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Speaker 1: Welcomed Unobscured, a production of I Heart Radio and Aaron Minkey.

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Speaker 1: Today's guest interview is author and journalist Mary Gabriel. Her

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Speaker 1: books have been finalists for the Pulitzer Prize, the National

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Speaker 1: Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award. For

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Speaker 1: nearly two decades, she worked in Washington and London as

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Speaker 1: an editor for Reuter's. Her biography of Victoria Woodhall Notorious

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Speaker 1: Victoria isn't the only book that sent Mary Gabriel into

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Speaker 1: the past, though. She also wrote a dual biography on

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Speaker 1: Carl and Jenny Marks, and when researcher Carl Nellis talked

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Speaker 1: with Mary, they explored beyond the life of Victoria Woodhall's

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Speaker 1: radical comrades to discuss how Mrs Satan's political career fits

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Speaker 1: into the bigger picture. It's a fascinating interview and I

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Speaker 1: can't wait to share it with you. So without further ado,

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Speaker 1: here's Mary Gabriel. This is the Unobscured Interview series for

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Speaker 1: season two. I'm Aaron Mankey as spiritualist. You know, I

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Speaker 1: think from our point of view, you think of someone

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Speaker 1: raising tables and sitting in a darkened room with a

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Speaker 1: group of people communing with the dead, and that was

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Speaker 1: part of it. But really interestingly, spiritualism in the nineteenth

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Speaker 1: century was away for people who didn't have a political

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Speaker 1: or a social voice i e. Women to have one

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Speaker 1: and um, so that's in the case of Victoria Woodhall,

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Speaker 1: that that's what spiritual spiritualism was for her, and what

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Speaker 1: that meant was that she could almost act as a

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Speaker 1: therapist or any of the spiritualist healers who were traveling

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Speaker 1: around the country almost acted as spiritualists I mean sorry,

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Speaker 1: as as therapists to the word working class or the poor,

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Speaker 1: or the the itinerant farm farm worker who they would

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Speaker 1: roll up in a caravan and say, you know, would

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Speaker 1: you like to speak to your dead mother? Well, everyone

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Speaker 1: wants to talk to their dead mother about the problems

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Speaker 1: they're currently having. In so in the course of that dialogue,

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Speaker 1: someone like Victoria would hear the concerns of these people

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Speaker 1: and then not necessarily having tapped into the dead mother's

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Speaker 1: ideas or the dead mother's advice, but she herself with

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Speaker 1: an offer her own advice, which would be um based

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Speaker 1: on her own experience which was troubled, um, but also

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Speaker 1: based on the people she she'd met along the way.

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Speaker 1: So so basically spiritualism was a big communications network, not

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Speaker 1: necessarily with people from the beyond, but very much among

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Speaker 1: a desperate crowd within the United States at that time.

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Speaker 1: And it's really it was probably one of the colonels

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Speaker 1: or one of those seeds for the entire US women's

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Speaker 1: rights movement because these women started talking among themselves about

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Speaker 1: themselves and discovered that they all sort of had similar

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Speaker 1: problems and that those similar problems were all based in

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Speaker 1: in repressive or oppressive social situations i e. Marriage. So

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Speaker 1: you've already touched on this a little bit, but um,

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Speaker 1: when people were coming to a science, what kinds of

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Speaker 1: questions were they asking? What were they looking for to

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Speaker 1: get out of it? There are all kinds of varieties there,

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Speaker 1: But what are the things that you really picked up

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Speaker 1: on is you read these documents and the periodicals and

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Speaker 1: the things that were recording spiritualist experiences. Yeah, it was

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Speaker 1: really you know, there were two kinds. There were the

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Speaker 1: seances and in spiritualism had the literally the Barnum and

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Speaker 1: Bailey kind of aspect where you know, you had a

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Speaker 1: woman or a woman with a group of people in

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Speaker 1: a room and they'd hear tappings and um and the

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Speaker 1: tappings would indicate um um, a communication with a spirit,

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Speaker 1: you know, a spirit with a bizarre name like Mr.

