| | by admin | | posted on 10th October 2024 | Quakers in 100 Objects | | Artworks | | views 1211 | |
Wet Quakers shows how the Society of Friends was mocked in the 19th century — and how that mockery was reclaimed and became part of an enduring identity.
Wet Quakers is a 1813 hand-coloured engraving by the artist James Green (1771–1834). Green was a portrait painter who studied and exhibited at the Royal Academy.
He visited the English coastal town of Scarborough by stagecoach in 1812. During his stay he made a series of sketches of interesting scenes in the town which he later made up into watercolours.
The following year he reworked his watercolours into engravings and published them in his book entitled Poetical Sketches of Scarborough (1813) — of which Wet Quakers is one of 21 illustrations.
At first glance, the image reads like a comic seaside scene. A group of plainly dressed Friends struggle ashore in wind and spray. Clothes cling, hats are battered by weather, and the figures look dignified yet awkward, serious yet drenched.
This is not devotional art. It is satire. The humour depends on visibility. Quakers were instantly recognisable by plain dress, sober bearing, and the small social refusals that marked them out in public life.
In a culture attentive to rank and ceremony, Friends were mocked for refusing hat-honour, for continuing to use “thee” and “thou,” for refusing oaths, and for rejecting violence. Strangeness invites laughter, and the engraving trades on that recognisable difference.
Mockery, however, was nothing new for the Society of Friends. The very name “Quaker” began as a sneer, thrown at early Friends who were said to tremble under the power of God’s Spirit.
Friends were ridiculed in marketplaces, attacked in print, fined, and imprisoned. Their refusal to conform made them conspicuous, and at times unwelcome. And still they did not retreat.
They gathered in silence, preached equality, and refused violence. In that longer historical frame, the engraving becomes more than a joke about wet clothes. The figures may be soaked, but they remain together, helping one another, still recognisably Friends.
Over time, ridicule can lose its sting. An insult can become a name, and a name can become a settled identity. “Quaker” is a classic example of this strange reversal: a label given in mockery that Friends ended up wearing.
So too with the outward marks that the wider culture found amusing or irritating. Plainness became testimony. Refusing hat-honour became a lived sign of equality before God. What outsiders mocked as stubbornness was experienced inwardly as faithfulness.
Mockery became endurance. Endurance became reclamation. Reclamation became identity.
Many modern Quakers would not be offended by this illustration. Some might quietly enjoy it. A few might wince at the stereotype. But many would recognise something familiar — not in the wet coats, but in the persistence.
Friends are still sometimes thought peculiar, still occasionally misunderstood, still described in ways that miss the inward life. Yet the pattern remains — visible difference, steady witness, and a refusal to be reshaped by ridicule.
James Green likely intended his Wet Quakers illustration to capture an amusing moment from Scarborough life. But the image also testifies to something the artist may not have intended, which is steadfastness of faith.
The sea could drench their coats. It could not wash away their identity.
