impossible to trace. One of them is, however, reprinted in The Revival (3 May 1866), and the correspondence columns of this weekly newspaper carry many letters on the subject, on the whole more favourable in tone than its editorial comments (see especially 20 November 1862, 8 October 1863, 31 August and 7 September 1865, 7 June and 2 August 1866).

³³ ‘Presbuteros’, Reply to a Priest of Rome: Part II, The Constitution of the Primitive Churches contrasted with the Constitution of the Papacy (2nd ed., London, 1868), p. 93.Google Scholar Catherine Booth's pamphlet, p. 109, uses this work. Dark allusions to the consequences of the spiritual subjection of women in ‘Popery and its kindred systems’ appear in the correspondence columns of The Revival, 7 July 1864 and 2 August 1866.

³⁴ Ibid. 20 November 1862, 8 October 1863, 29 November 1866; ‘Nathaniel Wiseman’, op. cit. p. 90; Guinness, op. cit. pp. X–XI.

³⁵ One of her last publications was a sixpenny pamphlet, The Tongue of Fire on the Daughters of the Lord (1869), apparently a much abbreviated version of her The Promise of the Father. She described her tour of Great Britain in Four Years in the Old World (New York, 1866).Google Scholar

³⁶ Booth-Tucker, op. cit. I,243. Catherine Booth's belief that the reappearance of the ministry of women heralded the Church's ‘ultimate triumphs’ appears even more clearly in her correspondence at this time (ibid. pp. 249, 251). She always believed that it was mankind's duty to prepare for the Second Coming and not to discuss its details, and regarded the Bible as a storehouse of common sense, rather than prophecy (ibid 1, 433; II, 154).

³⁷ She had almost reached this position quite independently as early as 1855. See her letters in Begbie, op. cit. I,273 and in the Methodist New Connexion Magazine, LVIII (June 1855), 321 (reprinted, with significant and unindicated omissions, and mis-dated, in Booth-Tucker, op. cit. I, 123).

³⁸ The change is well reflected in the views of William Landels, of Regent's Chapel, Park, first expressed in his popular book Woman's Sphere and Work (London, 1859), p. 221Google Scholar and significantly altered in his Woman: Her Position and Power (London, 1870), p. 254.Google Scholar

³⁹ For example, in 1872 Fanny Guinness in defending Geraldine Hooper's ministry insisted that‘ the rule is men, the exception only, women’ (Guinness, op. cit. p. 243). Mrs Pearsall Smith's famous Bible Readings in the seventies were ostensibly confined to women, but often attended by men.

⁴⁰ Booth-Tucker, op. cit.II, 17,70

⁴¹ Ibid p. 141; Booth, B., ‘ The Salvation Army’, in Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, ed.Hastings, James (Edinburgh, 1920), XI, 156;Google ScholarStead, W.T., Mrs Booth of the Salvation Army (London, 1900), p. 88.Google Scholar Cf. Hugh Price Hughes's tribute to Catherine Booth, quoted in Wiggins, A.R., History of the Salvation Army (London, 1964), IV, 309,Google Scholar and Hill, G., Women in English Life (London, 1896), II, 247–9.Google Scholar

⁴² As asserted, for example, by Watson, B., A Hundred Years' War: The Salvation Army, 1865–1965 (London, 1964), p. 29.Google Scholar

⁴³ Begbie, op. cit. I, 271–3; cf. Booth-Tucker, op. cit. I, 86.

⁴⁴ I Corinthians i. 27. This was, for example, Hay MacDowall Grant's response to Geraldine Hooper's success where he had failed in 1867 (Gordon, M.M., Hay MacDowall Grant of Arndilly (2nd ed., London, 1877), p. 231).Google Scholar

⁴⁵ Undated review quoted in the advertisement at the end of her Pioneer Experiences(New York, 1868).Google Scholar This, like several other works of hers, was published simply as ‘By the author of The Way of Holiness.’.

⁴⁶ Revival, 17 March 1860, 20 November 1862, 7 June and 2 August 1866.

⁴⁷ For the familiar and opposite view that ‘the hostility of the clergy to feminism bred free-thinkers’, see Thistlethwaite, F., The Anglo-American Connexion in the Early Nineteenth Century (Philadelphia, 1959), p. 129.CrossRefGoogle Scholar It is perhaps worth remarking that although English and American feminists at that time ‘neglected their transatlantic communications’ (ibid. p. 132), this was certainly not the case with the spiritual feminists discussed here.