Edward Green

This book is less a biography of the eponymous Wroe than a history of the Christian Israelites, a sect which evolved out of an older, moribund group called the Southcottites, and which briefly thrived under his leadership, particularly around Lancashire towns Ashton and Bradford. The sect survives today, barely, in Australia. Like many books which treat of a subject which is really too minute to justify a book, the author makes the mistake of pitching everything he finds into the book as well as including uninteresting digressions on barely related subjects. Thus we are treated to street addresses, inheritance amounts, donation records and burial sites for individuals who appear to be of no particular significance and to explanations of the wage structure of Lancashire during the industrial revolution. The main point of interest for the general reader in the book is the series of scandals, mostly sexual, which the prophet found himself involved in, and Green does a good job of sifting the evidence on those topics. The book is well-researched and written, but difficult to recommend except to researchers and those with a particular interest in millennial cults of that period.… (meer)