Joanna Southcott was born in the hamlet of Taleford, Devonshire, baptised at Ottery St Mary, and grew up in the village of Gittisham.

She did dairy work as a girl, and after the death of her mother, Hannah, she went into service, first as a shop-girl in Honiton, then for a considerable time as a domestic servant in Exeter.

Southcott came to London at the request of William Sharp, an engraver, and began selling paper "seals of the Lord" at prices varying from twelve shillings to a guinea.

Her official date of death was given as 27 December 1814, but it is likely that she died the previous day, as her followers retained her body for some time in the belief that she would be raised from the dead.

In 1844 one Ann Essam left large sums of money for "printing, publishing and propagation of the sacred writings of Joanna Southcott".

In 1927, the psychic researcher Harry Price claimed to have come into possession of the box and arranged to have it opened in the presence of one reluctant prelate, the suffragan Bishop of Grantham.

[14] A campaign on billboards and in national newspapers such as the Sunday Express was run in the 1960s and 1970s by a prominent group of Southcottians, the Panacea Society in Bedford (formed in 1920), to try to persuade the 24 bishops to have the box opened, claiming: "War, disease, crime and banditry, distress of nations and perplexity will increase until the Bishops open Joanna Southcott's box."