Sunday School Treats
The “Sunday School Treat”
As Williams and Livingstone took their lanterns to the South Pacific and Africa, the magic lantern was also gaining traction as a form of educational entertainment in Britain. Carpenter and Westley’s improved phantasmagoria lantern was not only widely regarded as a “scientific instrument” but had also become a powerful vehicle for religious instruction. In the fourth edition of A Companion to the Improved Phantasmagoria Lantern, the Westley proudly proclaimed thatDespite its usefulness as an audio-visual form of communication, the lantern was not used as an instructional aid on a daily or weekly basis. Instead, lantern shows were given around Christmastide in England and abroad as Sunday School “treats.” As an extension of the classroom, these lantern shows tended to include scriptural material, but they also encompassed comic slides, virtual tours, and accounts of missionary work. In this regard, the Crowther’s shows paralleled those given in Britain more closely than either Williams or Livingstone. In England and abroad, the lantern’s status as a “treat” rather than as a regularly used instructional aid was in part due to the availability of slides before the age of photography. Before 1870, lantern manufacturers relied predominantly on semi-mechanized processes, making slides relatively expensive to obtain and transport. This, in turn, meant that missionaries often had a small number of slides to work with. For example, John Smithurst’s shows to his Cree congregants in Red River Canada featured five slides, two of which had been so badly painted that he characterized them as “wretched daubs.”[2] Because they were working with a small number of slides, magic lantern shows were given only on special occasions.this instrument is now most extensively employed by the Clergy in giving Lectures, both in their Schools, and to the juvenile portion of their Congregations. [...] All persons engaged in giving information to the young, are impressed with the value of pictorial representation in assisting them to fix ideas. . . [1]
Reverend Smithurst’s lantern show in December 1844 (and subsequent Christmastide treats) are among the earliest recorded instances of the Sunday School treat abroad and among the first to appear in print. An account of Smithurst’s first lantern show was published in the December 1845 issue of the Record.[3] Other descriptions of lantern shows would follow suit, including James Booth’s in Whanganui New Zealand (North Island) (Record, January 1857)[4] and Alfred Stackhouse’s in Hobart, Tasmania (Gleaner, May 1858).[5] In all of these accounts, the missionaries framed the lantern’s value as an entertainment by describing it as a reward for the success of their “native” students.
The Crowthers’ lantern shows in West Africa were preceded by two in Sierra Leone. The first was given by Mr. Thomas Peyton at Regent at the request of Nathaniel Denton. Deyton “begged Mr. Peyton to visit us [the missionary station in Regent] with his magic lantern,” which he happily obliged. Peyton was the former principal of the CMS Grammar School in Freetown, Sierra Leone. The lantern show took place on 15 January 1852, and there were approximately 100 people in attendance. While Denton and Bishop Crowther would explicitly characterize the lantern as entertainment, Denton added that he wanted to “the entertainment one exclusively for the mind.” Denton elaborates by saying that
By couching the lantern show as an extension of the theological training offered by the school, Denton avoided awakening the editor’s dread that projected images were not serving a pedagogical purpose. Similarly, George Nicol, Bishop Crowther’s son-in-law, requested to borrow Mr. Carpentier’s lantern for a show in Regent in August 1853 in celebration of the opening of a new school room. After eating a meal,At the close, I endeavoured to show them, in a few remarks that religion was not intended “to make our pleasures less;” and that if they were ready to give up heathenish customs, and the follies of the world, there were many other and far greater pleasures in reserve for them.[6]
The contrast between these passages anticipate the censorship of the Crowthers by laying bare the double standards governing missionaries of European and of African descent. Though Denton’s account is explicitly pedagogical in its focus, his repetitions of pleasure emphasizes the ways in which the lantern show was primarily divertive. His address registers as a thinly veiled ploy to pitch the lantern as part of the process of “civilizing” in which technological sophistication goes hand-in-hand with religious change. In stating this connection, Denton reinforces his authority in Henry Townsend’s ideal ecclesiastical structure: one which includes Africans as subjects, but not as leaders. Meanwhile, the most academically gifted African teachers who were genuinely passionate about the subjects they taught had to cede the floor to European missionaries, their presence downplayed in the context of the lantern show and in the remediation of these events in print. Though they describe the lantern show with great warmth and enthusiasm in their letters, the accounts written by African lanternists are devoid of any references to the lantern show as an entertainment.The children were then addressed by several members of the Committee, and some very sensible remarks were made on the occasion. In the evening I exhibited the magic lantern, kindly lent me by Mr. Charpentier. The astronomical slides struck our rural population here with surprise.[7]
Oko Jumbo and the performance of knowledge
