ABSTRACT
This chapter will look at a form of co-operation and communal living practised by the Society of Dependents which was articulated in religious terms, apparently without reference to socialism.
The story of the Dependents, better known to outsiders by their nickname ‘Cokelers’, has been oudined on several occasions, usually with much error and uninformed assertion about their beliefs.2 Only a beginning has been made at studying their history.3 Their founder, John Sirgood, was bom into a weaver’s family at Avening, Gloucestershire in 1821. In the 1840s he came to London, setding in Kennington where he became a disciple of William Bridges, founder of the Plumstead Peculiars and later described by Sirgood as his ‘father in the Gospel’.4 Sirgood, a shoemaker by trade, preached a good deal around south London, but in 1850, apparendy disillusioned by the response to his efforts, he moved with his wife, Harriett, to Loxwood in north-west Sussex, where he soon built up a following amongst the agricultural workers. Eventually the ‘Society of Dependents’ was formed, so-called because its members were dependent upon God for everything.
