The Scarlet Sisters (14 page)

The trial, which began on Monday, May 15, following Woodhull’s
stunning NWSA success, resulted in unprecedented coverage of this family feud; it would ruin Woodhull’s credibility with the movement, give anti-suffragists fodder for their fight, and cover the sisters in ignominy. Rumors were one thing, and likely to be fleeting, but the stormy assertions and facts about the tawdry battling Claflins were quite another. Victoria, Tennie, and Colonel Blood met with a
Brooklyn Eagle
reporter on May 7 after the court meeting, hoping to defuse the bomb before the trial.

Blood, a spare man of “about five feet eight, with a straight nose, firm mouth and deep blue eyes,” impressed the reporter as a phrenologist’s fine specimen. Woodhull had a Grecian figure, and Tennie looked like “Byron’s Dadu electrified into animation.” Blood said that he and Victoria were married “for six years past, and till death doth us part as to the future.” Victoria said of her first marriage, “We were legally and duly divorced… by mutual consent” because they “were not compatible.” Colonel Blood added vaguely that “in order to effectuate” his divorce, “I left St. Louis for a time. My leaving [with Victoria] is made a great handle of but they will have to prove or swallow all their charges.” Blood was referring to an extortion ruse by Polly Sparr and her husband. Blood said, “See how they began this against me six years ago almost,” and produced an affidavit signed by another Claflin sister, Margaret A. Miles. She vowed that the Sparrs were going to get a policeman to arrest Blood “for bigamy and get $10,000 or $15,000 for letting him off, which we will divide.”

The reporter tried to discuss Annie’s complaint, but Tennie interjected: “Now, let me come in right here! My mother is a very old lady, whom I believe to be insane. She can neither read nor write. She did not make that affidavit [on Blood’s threatening her life]… A letter like this has been sent to every prominent person with whom we are acquainted,” she said, vehemently reading it out loud: “Dear Sir: Your intimacy with Tennie C. Claflin and with Mrs. Woodhull is known… I know also that you have a wife and family. Now I am down on my luck, and I want $300 out of you. You may call this blackmailing. But I have you tight.”

Tennie produced a “reply to a blackmailing letter… written to me by a prominent gentleman worth millions of dollars and of high position…:
‘My dear Miss Claflin: A pirate has just left this letter with me… an old woman came in who said she was your mother. I believe from what she said that she was crazy. She said that she had been told to get $300 out of me for that letter, but as she couldn’t read, I believed that she did not know what she had been put up to. I told her it was no use. That my intimacy with you was honest, square and pure and that all I knew of you was that you were a woman who honestly earned your own living. I gave her three dollars because she said she hadn’t eaten anything since yesterday morning, and that she hadn’t a cent. I asked her why she didn’t go to you. She said Sparr told her that if she did you would send her to the Island.’ ” Blackwell’s Island, now Roosevelt Island, was a nineteenth-century hellhole that housed prisoners, debtors, and the insane. “I write this to you to put you on your guard… the parties behind your mother mean you harm.”

In court Tennie charged the Sparrs with extortion, but even her own father was an apparent villain. Benjamin Tucker, a friend who later turned on the sisters, nonetheless noted, “Blackmailers beset them continually, some of these belonging to their own family. One day Victoria handed me a post-card threatening terrible things unless certain demands were met.” Tucker went to the address on the postcard, and “through the side-entrance came that frightful old scoundrel, Buckman Claflin.” When Tucker reported back to Victoria and Tennie, “the matter was dismissed. They were accustomed to trouble from that source.”

These revelations of extortion attempts endured by the sisters explain in great measure why they had tolerated the Claflin “deadbeats.” First, they were pulled into nefarious dealings with their parents and family as young girls, and then, when they were famous, they were threatened with blackmail for any activities, real or not. Clearly the shiftless Claflins had no reputations to lose with their extortion schemes, but Tennie revealed the fear that had haunted her and her sister: “When we first started here two years ago, we thought a row in the papers with these people would hurt us.” When she tried to evict the “deadbeats” at Great Jones Street, a brawl ensued. “They said if I tried to put them out they would make it hot
for us in the papers.” When officers came to the home they “told him to clear, else they would throw him out of the window… the marshals had to put them out by force.” The sisters’ firm paid for hotel expenses, then, responding to their family’s threats to ruin them, gave the “freeloaders $1,500 to go West and set up in business… now they are back.… they are the blackmailers working through and by my uneducated and feeble-minded mother. We are going to take care of ourselves after this and meet these persons face to face.”

