Inconvenient People (18 page)

As well as new arrivals, there had been defections. Some of his original Lampeter associates felt that Prince was presenting a new article of faith when he declared that the Holy Spirit had found fleshly lodgings within him. Was Prince claiming to be the Messiah? That
would be blasphemy. Prince’s convoluted language – the declarations that endlessly circled back on themselves, ridden with qualifiers and hedging and contradiction – made it difficult to ascertain (before the late 1860s at least, when he became a lot clearer on the matter) whether he was or was not revealing himself as Christ’s successor. His latest pronouncement was that those friends and relations of his followers who did not see that the Holy Spirit dwelt within Prince were, in fact, damned. This brand-new ultimatum, this attack on natural harmonious relationships (the gauntlet it threw down to domesticity and familial happiness), appeared to some to be reason enough to desert Prince.

Emily Nottidge – in her mid-seventies in 1845, and having lost three of her daughters, with their financial settlements, to a religious sect – was by now living back in Suffolk with Louisa and Cornelia. Cornelia had abandoned the Agapemone, disgusted by many aspects of doctrine as well as everyday life under Prince, and had settled back into life with her mother. But Louisa was becoming restless; she especially missed Harriet, the sister to whom she had been closest. But Agnes wrote letters to Louisa warning her against Prince, his growing dominance within the Agapemone ‘family’, and the control he had assumed over the marital lives of those living at the Abode; she strongly urged Louisa to stay away. When she was composing such a letter in the drawing room at the Weymouth house one afternoon in November 1845, Agnes had not been aware that Brother Thomas Williams had stalked silently up behind her high-backed armchair and read the entire draft over her shoulder. He grabbed it and took it to Prince, who then shouted abuse at Agnes. From this point on, she was shunned by the whole household.

Then, in December, Reverend Starky and another Agapemonite appeared on Emily’s doorstep and declaimed that it was the will of God that Louisa come with them to the Abode. They gave her two hours to pack and during that time Emily pleaded with Louisa to stay. Louisa told her mother that ‘it is tearing the flesh from my bones to leave you, but it is the will of God that I do so’. Starky and his colleague rolled up in a carriage and took her away.

For weeks Emily looked for Louisa in Agapemonite haunts, fearing she might be living in ‘the greatest sin and iniquity’. Then one day, Agnes suddenly returned to Rose Hill. Despite having been instructed
that her marriage was of the spirit only, she had become pregnant. On learning of this, Prince had said of Agnes, ‘This comes of sin. She is faithless, she is fallen, she must be cast away.’ When Agnes had tried to persuade her husband to leave the Agapemone with her and their unborn child, Prince had clenched his fist and shouted at Agnes, ‘If you dare attempt to influence your husband again, in acting contrary to my commands, God will crush you out of the way.’ Brother George Thomas banned his wife from their bedroom, telling her, ‘You are lost . . . you enter here no more. There is an empty room, go and find such rest as you deserve, you who have crossed the Servant of the Lord.’

Agnes fled, and on 4 June 1846 gave birth to a son; she was very ill after the birth. She wrote to Brother Thomas, asking him if there were any name he would like to give the baby, and requesting money to help with the child’s subsistence. Her letter was returned with a note renouncing her for ever. Prince, too, posted her abusive letters.

Harriet had also fallen pregnant but managed to reconcile herself to Prince, despite his furious scorn at her condition. Harriet’s child did not live long after being born, and Agnes would later claim that its death had been highly suspicious; Harriet insisted that the sickly baby had died in her arms, and that plenty of witnesses would attest to this.

Emily was delighted to have Agnes back, with her new grandson, George Nottidge Thomas, but she was nevertheless distraught about the loss of Louisa and the likelihood that Louisa’s £6,000 would go the way of the other Nottidge thousands. There was also the grim prospect that upon Emily’s death, the three brides plus Louisa would bring to the sect a further £12,000, which had been settled upon his daughters by their late father. She continued to search for Louisa for months, even offering a financial reward for news of her whereabouts. ‘I was in such a wretched state of mind about her,’ Emily later said. Although Clara and Harriet refused to give Emily any information on her likely whereabouts, news suddenly came that Louisa was at Four Forks, as the Agapemone complex was reaching completion. On hearing this, Emily made a drastic – and disastrous – move.

On 10 November 1846, Louisa was getting ready for bed upstairs at the cottage of labourer George Waterman, which backed on to the Agapemone site. Waterman had been putting up Prince (who was absent that night), Mrs Julia Prince and Louisa for the past three
weeks. That night, he had deliberately left his back door ajar when the household went up to bed, as two well-dressed gentlemen from London had requested of him. Hearing noises downstairs, Louisa assumed that Prince was returning to the cottage, but moments later her bedroom door burst open and there stood her brother Edmund and her brother-in-law Frederick Ripley. You must come with us now, they said, your mother is dangerously ill. Be quick or it might be too late. When Louisa refused to believe this, the two men grabbed her, carried her out of the cottage and into a waiting carriage, as she fought and screamed. She had not been allowed time to dress herself: she had no bonnet, no shawl, and was wearing slippers. She continued to scream as the carriage drove off through the deep and remote country lanes.

