Elsie Rhodes
As an example of unyeilding and vicious Exclusive Brethren legalism there is little better example than what happened to Winifred and Elsie Rhodes in UK during 1962.
The British Egg Marketing Board installed legislation that ensured eggs were of a marketable quality. This involved inspection of facilities and various scientific tests. Once the inspection was complete, the sign that an egg was of marketable quality came in the form of a small stamp of a lion. Without the stamp, the egg was deemed unsaleable for the main distribution channels.
On the basis of ‘Separation from evil’, a statement was made by the Exclusive Brethren that this stamp, a seal of food safety, was “an impure link”! James Taylor Jnr, already out of control, deemed that this harmless and health-oriented symbol was ‘The Mark of the Beast’. The small-mindedness and ridiculousness of this particularly idiotic Exclusive Brethren edict would simply be yet another laughable example of a sect being led deeper into cultdom, if it were not for the fact it directly lead to the deaths of Winifred and Elsie Rhodes.
I remember very well the tragedy of the Miss Rhodes, two years after I left the brethren. They were simple, guileless country folk, who managed to support themselves by keeping about 1,500 chickens. They were known among the brethren for their hospitality and few of us ever left their house without some little gift of eggs, flowers or other produce.
For me, the destruction of those harmless innocents ( because the little lion stamped on their eggs by the Egg Marketing Board was said to be ‘the mark of the beast’, as in Revelation 16 and 20) was one of the very worst deeds of the brethren, even at a time when there were many shocking deeds.
In true Exclusive Brethren fashion, the sisters were hounded and cowed into submission. As Norman Adams wrote in ‘Goodbye Beloved Brethren”:
The sisters ran an egg farm at Gailey in Staffordshire. They were kindly, well-liked by their neighbours and they had been members of the Brethren since childhood. Against their upbringing they were obliged to carry out the creed of separatism. This meant they stopped visiting their cousin and her husband in Eccles, Lancashire, after many years of friendship. Brethren priests then put new pressure on the sisters, telling them their dealings with the Egg Marketing Board constituted an ‘impure link’. The Rhodes were even told the little lion stamped on the Marketing Board’s eggs was a ‘sign of the devil’, and that they should sever their link with the Board.
The Brethren priests ordered the dismayed sisters to sell their smallholding. They advised (sic) it was worth £7,000. In blind obedience, they sold their property for less than £5,000.
In a brief interview the woman witness describes how one night as she came out of the Brethren meeting with the sisters they walked to the other side of the road, followed by two priests. She went on: “The two men were shouting at the sisters and pointing at them. After a few minutes the men walked away and the sisters stood there, crying and shaking with fear.
- Norman Adams - Goodbye Beloved Brethren, 1972
Part of the attack against the two sisters was the increasing pressure being placed upon Exclusive Brethren women to not work for a living. Their Brethren ‘advisers’ wanted them to sell the farm and live off the proceeds. As two middle-aged Exclusive Brethren spinsters, they had few options. The impact was immediate as the two sisters were forced into submission. The Scottish Daily Mail records:
Mrs. Nora Cox of Ravensdale-Gardens, Eccles, Lanashire, talked yesterday of how her cousins, middle-aged spinsters, neglected their chicken farm and let the family business run down until it was unsaleable.
They cut themselves off from relatives who could have helped them out of financial trouble and finally walked to their death in a pool - because they were Exclusives, she claims.
“That was the reason,” she said. “They were brainwashed in a fantastic way.”
“Their lives had become directed in every detail by the Brethren - but when it came to material help at a crucial time there was none.
“They changed from happy people into dispirited recluses.”
“They would not turn to members of their own family even to help them out of financial difficulties that were by no means insurmountable”
- Scottish Daily Mail, July 24th, 1962
The writer, David Burgess, himself a former sect member, told ‘The People’, in March 1968 how the harsh Taylorite doctrine drove the unmarried and middle-aged sisters Elsie and Winifred Rhodes to take their lives. Burgess wrote:
“The desperation of this situation drove the two sisters to despair. They could see no way out. Finally, at the end of their tether, they walked hand in hand into a pool near their home on the night of June 29th, 1962, and drowned themselves.
“At the inquest a verdict of suicide whilst the balance of their minds was disturbed was recorded. No real explanation for the tragedy was offered. But I have the name and address of one person who was an actual witness to the persecution of the Rhodes sisters and the real reason for their suicide. I will not divulge her identity, but I am prepared to do so to the proper authorities if required.”
- David Burgess (as recorded in Goodbye Beloved Brethren)
The image is heart-breaking. Two sisters, all they had were each other and their chicken farm. They sat and watched their life’s work slowly deteriorate and then, when it was over and there was no further hope, they left us too.
They drove to a nearby small lake with their beloved dog. Leaving him inside, Winifred and Elsie walked slowly, hand-in-hand into a life without harsh decrees and liquor-fuelled madness.
When their car was found near the pool where they drowned themselves, their much-loved, over-fed collie was inside, as was also a little note saying:
‘Be kind to Bruie, our dog.’
In compiling these outrageous excerpts of history, we cannot help but hope that Bruie found a non-Exclusive Brethren home. A few years later, the alcoholic leader of the Exclusive Brethren, James Taylor Jnr, suddenly decreed that all pets must be slaughtered or given away in another mindless act of social and emotional vandalism.
