The Scarlet Sisters (56 page)

4.
they “were not compatible.”:
TC and VW were incredibly advanced on divorce reform; incompatibility as of 2010 was still not a ground for divorce in New York, although no-fault divorce had been instituted.

5.
get $10,000 or $15,000:
Brooklyn Eagle
, May 8, 1871, p. 10.

6.
the parties behind your mother:
Ibid.

7.
They were accustomed to trouble:
Tucker-Sachs.

8.
meet these persons face to face:
Brooklyn Eagle
, May 8, 1871, p. 10.

9.
the firm’s “silent or ‘sleeping partner’ ”:
New York Herald
, May 16, 1871, p. 3. The biased headline:
ASTONISHING REVELATIONS BY OLD MRS. CLAFLIN—BLOOD THREATENED HER LIFE
.

10.
living example of immorality and unchastity:
(NY) World
, May 22, 1871, p. 3.

11.
takes care of him:
New York Herald
, May 16, 1871, p. 3.

12.
divers wicked and magic arts:
Ibid.

13.
Counsel: “[W]ould you really do that?”:
Ibid.

14.
silver-tongued Tennie:
New York Herald
, May 17, 1871, p. 10.

15.
she would have him in the Penitentiary:
Ibid. The entire description of Woodhull and Claflin testimony is from the
New York Herald
, May 18, 1871, p. 10, unless otherwise indicated.

16.
make money to keep these deadheads:
San Francisco Chronicle
, May 26, 1871, p. 1;
New York Herald
, May 17, 1871, p. 10.

17.
COMMODORE VANDERBILT KNOWS MY POWER
:
Ibid.

18.
you are only making yourself conspicuous:
Ibid.

19.
She hates Colonel Blood and Vicky:
New York Herald
, June 8, 1871, p. 6.

20.
The fond and fierce mother:
Tilton, “Victoria C. Woodhull.”

21.
these brittle tenements:
WCW
, June 8, 1871.

22.
the one had me taken off:
Chicago Tribune
, May 27, 1871, p. 1.

23.
shoot her down in the streets:
Chicago Tribune
, June 11, 1871.

24.
“poor old mother, Pa and Polly,”:
(NY) Sun
, June 9, 1871, p. 1.

25.
“kicked about the corpse”:
Brooklyn Eagle
, June 9, 1871.

26.
the social subordination of woman:
Stanton letter to VW, June 21, 1871, published in
WCW
, July 15, 1871.

27.
a fair representative of the movement:
Goldsmith,
Other Powers
, p. 279, cites the
Cleveland Leader
, no date provided; M. M. Marberry,
Vicky: A Biography of Victoria C. Woodhull
(New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1967).

28.
one who has two husbands:
New-York Daily Tribune
, May 20, 1871.

29.
Mr. Greeley’s home:
WCW
, May 27, 1871.

30.
shouldn’t be associating with such folks:
New-York Daily Tribune
, May 21, 1871.

31.
I believe in public justice:
VW letter to the
New York Times
and the
(NY) World
, May 20, 1871.

Chapter Nine: Sex and the City, circa 1871

1.
the stream will disappear:
Tried as by Fire
, Cari M. Carpenter, ed.,
Selected Writings of Victoria Woodhull (Legacies of Nineteenth-Century American Women Writers)
. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2010).

2.
“improper sexual commerce”:
Ibid.

3.
sink such morality!:
Ibid.

4.
saying nothing about the men:
Ibid.

5.
that great good to the human family:
Reprint of TC speech, in Doyle,
Plymouth Church and Its Pastor
.

6.
a worshipped belle of New York:
Doyle,
Plymouth Church
, p. 90; TC’s sexual equality speech published in
WCW
Co. collection.

7.
those who are called prostitutes:
Tried as by Fire
.

8.
Transplanted impoverished southern belles:
Diary of George Templeton Strong (1869 comment). Reprinted in George Ellington (pseudonym),
The Women of New York, or the Underworld of the Great City
(c. 1870; reprinted as
The Women of New York or, Social Life in the Great City
, New York: General Books LLC, 2009), p. 42.
The Women of New York
different edition (New York: Arno Press, 1971), p. 243.

9.
These women paraded on Broadway:
Ellington,
The Women of New York
.

10.
could not procure elsewhere:
The Gentleman’s Companion New York City
(1870; reprinted in the
New York Times
, Jan. 28, 2011). All grammatical and spelling errors are repeated as in original.

11.
likely to engage in the sex trade:
Christine Stansell and the American Council of Learned Societies,
City of Women Sex and Class in New York, 1789–1860
, 1st ed. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1986), p. 167.

12.
sixty percent of women workers in 1870:
Alice Kessler-Harris,
Out to Work: A History of Wage-Earning Women in the United States
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), p. 141.

13.
degradation and bodily injury:
WCW
, February 1871.

14.
when the sluts are out:
Kerr,
Lucy Stone
, p. 25.

15.
Neither teachers, parents or priests:
WCW
, April 26, 1875. Amazingly they broached sex education that was taboo well into the twentieth century and among some religious groups today. The sisters would have been shocked to know that, 140 years later, this battle was still being fought. In 1980, opposition from religious groups and school board members defeated a city mandate approved for a sex-education curriculum. Thirty years later, in 2011, mandatory sex education in New York City was instituted despite protests. Still, parents can keep their children out of sex-ed classes; many public schools have “opt out” options for parents. Despite protests, the mandate calls for sex ed to be taught starting in the sixth and seventh grade, in coed classes like those the sisters championed. “Sex Education Again a Must in City Schools,”
New York Times
, Aug. 10, 2011, p. A-1.

