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

are gentlemen show yourselves sich”.’

      As the hubbub rose, Mary Ann folded her arms like a long-suffering school mistress and stared at the rafters until the noise subsided. Some took this to mean that she had ‘seen something’ (‘“Cobwebs”, suggested a shock-headed youth’), while a greenogrocer offered, ‘’Ave a drop of short, missus.’ ‘Turning sharp round, the goddess thundered forth, “You are a disgrace to the name of Englishmen; if you were in the lowest place of worship in the land you would not behave so”.’ After the dancing, during which Eliza’s flaxen hair flew ‘as wildly as the snakes that … supply the Furies with chignons’, Mary Ann declared, ‘I’m not afraid of death’, to an ‘Oh, Oh’ from the audience. ‘You are, but I am not,’ she replied. ‘I shall never die. I was dead once’ – at which a voice interrupted, ‘What a shake you must have given to have got out of yer coffin’ – ‘but I have been born again.’ As the meeting disintegrated, Mary Ann ‘abused the press’ and ‘maintained that she and her followers were not such fools as they looked. She repudiated the assertion that their religion was an American importation, but gave no explanation of its origin.’ The session ended with the police clearing the room. Afterwards, the reporter spoke to one of the elders: ‘“Is your religion an American invention?” we inquired. “Certainly not.” “Let us look at your hymn-book.” The saint looked confused, but seeing we would take no refusal, he let us open it. It was headed “The American