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Speaker 1: Split Foot was one, and and he would offer advice

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Speaker 1: on you know, our our dead family members happy? Now

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Speaker 1: are they? Are they still with you? Do they approve

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Speaker 1: of what you're doing? But the kind of spiritualism that

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Speaker 1: a woman like Victoria Woodholl would practice as she traveled

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Speaker 1: around the country um hearing people's troubles was a much

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Speaker 1: more basic kind of almost like a advice columnists that

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Speaker 1: you might have in a newspaper today. Um. You know.

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Speaker 1: She she would set up in a hotel and she

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Speaker 1: didn't have seances per se. She had one and one

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Speaker 1: one on one encounters with people who would come in

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Speaker 1: with maybe physical maladies or um problems in their marriage,

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Speaker 1: problems with their children's financial problems, you know, just the

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Speaker 1: basic things that that a person would go to a

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Speaker 1: priest or a a therapist or uh, you know, a

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Speaker 1: politician if they so dared and and and you know,

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Speaker 1: describe their situation and ask for help. These people knew

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Speaker 1: Victoria wasn't equipped to provide them with actual help, but

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Speaker 1: in many cases it was just enough for just to

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Speaker 1: have someone to listen to what they had to say,

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Speaker 1: and that in itself was empowering both for them and

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Speaker 1: for her. And uh for spiritualists, Um, that kind of conversation,

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Speaker 1: you can imagine the the the experience that they would

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Speaker 1: after a few years, the experience they would build, you know,

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Speaker 1: and the kind of advice that they could then offer,

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Speaker 1: and how it became very social and very political because

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Speaker 1: they knew so many people were suffering from the same

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Speaker 1: problems and so um, it was very much the kind

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Speaker 1: of thing that you see in films where people, you know,

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Speaker 1: go in and expect miracles and have apparitions and appear

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Speaker 1: and you know, a lot of kind of smoke and

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Speaker 1: mirrors literally was crystal balls, etcetera. But but there was

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Speaker 1: also a very basic and very human and of very

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Speaker 1: warm and generous spirit um behind the kind of spirituals

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Speaker 1: and that would haul practice and that was one person

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Speaker 1: helping another person. Now, the reason it was called spiritualism,

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Speaker 1: and the reason why a woman would have to resort

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Speaker 1: to something as as kind of outlandish as that rather

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Speaker 1: than just say tell me what your problems are and

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Speaker 1: I'll tell you what I think, was because women weren't

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Speaker 1: supposed to have a political voice or a social voice.

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Speaker 1: They weren't supposed to extend themselves to that extent. And

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Speaker 1: for a woman to set up a shop in a

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Speaker 1: darkened room in a hotel and have strangers come in

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Speaker 1: and give her a dollar and then she would offer advice,

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Speaker 1: if she said that that advice was coming from her

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Speaker 1: without the guidance of a spirit, it would really be

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Speaker 1: um it would be outrageous, it would be it would

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Speaker 1: be it would be more than society could bear, because

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Speaker 1: that was not the role of a woman. But if

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Speaker 1: she said, I'm hearing the voices you know, from your mother,

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Speaker 1: and she's telling me to tell you, you know, your

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Speaker 1: husband is a drunk, you have to leave him. It's

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Speaker 1: good for the children, it's good for you, then society

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Speaker 1: could could have a sanction that and the woman who

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Speaker 1: was hearing the advice could then say, you know, okay,

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Speaker 1: and act on it if she wished to. So it's

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Speaker 1: really interesting, isn't it that it was. It was kind

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Speaker 1: of a charade that was allowed to play out that

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Speaker 1: a woman like Victoria could give advice who just about

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Speaker 1: everybody knew was giving advice based on her own experience.

