Divorce, Insanity, and Celery Tonic

Sometimes a story is a story.

The New York papers had a scandalous and salacious story in the October 22, 1889 papers. The whole story reads like something out of a Victorian melodrama. A perfumer enters a hotel room where his wife is with another man! The young man flees, and the perfumer drives his wife in a carriage to her father’s home. He wakes the old man, leaving him with the woman, saying, “There is your daughter, keep her.”

If this were an 1889 play, there would be no hope of reviving it in 2014. But this story really happened. Well, it sort of happened. During this time, there were morning and evening papers, so before New Yorkers went to bed on October 22, 1889, they had heard both sides of the story. Or at least the beginning of the story.

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The Love Lives of Spirit Mediums

The spirits say that my
husband is a monster!

When we think of “free love,” we tend to think of the 60s, and we’re more–0r-less right, except that we should be thinking of the 1860s, or even before, and was closely tied to a number of nineteenth century social reform movements, including feminism (the concept[1] that marriage is a patriarchal institution designed to oppress women[2] had to start somewhere). In a way, we live in a world that the Free Love moment hoped for, one in which couples who are no longer in love may readily separate.[3]

The spiritualist movement was also strongly tied into the free love movement, according to this article printed in the Memphis Daily Appeal on September 24, 1858, which had previously appeared in the New York Post. It was actually part of a pair of articles, with the second item headed “Another ‘Free Love’ Feast.” The connection between Free Love and spiritualism is only referenced in one paragraph in the middle of the article, but I’ve typed out the whole thing, since I just couldn’t get enough of the lurid details.

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You can follow my blog on Twitter (@impofthediverse) or on Facebook. If you like this post, share it with your friends. If you have a comment just for me, e-mail me at impofthediverse@gmail.com.

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This blog runs solely on ego! Follow this blog! Comment on this post! Let me know that you want to read more of it!