The published account of the lantern show in King Pepple’s court represents one of the most extensive cases of censorship, particularly in the ways that it misrepresents the timing of the show and one of its key participants, Oko Jumbo. Bishop Crowther’s quarterly report indicates that the lantern show (with its boar’s head slipper) took place on 12th February 1868. However, the Record collapses the distinction between this lantern show and a school event in December 1867. In celebration of Christmas, the children recited portions of the catechism and scripture in front of the king and his court. It is possible that Dandeson Crowthers gave a lantern show at both events, for the school’s Christmas celebrations fall between the lantern shows in Lagos and in Bonny. However, neither Samuel nor Dandeson Crowthers mention such an exhibition in their letters, and the article misdates the school examination as taking place in February. These two changes suggest that the passage below represents an editorial intervention.Bishop Crowther's Report | “Niger Mission,” Church Missionary Record |
| Oko Jumbo showed off his knowledge of Scripture history to his brother chiefs. No sooner those figures representing the [page 10] birth of Christ, his presentation in the temple, the visit of the wisemen, and Solomon’s decision of the disputed living child were exhibited and explained than Oko Jumbo at once undertook to explain them to his brother chiefs, either in the Bonny or Ibo language, as both languages are spoken here, besides the broken English as it is spoken on the coast.[8] | The children were rewarded by a magic lantern, Oko Jumbo undertaking to explain the various subjects to his brother chiefs, which he did in the Bonny and Ibo languages, both of which, as well as broken English, are spoken on the coast.[9] |
In both accounts, Oko Jumbo’s enthusiastic explanations register as a performance of knowledge, showcasing what he had learned under the tutelage of the CMS’s teachers stationed in Bonny. However, the context of the lantern show and the presence of chiefs in the audience suggests that Oko Jumbo was using the lantern show as an opportunity to consolidate King George Oruigbiji Pepple’s power. The king had been ascended to the throne in 1866 with the support of the British Consul. Because he was a Christian who had been raised in England, the colonial government hoped that he would continue to develop trade networks that excluded slavery and to expand the influence of Protestant missionaries. By February 1867, tensions were mounting between two factions within the Bonny kingdom— the Manilla Pepple (who were ruled by Oko Jumbo) and the Annie Pepple. As such, Oko Jumbo’s enthusiasm to serve as translator was not simply a demonstration of academic mastery of scriptural material for the missionaries. Instead, it reads more as a carefully calculated performance of loyalty for King Pepple. By bridging linguistic barriers, Oko Jumbo not only demonstrated his commitment to avoiding war, but he also attempted to convince other Africans to do the same, creating a more stable foundation for the Pepple-Consulate government. Oko Jumbo’s efforts to resolve the conflict peacefully were ultimately unsuccessful, and the Manilla Pepple formed a separate kingdom two years later. When viewed in this light, the lantern show become a critical moment in the negotiation process. The lantern show provided an opportunity for the king, the missionaries, and their close allies to display the potential benefits of continued collaboration with the British consulate.
The account in the Record conveys none of these valences. By collapsing the distinction between the lantern show in King Pepple’s court and the Sunday School examination, Oko Jumbo’s performance of knowledge registers as a continuation of the children’s, making him seem child-like in his repetition of Bible stories and scriptural trivia. Such a narrative strategy served a double purpose. First, it reinforced the views of CMS missionaries who, like Henry Townsend, inscribed Africans within a narrative of development that always placed them under British authority. Secondly, the lantern show in print became a secondary site for fundraising by appealing to children. In the words of one church historian, the proliferation of juvenile missionary magazines stemmed from “the conviction that missionary committees had discovered not children but a copper-mine.”[10] F. K. Prochaska has traced the increasingly important role that children played in fundraising for missionary societies, particularly for the Methodist Missionary Society. The first Christmas appeal to juvenile subscribers raised £4,721, six percent of the society’s total operating budget. By 1871, that percentage grew to eight percent; by 1901, twenty.[11] A similar study of the London Missionary Society would reveal that the juvenile auxiliaries raising enough funds to purchase, provision, and sustain a series of seven missionary ships christened the John Williams from 1844—1968. In addition to the usual fundraising structures of special collections and subscriptions, children devised particularly creative strategies to support the missionary cause. One family of seven went so far as to train their pet cat to greet visitors at the door with a collection box tied around its neck.[12] Reading about Sunday School treats abroad in the juvenile periodicals (and their adult-oriented counterparts) would have evoked a sense of shared embodied experience with the young readers of the missionary society magazines. Because they had likely seen a lantern show in the context of Christmas celebrations in Britain, British children could haptically imagine the events unfolding on the page. Such affinities were designed to make the children all the more eager to contribute to the missionary societies’ fundraising efforts.
