Episode #29: 1846 Timeline Twist & The Agapemonites: Victorian Doomsday Sex Cult

6/12/2024: On today’s episode, Valerie’s “Bev Heavy” Timeline Twist presents the origin of the Lake Compounce Amusement & Water Park, a “Golden Treasure” cold cream for cuts?, a Gold’s Gym/Cher video reenactment within an 1846 flatboat painting, a Scottish-born British surgeon so speedy you had better watch your nutmegs!, the advent of some boozy drinks, along with some sugary temperance drinks, and never fear, that’s not a spirit rapping, it’s a red shafted flicker! Next Amy Jo brings us a story about an exceptionally long-running doomsday sex cult led by Henry “Harry” James Prince, a man with an evangelical style so persuasive he converted a Catholic! (among many others), including a daring rescue, an involuntary commitment, multiple lawsuits, spiritual-wifery, illegitimate children, and the mad scramble and aftermath of a cult grappling with what to do when their immortal “beloved” did the unthinkable and died.

Cover Photo: The only known photo of Henry Prince

1. An 1890 photograph of the original flag. It and the accompanying Storm Flag (bear flag by Peter Storm), were destroyed on April 18, 1906, in the fires that followed the great San Francisco Earthquake

2. Dubonnet poster (1895)

3. Lake Compounce Crocodile Cove Map

4. Pond's print advertisement for vanishing cream, 1910

5. George Caleb Bingham's The Jolly Flatboatmen (1846) became wildly popular after an East Coast art union bought it and started disseminating it as a print. National Gallery of Art

6. Portrait of Robert Liston (1794–1847), Scottish surgeon

7. A male northern flicker in Roslyn, New York

8. Agapemone

9. A group from Agapemone

10. A postcard from the Agapemonists

11. Fonzie

12. Agapemone

13. John Hugh Smyth-Pigott

14. Rising Son of Righteousness Stained Glass Windows

15. The Church of the Good Shepherd at Upper Clapton

Sources/Photo Sources