The long interview in advance of the trial stimulated the curious. On May 15, reporters and spectators jammed the Essex Market courthouse to view this “Great Scandal.” Some papers practically convicted Blood of threatening his mother-in-law’s life when they characterized Annie’s charges as “revelations” rather than “allegations.” Rationalizing its coverage of a trifling domestic squabble, the
Herald
said the story was important because the parties were the notorious stockbrokers, their mother, and Blood, who was the firm’s “silent or ‘sleeping partner’ ”—a snide double entendre.

During the sensational trial both sisters testified repeatedly that the only reason the Sparrs and their mother had filed the suit was to get their trump card, Tennie, back telling fortunes to make money for them. However, the main disclosure remembered—and one that would tar Victoria for years as the Jezebel some papers had already labeled her—was that Victoria was living with both a former husband (Canning Woodhull) and a present one (Blood), under one roof. This was hardly a ménage à trois. Canning Woodhull was a drunk addicted to morphine. Victoria tried to explain, in the
World
and the
Times
, that Canning was “sick, ailing, and incapable of self-support,” so she felt it her duty to care for him. “My present husband, Colonel Blood, not only approves of this charity but cooperates in it. I esteem it one of the most virtuous acts of my life, but various editors have stigmatized me as a living example of immorality and unchastity.” It was indeed an act of compassion. Dr. Woodhull did not live out the year, dying on April 9, 1872.

Her explanation did not matter. What the newspapers headlined was
Colonel Blood’s testimony. His statement regarding Canning Woodhull electrified the court: “I see him every day; we are living in the same house.”

Counsel: “Do you and Mrs. Woodhull and Mr. Woodhull occupy the same room?”

No answer.

Blood’s counsel hastily prompted Blood: “[P]lease tell the Court why Dr. Woodhull lives in the same house, and who supports him.” Blood: “The firm of Woodhull, Claflin & Co. has supported the whole of them: Mrs. Woodhull’s first child is idiotic and Dr. Woodhull takes care of him.”

Annie, a “peculiar old lady, of determined mien and expression,” peering with keen little black eyes through gold-rimmed glasses, took the stand and “spoke with a strong German accent and great volubility”: Blood had “ ‘by divers wicked and magic arts and devices, alienated the affections’ of her devoted daughters and had ‘threatened her life.’ ” Attempts to keep her on track failed: “Judge, my daughters were good daughters and affectionate children ’til they got in with this man Blood. He has threatened my life several times, and one night last November he came into the house and said he would not go to bed till he had [here the paper capitalized]
WASHED HIS HANDS IN MY BLOOD
. I’ll tell you what that man Blood is. He is one of those who have no bottom in their pockets. You can keep stuffing in all the money in New York; they never get full up. If my daughters would just send this man away, they might be millionairesses [
sic
] and riding around in their own carriages… he has taken away Vicky’s ’fection [
sic
] and Tennie’s ’fection [
sic
] from poor old mother. S’help me God, Judge, I say here and I call Heaven to witness that there was the worst gang of free lovers in that house on Thirty-Eighth street that ever lived—Stephen Pearl Andrews and Dr. Woodhull and lots more of such trash.”

Even her lawyer admonished, “Keep quiet, old lady.”

She rolled on: “I was afraid of my life all the time I was in the house; It was nothing but talking about lunatic asylums; if God had not saved me Blood would have taken my life long ago.”

Blood denied everything. He never made any threats except one night
“when she was very troublesome, I said if she was not my mother-in-law I would turn her over my knee and spank her.”

Counsel: “[W]ould you really do that?”

No answer.

The next day, a mob arrived well before the courthouse doors opened, pushing and shoving to get a choice seat to see the sisters. “Physicians, lawyers, social reformers, cooks, chambermaids, brokers, gentlemen of elegant leisure arrayed in velvet and tuba roses thronged the passage ways.” They pressed against the railings and stood on the benches to see and hear the “heroines of the hour… as good looks and winning ways generally carry the day, silver-tongued Tennie had all the sympathy,” compared to her “more reserved” older sister.