[1] Companion to the Improved Phantasmagoria Lantern, Carpenter and Westley, 1850, p. 5.
[02] See page 3 of his letter to Dandeson Coates (the CMS Foreign Secretary after whom Dandeson Crowther is named), 18 November 1846, Church Missionary Society Archives, University of Birmingham Special Collections, CMS C1/063/34. 4 May 2017.
[3] “North-West-America Mission,” Church Missionary Record, vol. 16, issue 12, December 1845, available through Adam Matthew, Church Missionary Society Periodicals, http://www.churchmissionarysociety.amdigital.co.uk/Documents/Details/CMS_OX_CMS_Record_1844-1845_24, p. 292. I discuss Smithurst’s requests and his slides in “Rev. Smithurst’s Wishlist,” The Magic Lantern, a publication of the Magic Lantern Society of the UK, no. 15, June 2018, p. 8.
[4] The letter describes a lantern show at the Government Industrial School for native boys on 2 June 1856. The unusual timing of the lantern show is due to the fact that he had just arrived in New Zealand and was on his way to his assigned station in Pipiriki, 30 miles north on the Whanganui River. The account was reprinted in “New Zealand,” Church Missionary Record, vol. 28, issue 1, January 1857, available through Adam Matthew’s Church Missionary Society Periodicals, http://www.churchmissionarysociety.amdigital.co.uk/Documents/Details/CMS_OX_CMS_Record_1857_01, p. 4.
[5] “Tasmania, or Good News from a Distant Land,” The Church Missionary Gleaner, vol. 8, issue 5, May 1858, available through Adam Matthew’s Church Missionary Society Periodicals, http://www.churchmissionarysociety.amdigital.co.uk.proxyiub.uits.iu.edu/Documents/Details/CMS_OX_Gleaner_1858_05, p. 49.
[6] “Mountain District,” Church Missionary Record, vol. 24, issue 4, April 1853, available through Adam Matthew, Church Missionary Society Periodicals, http://www.churchmissionarysociety.amdigital.co.uk/Documents/Details/CMS_OX_CMS_Record_1852-1853_16, p. 84.
[7] “West Africa Mission,” Church Missionary Record, vol. 2, no. 2, February 1857, available through Adam Matthew, Church Missionary Society Periodicals, http://www.churchmissionarysociety.amdigital.co.uk/Documents/Details/CMS_OX_CMS_Record_1857_02, p. 41. Although a “native” missionary, Nicols had traveled to England as a young boy. There, he met Henry Venn, who encouraged him to explore science by taking him to an optician’s in Fleetstreet. The large telescope made such an impression that it sparked a lifelong love of math, astronomy and physics. Nicol would become one of the instructors at the Forah Bay College. See “Letter to the CMS Secretary, 10 April 1877,” Church Missionary Society Archives, University of Birmingham Special Collections, CMS C A1/O 164 51. 3 May 2017.
[8] “Letter to Henry Venn, 27 February 1867,” Church Missionary Society Archive, University of Birmingham Special Collections, CMS/B/OMS/C A3/O4 226, 10 May 2017, pp. 9-10.
[9] “Niger Mission,” Church Missionary Record, vol. 13, no. 3, March 1866, available through Adam Matthew, Marlborough, Church Missionary Society Periodicals, http://www.churchmissionarysociety.amdigital.co.uk/Documents/Details/CMS_OX_CMS_Record_1868_03, pp. 78.
[10] Constance Padwick, “Children and Missionary Societies in Great Britain,” International Review of Missions, no. 6, 1917, pp. 561-575, quoted in Terry Barringer’s “What Mrs. Jellyby Might Have Read Missionary Periodicals: A Neglected Source,” p. 49.
[11] “Little Vessels: Children in the Nineteenth-Century English Missionary Movement,” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, vol. 6, issue 2, January 1978, p. 107, available via interlibrary loan.
[12] “The Missionary Cat,” The Juvenile Missionary Magazine, vol. 23, no. 11, November 1866, p. 135, accessible via Googlebooks. I am indebted to Jo Ichimura, the Archivist & Records Manager for the London Missionary Society Archive at School of Oriental and African Studies for introducing me to the juvenile missionary magazines.
