In 1848, a group of religious perfectionists, led by John Humphrey Noyes, established a commune in Oneida, New York, where they lived and worked together. Women in the community had certain freedoms compared to the outside world, in both dress and occupation. What captured the attention of the outside world, though, were the sexual practices of the Oneidans, who believed in complex marriage where every man and every woman in the community were married to each other and where birth control was achieved via male continence.
Joining me to discuss the Oneida community, and its most infamous resident, presidential assassin Charles Guiteau, is New York Times bestselling writer Susan Wels, author of An Assassin in Utopia: The True Story of a Nineteenth-Century Sex Cult and a President's Murder.
Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode Music is “Walk Together (Acoustic Piano and Guitar Version)” by Olexy from Pixabay. The episode image is “Oneida Community,” photograph taken between 1860 and 1880; image is in the Public Domain and available via the Library of Congress.
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