Victoria testified that Blood “is my husband” and Woodhull “was my husband.” She shaved her age from fifteen to “near fourteen years” when she married Woodhull. Unless she was living with Blood when she gave birth to daughter Zula in 1861, she misstated that she had lived eleven years with him. Victoria testified that at times she thought her mother “was insane and not responsible for what she said; I never thought my mother in danger of any violence from Colonel Blood.” Her erratic mother would sometimes “sit on Mr. Blood’s lap and say he was the best son-in-law she had,” continued Victoria. “Then again she would abuse him like a thief, calling him all the names she could lay her tongue in… all without any cause whatsoever… The Sparrs were always telling mother that as long as Blood was around” she could not get Tennie back. Her mother was “determined to ruin Blood,” recalled Victoria, “saying that she would have him in the Penitentiary before she died.”

The counsel asked, “Is the Sparr family poor?”

Victoria said caustically, “They must be poor—they have had to live off two women all their lives.”

Tennie caused a stir, greeting her counsel with a friendly nod, and stared the opposing counsel full in the face. “She looked meltingly at the twenty-five reporters gathered to hear her wondrous tale. Tennessee has good eyes and knows her power.” She “kissed the book with an unctuous
smack… everything that Tennessee did was done fervently. She had evidently inherited her mother’s talent for volubility.”

With a smile, she teased the opposing counsel: “Now, go on! You may cross-examine me as much as you like. I never knew Colonel Blood to use any violence toward mother. He only treated her too kind, in fact, I don’t see how he stood all her abuse.” Then she blurted out what was vital to the sisters and what she wanted to convey to a packed court: “Sparr has been trying to blackmail people through mother.”

“This is altogether irrelevant!” the Judge bellowed. “If it is objected to I will rule it out.”

The counsel said, “I have objected, but I can’t stop her.”

As laughter filled the courtroom, Tennie raced on, trying to show letters that blackmailed “different eminent persons in this city… written by this man, Sparr!!”

Tennie wanted to reveal the blackmail to explain why the sisters had never totally severed ties with their parents and family. That the parents were willing to ruin their two daughters said everything about the family the women had tried so desperately to escape.

The judge did not care about Tennie’s blackmail charges, ruling the letters inadmissible. Tennie persisted, addressing the reporters: “I am the martyred one in this case. Colonel Blood is the best son-in-law my mother ever had… My mother is insane on Spiritualism.” Tennie hinted at something worse than just fake fortune-telling: “I have left the degradation of a life where I was almost lost… I have humbugged a great many rich people, Vanderbilt included, but I did it to make money to keep these deadheads [her family].” Tennie swore that she also had real healing ability. The
Herald
capitalized her next statement:
COMMODORE VANDERBILT KNOWS MY POWER
.

Whatever psychological reasons—misplaced guilt, loyalty to a captor, a vague memory of her mother at her kindest—Tennie felt inextricably bound to her. On the stand, she suddenly cried, “But, Judge, I want my mother,” then jumped from the witness box, raced behind the railing, and sprang toward Annie, clasping her in her arms. She kissed her mother so
loudly that it echoed in the courtroom, while Polly Sparr tugged on the other side of old Annie.

Spectators stood on tiptoe, craned their necks, and shoved one another in an attempt to see the action. Colonel Blood moved in to soothe the sobbing Tennie, patting her on the cheek and pushing her hair back from her face with gentle hands. He whispered, “Do retire, my dear; you are only making yourself conspicuous.” Tennie calmed down. The case was closed that afternoon. Whatever the judge ruled was never reported.

For the sisters—who had lied so beautifully about experiencing a pleasant childhood, acquiring a good education, and learning stocks through their lawyer father—their public image was wrecked. All Victoria’s acquired dignity and poise, and Tennie’s attempts to be her sister’s exemplary partner, were for naught. Now the two were seen as adjuncts to this squalling, trashy clan; the word
tramps
followed them with regularity.

The sisters had a naïve but abiding belief that if they could just tell their story to the press they would be understood and all would be resolved. Yet whatever sympathy they gained seldom offset the traction they gave to more scandal. A few weeks after the trial, the sisters once again held forth for the press. Woodhull revealed her shame at belonging to a family she had tried to hide. The Sparrs, she said, had “forced us to expose our family secrets, which we have been guarding for a long time, and now they can do no more. The skeleton in our closet is exposed.” Tennie then said that she was now “free from the Sparrs and their threats: ‘we’ll show you up. We’ll put you in the newspapers. We’ll ruin you.’ This has been the cry at every attempt of mine toward independence.”