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Speaker 1: Um As woman to woman, but they but people would

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Speaker 1: pretend that this voice was that this that this advice

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Speaker 1: was coming from you know, another world, another another kind

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Speaker 1: of um, a spirit world beyond one that we could see,

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Speaker 1: and that this charade was allowed to play, was allowed

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Speaker 1: to play out so that she could have a voice

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Speaker 1: and that women could hear it. So it was a

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Speaker 1: fascinating period. And one of the other you mentioned the

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Speaker 1: priesthood and some of the roles that a traditional religious

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Speaker 1: figures would would play in this kind of almost a

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Speaker 1: therapeutic kind of mode for for people who would come.

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Speaker 1: But one of the other kind of movements that was

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Speaker 1: happening at the time and leading up to the eighteen

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Speaker 1: forties was the practice of animal magnetism mesmerism. Uh, some

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Speaker 1: of those um discourses that were considered to be kind

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Speaker 1: of horizons of science about the mind and the person

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Speaker 1: that also were practiced and often demonstrated publicly in a

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Speaker 1: kind of a therapeutic mode. Can you talk a little

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Speaker 1: bit about how those practices set up a foundation for

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Speaker 1: what became spiritualism. Yeah, that's very interesting because it was

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Speaker 1: It's one of the fascinating, fascinating aspects of what you're

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Speaker 1: talking about and also the spiritualism I was speaking of

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Speaker 1: with Victoria is that this all occurred in an in

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Speaker 1: a climate of technological and industrial advancement and change. You know, suddenly,

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Speaker 1: you know, trains were speeding through virgin countryside at unheard

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Speaker 1: of speeds, and a telegraph could be sent from one

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Speaker 1: place to another, you know, without anyone actually physically carrying it.

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Speaker 1: And it was it was a time when um people

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Speaker 1: didn't quite understand what was happening to them, that the

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Speaker 1: society and the the the industry and the manufacturing and

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Speaker 1: the way of life was changing so radically that people

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Speaker 1: sought explanations for that through either through either spiritualism or

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Speaker 1: through the sort of laying on of hands and things

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Speaker 1: that you describe. And and so one actually was a

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Speaker 1: physical manifestation of these these social and industrial changes and

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Speaker 1: the technological changes that were occurring, which was the lilying

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Speaker 1: out of hands the mesmerism, and the other was just

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Speaker 1: actually helping people cope with the changes that the massive

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Speaker 1: changes in their lives. And one of the reasons why

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Speaker 1: both of those were more readily accepted than perhaps they

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Speaker 1: would have been thirty y years, you know, thirty years previously,

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Speaker 1: was because people could see in their everyday lives changes,

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Speaker 1: massive changes that that amountages speed and ways of communication

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Speaker 1: that had never existed before. And and and so if that

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Speaker 1: could happen, then maybe it was actually possible for for

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Speaker 1: people to heal by just touching you, or for someone

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Speaker 1: to give advice from a figure who existed outside a

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Speaker 1: realm you could see. M hmm. And one of the

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Speaker 1: technologies that was so crucial to the spread of all

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Speaker 1: these ideas was, um, the explosion of cheap fast printing,

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Speaker 1: and there's all these periodicals that just kind of burst

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Speaker 1: onto the scene, and they were crucial to mesmerism, to

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Speaker 1: those sciences, but also to spiritualism. Can you talk a

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Speaker 1: little bit about the role that periodicals played kind of

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Speaker 1: in American life, um in the in the middle of

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Speaker 1: the nineteenth century, but kind of across that period. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it was really fascinating, and um, it wasn't just in

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Speaker 1: the United States, it was in Europe as well. Suddenly,

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Speaker 1: you know, trains would could carry periodicals from one place

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Speaker 1: to another end so you and carry news. So you

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Speaker 1: could you could assemble a periodical and Dayton Ohio that

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Speaker 1: would have news from New York City or news from London.

