1. John Sirgood was born in Avening, Gloucestershire on 21 August 1821 into a family of weavers.
18 Facts About John Sirgood
1. 2.
John Sirgood is a fairly uncommon spelling of the name and appears on page 97 of the Ludus Patronymicus, the Etymology of curious surnames.
3.
Census records reveal his father and a branch of the Sirgood family living in Kennington south London in the mid 19th Century, which is where John Sirgood settled sometime during the 1840s.
4.
John Sirgood was originally a fundamentalist preacher with the Peculiar People in Southwark.
5.
John Sirgood evangelized on Clapham Common and around south London, preaching during the winter in "private houses".
6.
John Sirgood married Harriet Coxhead from Godalming in Surrey at St Mary-at-Lambeth on 17 March 1845 and worked as a shoemaker out of 9 Market Place, Bromells Rd, Clapham.
7.
John Sirgood did this in an area outside the control of the large estates whose Anglican owners would not have let him use their lands or premises.
8.
John Sirgood's evangelism appealed mainly to the poor labourers, small farmers and tradesmen, attracted by Sirgood's obvious ability as a preacher.
9.
John Sirgood was overtly critical of the Anglican Church, and the inequality of 19th-century society in general, which led to his movement being harassed by the gentry and threatened by outraged parish authorities.
10.
Church efforts to stop John Sirgood were thwarted by the repeal of the Conventicle Act but action by others resulted in evictions and the sackings of servant girls and labourers.
11.
John Sirgood replied to his landlord, a magistrate and a member of parliament, advising the man that the fewer properties he owned, the more he would be free from "care, anxiety and responsibillity".
12.
John Sirgood it seems had his "eyes set firmly on another world".
13.
John Sirgood led both himself and his followers out of poverty by means of dissidence, dissent and Christ's Combination Stores.
14.
Quite early in their history the Society of Dependants acquired the soubriquet Cokelers, possibly because an 'obscure Sussex joke' made by their opponents and neighbours stuck to them, or because John Sirgood relentlessly promoted Cocoa drinking in place of alcohol.
15.
For many years John Sirgood spent weeks at a time in Sussex and elsewhere but still retained links with south London where his father George died at Kennington in October 1865.
16.
John Sirgood was still based at Clapham and can be found in the 1867 Post Office Directory and 1875 electoral records.
17.
John Sirgood continued to grow 'his flock' and saw the building of many Chapels and Stores in West Sussex and Surrey.
18.
When John Sirgood died on 19 October 1885 at Lords Hill Cottage Loxwood, his sect had about two thousand followers.