We do not know where that night was spent, but wherever it was, Louisa tried and failed to escape through a window. The following day, she was presented to her mother at the Ripley home in Woburn Place, Bloomsbury. There was no fond reunion, as Louisa well knew that Emily had commissioned the abduction. Ripley, Edmund and Uncle John (Emily’s bank director brother) asked why she was so determined to throw her lot in with a charlatan such as Prince. According to Emily, her daughter replied: ‘I know no such person. God now dwells only at Charlinch in the flesh of Him I once knew as Mr Prince. God who made me, and all the world, is now manifest in Him whom I once called Mr Prince. He has entered His tabernacle of flesh among men, and I have seen God face to face. He will deliver me, wherever I am taken.’ Louisa added that she had now become immortal. Prince taught that all at the Agapemone had conquered the flesh, and because they were saved, they could not die; any follower of his who did die had consequently not been among the saved. Uncle John later said of Louisa, ‘In my opinion, her mind was under a strong delusion.’ He thought Louisa might do herself some injury and that she should not be left alone. No matter what question he put to her, Louisa would reply that it was the Lord’s will that she should return to Charlinch. After two hours of this, Uncle John called in the medical men.

Dr Thomas Morton was a Woburn Place neighbour of Frederick Ripley; he was surgeon to University College London and to the Queen’s Bench prison. The Ripley family’s GP, Dr Silas Stedman, recommended Dr Richard Rowland for a second opinion; he too lived
in Woburn Place. Each man spoke to Louisa separately and alone, as required by law. At first she would not answer their questions, but then she repeated her assertions about Prince and about her immortality. The doctors now filled in their certificates, and the order for Louisa’s committal was signed by Emily. Upon his certificate Dr Rowland stated: ‘I found that she had of late estranged herself from her mother’s house, where she had previously resided, to follow a person of the name of Prince, whom she believed to be Almighty God, and herself immortal.’

The asylum, Moorcroft House in Hillingdon, Middlesex, was chosen because Louisa’s brother Edmund had spent spells there recovering his own wits during bouts of psychological problems. Emily hoped that Louisa would soon be able to return to Rose Hill, to live with her and be cared for with the help of a hired nurse, or attendant. Emily had been desperate not to attract publicity to the shameful behaviour and opinions of her daughter; she believed that Louisa, just like Edmund, was experiencing a temporary bout of unsoundness of mind. For these two reasons, Emily did not seek a lunacy inquisition. It would turn out to be an unwise decision.

Louisa was driven to Moorcroft House, where thirty-two-year-old Dr Arthur Stillwell had taken over the running of this family madhouse, in 1839. (His own mother, Ann, had become a patient there after developing some kind of mental affliction in her seventies.) Dr Stillwell was Dr Silas Stedman’s brother-in-law, a propinquity that would later cause anti-incarceration campaigners to suspect a profit-related motive; but Emily and Uncle John had full trust in Stillwell. A Commissioner in Lunacy described Moorcroft House as one of the best-run asylums in the nation, ‘most agreeably situated’ and ‘only intended for persons moving in the higher ranks of society, and such as could afford to pay high terms for their board and attendance’. There were twice as many males as females at the asylum and by the time Louisa arrived there it was filling up with barristers, architects, army officers and medical men. Moorcroft had ornamental grounds, orchards, meadow-land, gravel walks, a shrubbery and pleasure gardens – not unlike the Agapemone itself, and it is tempting to fancy that Louisa was merely exchanging one luxurious madhouse for another.

The Stillwell family placed adverts, such as the one below, which were highly contentious, as they could be construed as touting for patients. The Commissioners in Lunacy monitored such advertising but it is unclear whether proprietors faced any serious censure.

We strongly recommend Mr. Stilwell’s Lunatic Asylum, at Hillingdon, near Uxbridge, to all who may have friends or relations afflicted with mental derangement. We have seen every part of this excellent establishment, which is conducted without keepers, and without coercion. The health, comfort, and amusements to be completely studied, and the patients with whom we conversed, expressed their gratitude for the care and attentions of Mr. and Mrs. Stilwell, and for the prompt and humane assistance which they invariably received from the medical attendants.

For the first few days, Dr Stillwell found Louisa uncommunicative. He allowed her full use of his private library and after a while she began to open up to him. She explained that Prince was God made flesh; that the Day of Grace was past and the Day of Judgement had arrived; that she was immortal and should not therefore be buried in a coffin as she would be taken up to heaven ‘in the twinkling of an eye’. She had ceased to pray and now only sang praises to God. ‘She attempted to explain to me, but it was such a mass of confusion that
I could not make anything of the explanation,’ recalled Dr Stillwell. And of her songs, the doctor said that she ‘never used any intelligible words’.

Louisa, Dr Stillwell noted, refused to wear a bonnet and took little interest in how she dressed. She also manifested ‘loss of all feeling for her family’. Emily visited her twice at Moorcroft House, but Louisa declared that she had no mother, and would not communicate with her. She would later swear in an affidavit that Emily, Frederick Ripley and her sister Maria Ripley had all attempted to shake her sanity when she was in the asylum by putting to her foul and disgusting assertions about what was going on behind the walls of the Agapemone. Clara, still very happily living at the heart of the Abode of Love, for her part claimed that Emily had forbidden her to visit Louisa and was deciding who was allowed to visit or write to her daughter. This was, in fact, Emily’s legal right – the controversial power that was granted under the English lunacy laws to whoever had signed the patient’s lunacy order. Ripley, meanwhile, still enjoyed full control over Louisa’s finances and paid Stillwell’s bills, of three guineas a week, out of Louisa’s money.