Lois Waisbrooker (21 February 1826 – 3 October 1909) was an American
feminist
Feminism is a range of socio-political movements and ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social equality of the sexes. Feminism incorporates the position that society prioritizes the male po ...
author, editor, publisher, and campaigner of the later nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries. She wrote extensively on issues of sex, marriage, birth control, and women's rights, plus related areas of radical thought like
free speech
Freedom of speech is a principle that supports the freedom of an individual or a community to articulate their opinions and ideas without fear of retaliation, censorship, or legal sanction. The rights, right to freedom of expression has been ...
,
anarchism
Anarchism is a political philosophy and movement that is skeptical of all justifications for authority and seeks to abolish the institutions it claims maintain unnecessary coercion and hierarchy, typically including, though not necessa ...
and
spiritualism
Spiritualism is the metaphysical school of thought opposing physicalism and also is the category of all spiritual beliefs/views (in monism and dualism) from ancient to modern. In the long nineteenth century, Spiritualism (when not lowercase) ...
. She is perhaps best remembered for her
1893
Events
January–March
* January 2 – Webb C. Ball introduces railroad chronometers, which become the general railroad timepiece standards in North America.
* Mark Twain started writing Puddn'head Wilson.
* January 6 – Th ...
novel ''
A Sex Revolution''.
Biography
Born Adeline Eliza Nichols in upstate New York, she grew up in poverty there and in Ohio. She had little formal education, and worked for some years as a domestic servant. Beginning at the age of seventeen, an illegitimate pregnancy, a forced marriage, a quick widowhood and a brief second marriage inspired her devotion to feminist values. She converted to spiritualism and became a "trance speaker" at spiritualist gatherings. By 1863 she had adopted the name Lois Waisbrooker, and began a practice of lecturing and journalism that continued through the remainder of her life. "She wrote passable poetry, but didactic prose was her forte." She helped to organize the Boston Social Freedom Convention in the 1870s, and served as an official of the American Labor Reform League in 1882–83.
Waisbrooker founded and edited three periodicals, ''Our Age'', ''Foundation Principles'', and ''Clothed with the Sun'' (sometimes even setting the type and operating the printing press). In 1892 she "served as acting editor of an anarchist free-thought weekly titled ''
Lucifer, the Light-Bearer
Moses Harman (October 12, 1830January 30, 1910) was an American schoolteacher and publisher notable for his staunch support for women's rights. He was prosecuted under the Comstock Law for content published in his anarchist periodical ''Lucifer ...
''" when its former editor Moses Harmon went to prison. Like other radical writers of the period, she was prosecuted under the
Comstock Act
The Comstock laws were a set of federal acts passed by the United States Congress under the Grant administration along with related state laws.Dennett p.9 The "parent" act (Sect. 211) was passed on March 3, 1873, as the Act for the Suppression of ...
that prohibited the sending of obscene materials through the U.S. mail. She was involved in public controversy, and was the subject of condemnation and ridicule, throughout her career. In August 1894, the
''Topeka State Journal'' ran a story about her under the derisive headline "A Queer Old Woman Thinks She Has a Mission to Perform."
Waisbrooker spent a late phase of her career at the experimental community of
Home, Washington
Home is a census-designated place in Pierce County, Washington, United States. The 2010 Census placed the population at 1,377. The community lies on the Key Peninsula and borders the waters of Carr Inlet, an extension of Puget Sound. Home is now ...
. She arrived there early in 1901; local residents built her a small house. While there, Waisbrooker became involved in another legal controversy. She and the local postmistress, Mattie D. Penhallow, were arrested and charged with disseminating obscene material — the material in question being an article in ''Clothed with the Sun'' titled "The Awful Fate of Fallen Women." A jury convicted Waisbrooker; a sympathetic judge sentenced her to the minimum penalty, a fine of $100. (Penhallow was acquitted, though the U.S. Post Office subsequently closed the Home post office.)
Waisbrooker continued her activities to the end of her life, despite advancing age and worsening health. She left Home for Denver in 1904, and died in
Antioch, California
Antioch is the third-largest city in Contra Costa County, California, United States. Located in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area along the Sacramento–San Joaquin River Delta. The city's population was 115,291 at the 2020 Unite ...
where she is buried along with son, Abner Fuller in Oak View Memorial Park," at the age of eighty-three. "Penniless at the time of her death in 1909, Lois Waisbrooker had spent over forty years promoting the twin ideas of assertive womanhood and female sexuality as a positive power."
Selected works
* ''Mayweed Blossoms'' (1871), novel
* ''The Sexual Question and the Money Power'' (1873)
* ''Nothing Like It, or Steps to the Kingdom'' (1875), novel
* ''From Generation to Regeneration'' (1879)
* ''Helen Harlow's Vow'' (1884), novel
* ''Perfect Motherhood; or Mabel Raymond's Resolve'' (1890), novel
* ''The Fountain of Life; or The Threefold Power of Sex'' (1893)
* ''The Occult Forces of Sex'' (1893)
* ''A Sex Revolution'' (1893), novel
* ''The Wherefore Investigating Company'' (1894), novel
* ''Anything More, My Lord?'' (1895)
* ''The Temperance Folly; or Who's the Worst?'' (1900)
* ''My Century Plant'' (1903)
* ''Women's Sense of Power'' (1903)
* ''Eugenics; or Race Culture Lessons'' (1907)
References
Bibliography
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Waisbrooker, Lois
1826 births
1909 deaths
19th-century American novelists
19th-century American women writers
20th-century American women writers
20th-century American writers
American anarchists
American feminists
American suffragists
American spiritualists
American women novelists
American women's rights activists
Anarcha-feminists
Free love advocates
People convicted under the Comstock laws