16.
simplistic and incoherent solution:
Tried as by Fire
. For further reading, Cari M. Carpenter’s introduction to
Selected Writings of Victoria Woodhull: Legacies of Nineteenth-Century American Women Writers
(Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2010), discusses Victorian sexual attitudes.

17.
we prate of the holy marriage covenant!:
Tried as by Fire
.

18.
backlash against an “age of debauchery,”:
Margaret Drabble,
For Queen and Country: Britain in the Victorian Age
. 1st American ed. (New York: Seabury Press, 1979), p. 16.

19.
women were supposed to be horrified:
Ibid.

20.
Anthony resisted until she tired:
Baker,
Sisters
, p. 55.

21.
he will know what woman’s dress is:
Ibid., p. 56.

22.
man whose wife “wears the britches.”:
Ibid.

23.
Fashionable clothes were “absurd… ridiculous”:
TC’s sexual equality speech, pp. 93 and 94.

24.
While women remain mere dolls:
Ibid.

25.
BEAUTIFUL WOMEN
, beckoned one:
WCW
, July 12, 1873, p. 15.

26.
wash their face after application:
Ellington,
The Women of New York
.

27.
Plumpness was so admired:
Ibid.

28.
removing the clitoris:
Graham John Barker-Benfield,
The Horrors of the Half-Known Life: Male Attitudes Toward Women and Sexuality in Nineteenth Century America
(New York: Routledge, 1968).

29.
“concealed beneath its deceptive exterior.”:
Taylor Stoehr and Paul Avrich Collection (Library of Congress),
Free Love in America: A Documentary History
(New York: AMS Press, 1979), p. 357.

30.
its founder, John Humphrey Noyes:
“Histories of the free love movement written by men reflect the same sexism that existed in such communes and did not take women like Woodhull as seriously as men. Male concerns, such as ejaculation were considered central, while female sexual concerns—such as contraception or female orgasm—were peripheral.” HNet website, “Feminism and Free Love.” http://www.h-net.org/~women/papers/freeloveintro.html.

31.
too much education was unhealthy:
Several sources, including Drabble,
For Queen and Country
; Janet Farrell Brodie,
Contraception and Abortion in Nineteenth-Century America
, 1st Cornell paperback ed. (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997); Barker-Benfield,
The Horrors of the Half-Known Life
; Allan M. Brandt,
No Magic Bullet: A Social History of Venereal Disease in the United States since 1880
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1985).

32.
a relief from manual stimulation:
Rachel P. Maines,
The Technology of Orgasm: “Hysteria,” the Vibrator, and Women’s Sexual Satisfaction
, Johns Hopkins Studies in the History of Technology, new ser., no. 24 (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998).

33.
By the 1870s, gynecologists had also begun:
Barker-Benfield,
The Horrors of the Half-Known Life
, p. 83. Note: I am indebted to this well-researched book and its examples of the practices of nineteenth-century gynecologists. MM.

34.
an enormous tax on a young doctor:
Ibid., p 89.

35.
Mrs. H. couldn’t stand it:
Ibid., p. 95.

36.
her masturbation eternally damned her:
Barker-Benfield,
The Horrors of the Half-Known Life
, p. 121.

37.
the cheek of sweet sixteen:
Ibid., p. 124.

38.
tractable, orderly, industrious and cleanly:
Ibid., p. 115.

39.
‘they know too much to have babies.’:
Ibid., p. 242.

40.
unwillingness of our women:
Brodie,
Contraception and Abortion
, p. 272.

41.
“reproduction of the race.”:
Clerical objection to contraceptives was such a powerful force that even one hundred years after the sisters, one Long Island man was jailed merely for giving out birth control information (MM article on Bill Baird,
Washington Post
, December 9, 1968). Major news in the 2012 U.S. presidential election, termed the “War on Women,” covered GOP attacks on everything from federal funding for contraception to definitions of rape.

42.
Contraceptive devices were called:
Brodie,
Contraception and Abortion
, p. 212.

43.
“Vegetable Compound and Uterine Tonic,”:
Ibid., p. 214.

44.
abortion is the choice of evils:
TC,
WCW
, Sept. 23, 1871. Reprinted in Carpenter, ed.,
Selected Writings
.

45.
pills touted to induce miscarriage:
Brodie,
Contraception and Abortion
.

46.
Pills with a promise of producing abortion:
Anonymous,
The Gentleman’s Companion: A Vest Pocket Guide to Brothels
(1870; reprinted in
New York Times
, Jan. 26, 2011).

47.
a death rate 15 percent higher:
Brodie,
Contraception and Abortion
.

48.
an “evil murderer.”:
Alan Keller,
Scandalous Lady: The Life and Times of Madame Restell, New York’s Most Notorious Abortionist
, 1st ed. (New York: Atheneum, 1981).

49.
said to be worth $1.5 million:
New York
magazine, April 9, 2012, p. 36.

50.
constituted a special danger:
Brandt,
No Magic Bullet
.