Tilton, Josephine S.

TILTON, JOSEPHINE S. (1844-1921). Freethinker Josephine S. Tilton was born in March 29, 1844 in Deerfield, New Hampshire. A direct descendent of John Locke, she was a younger sister of free love journal publisher and writer Angela Tilton Heywood. Josephine was an officer of the New England Labor Reform League and the New England Free Love League. She and her sister Flora were traveling agents for the Heywoods’ The Co-Operative Publishing Company, which published Angela and Ezra Heywood’s journal The Word and their love treatises. Josephine called herself “an educated woman, not dependent on the sale of these books.” In 1877 she was arrested in Newburyport, Massachusetts she was for selling the Heywoods’ book Cupid’s Yokes. Following the arrest she said, “I look upon marriage as a curse, a prostitution of our noblest passions. I believe in free love, Spiritualism and affinity.”

After Ezra Heywood was sentenced to Dedham County Jail on obscenity charges related to Cupid’s Yokes, the New York State Freethinkers Association met in Watkins Glen, New York. Tilton presented Heywood’s opinions on various subjects, bringing along 600 copies of Cupid’s Yokes. On the third day of the convention, she, freethinker publisher D. M. Bennett, and a liberal lecturer, W. S. Bell were arrested on obscenity charges for selling Cupid’s Yokes. After the town learned of the arrests, 400 copies of Cupid’s Yokes were sold in less than twenty-four hours and the prices were raised from fifteen cents to fifty cents.

Bennett posted the $500 bail, but Tilton chose to stay in jail to cost the county money. Because there were no accommodations for women, a special cell had to be prepared for her. A visitor wrote, “[H]er friends as well as her enemies admired her grit and energy, but thought she was carrying her ‘spunk’ too far.” A defense lawyer told Tilton that if she stayed in jail she would probably be prosecuted, as her decision to stay had angered Watkins residents. Abolitionist Lucy N. Colman posted bail and Tilton left; her case was eventually thrown out.

After progressives petitioned President Rutherford B. Hayes to pardon Ezra Heywood, special agent to the US Post Office Anthony Comstock cited Tilton in his affidavit opposing a pardon. “[S]ince Heywood has been sentenced,” Comstock wrote, “his [wife’s] sister has been about the country peddling the said Heywood’s books, and has been arrested and indicted in the state of New York, for selling the same contrary to law. Therefore this deponent prays if for no other reason than this, that no pardon should be granted to said Heywood: for to do that will be to virtually license this vile boy.”

Heywood was pardoned, but charged again under the Comstock law in 1890. Tilton attended the trial and on the final day wore a red dress. After the district attorney moved for $5,000 or imprisonment for at least five years, Tilton rose to her feet. “Men of Massachusetts!” she cried. “In the name of the rights of men, I protest against this proceeding. I ask you if you countenance a court that does not aid justice, that does not weigh equity?”
“Take her out of court,” the judge ordered.
“That does not countenance liberty,” she replied.
“Remove her.”
As they forced her into her seat she cried out, “Shame on Massachusetts men!”

The judge sentenced Ezra Heywood to two years’ hard labor in Charlestown State Prison and as he was taken out, one newspaper accounts said that Angela and Josephine “made the corridors ring with their shouts of denunciation.” By 1899 Josephine Tilton had moved to Epsom, New Hampshire to run the family farm. She died in Natick, Massachusetts, at seventy-seven years old.

Rowbotham, Sheila. Rebel Crossings: New Women, Free Lovers, and Radicals in Britain and the United States. Verso: London and Brooklyn, 2016.

Elizabeth M. Foote Denton Correspondence, Denton Family Papers, Wellesley Historical Society, Wellesley, MA.

Denton Family Papers, Joseph A. Labadie Collection, Special Collections Library, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI.