Autograph Letter Signed W Cantuar, with original envelope, with substantial copy letter from Alfred Wigan, curate, Trotterscliffe [sic], concerning the issues and events surrounding the burial of a child of followers of Joannna Southcott.

Letter One (Archbishop of Canterbury] 3pp., 12mo, approving Wigan's actions in the burial of the child whose baptism was irregular and defective. He was right to toll the bell, and depositing the body of the child in the churchyard. He wants time to consider the right steps in such an important matter for 'similar cases which perhaps may be brought forward .... Letter Two: This copy letter, a rough draft in Alfred Wigan's hand, explains the situation with the dead child of followers of Joanna Southcott. They were said to have no intention of asking for Burial ... according to the rites of the Church, but the Clerk had heard something different. The mother visited him to ask for burial, saying their form of baptism was similar, with a miinor verbal difference. She referred him to someone in Gravesend for the form of words used but he couldn't contact. The mother brought a book with the form used which led him to say that nothing there entitled the child to be buried as she wished. He resorted to his more experienced Rector, Rev. E.J. Shepherd, giving information about the latter.Shepherd agreed that burial 'according to the rites' should be refused but burial in the churchyard should be allowed. He passed on this view, saying to the parents that it didn't create a precedent. The Rector also asked him to contact the Archbishop to give his view of the situation for the future. The final page is headed March 1850, and has extensive excision. in what's left Wigan discusses a later similar case, that of a Cordelia Sparks, referring to the Form of Baptism used by this Sect (now more frequently stating themselves the true Israelites) ... [which] differs ...from that of the Church. With: Certificate of Registry of Death, part printed, for the death of Cordelia Sparks, registered 12 March 1850, 16 x 9cm. On verso, Autograph Note Signed Alfred Wigan, Curate, 11 April 1850, reveals that the bell was tolled and she was buried in the Churchyard, but the corpse was not taken into the Church nor any service (Xtian or not) allowed at the grave. The Father who is still living, is a Churchman & was much concerned with other members of the family even of her own sect at this omission.