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Speaker 1: Or news from Cologne, Germany, and it wouldn't be that old,

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Speaker 1: you know, it might be two weeks old. And um,

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Speaker 1: people were learning. Their horizons were literally expanding. And every organization,

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Speaker 1: every political party, um, every group, the farmers groups, the

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Speaker 1: coal group, you know, coal miners, everyone had a periodical

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Speaker 1: So it was almost, I guess a little bit. I mean,

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Speaker 1: I suppose it's a little bit like our blogosphere now

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Speaker 1: that there were new there was this new way of

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Speaker 1: communicating through technology and through the printed page that allowed

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Speaker 1: people to speak to each other and learn about each

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Speaker 1: other and learn about what was happening in the world

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Speaker 1: much more quickly, um than they ever had before. And

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Speaker 1: it was during the Civil War in fact, in the

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Speaker 1: United States, the the newspapers were an absolutely crucial way

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Speaker 1: for you know, the country to stay as the country

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Speaker 1: was splitting physically, you know, through war. It was actually

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Speaker 1: kind of the thread that was keeping it together was

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Speaker 1: the exchange of newspapers and that information. And also um

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Speaker 1: into the seventies, when when into the seventies, when the

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Speaker 1: kind of later industrialization occurred, when there were more serious

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Speaker 1: class divisions, and when the labor market and the labor

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Speaker 1: union movement was heating up. The role of newspapers and

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Speaker 1: those in the radicalization of workers was immense, and um,

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Speaker 1: you know, people would joke Europeans would come to the

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Speaker 1: United States and joke that if you were a prisoner

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Speaker 1: in being held in a jail in New York City,

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Speaker 1: you may not have anything. You may not have food,

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Speaker 1: you may not have water, you may not have proper clothing,

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Speaker 1: but every morning you'll have your newspaper. It was considered

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Speaker 1: an absolutely essential tool to being alive in the in

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Speaker 1: the nineteenth century, which is, you know, kind of fun

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Speaker 1: considering that newspapers in our world are are going the

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Speaker 1: way of well the normal telephone, the dial telephone. Right.

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Speaker 1: You know, as I've been as I've been spending time

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Speaker 1: making this podcast, i haven't been able to avoid making

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Speaker 1: these connections between periodicals then kind of podcasts now with

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Speaker 1: the way that they're growing in and like you said,

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Speaker 1: everyone is starting one, every interest group, every political party

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Speaker 1: are yeah. Um, so as you have have researched and written,

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Speaker 1: You've worked in journalism for for a long long time,

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Speaker 1: you've at times turned two books, and you've written a

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Speaker 1: book on Victoria Woodhol which I'm so glad We're gonna

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Speaker 1: be talking about today. You've also written books on the

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Speaker 1: Cones Sisters, on Karl Marx and his wife Jenny, which

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Speaker 1: was a finalist from the Politicer Prize, the National Book Award,

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Speaker 1: the National Book a Circle Award. UM, and you recently

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Speaker 1: published a book on the Ninth Street Women. Before we

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Speaker 1: really dive into Victoria's story, UM, I'd love to hear

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Speaker 1: is there a kind of a common thread between the

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Speaker 1: kinds of people that you take as the subjects of

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Speaker 1: your books. I think what I try to do is, UM,

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Speaker 1: I take periods of history UM, that most people would

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Speaker 1: say have been written about to death. You know. For example, UM,

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Speaker 1: with Karl Marks. You know, I remember when I said

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Speaker 1: I wanted to do a book on him. A neighbor

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Speaker 1: I was living in Italy at the time, in an old,

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Speaker 1: older British woman said to me, you know who on earth?

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Speaker 1: You know, why on earth do we need another book

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Speaker 1: on Karl Marks. The point is that the parts of

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Speaker 1: history that have been told so far, that have been

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Speaker 1: told and retold actually are usually only half the story.

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Speaker 1: It's sort of the man's point of view, that's the

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Speaker 1: it's been the man's story. So what I try to

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Speaker 1: do is I go into areas where um and luckily,

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Speaker 1: you know, for a writer or researcher today, the numbers

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Speaker 1: of neglected women out there in history are vast, and

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Speaker 1: so there are many, many stories to be told. And

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Speaker 1: so with Victoria, I tried to look at the nineteenth

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Speaker 1: century through her perspective. I mean, how many people know

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Speaker 1: growing up in the United States, how many people learn

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Speaker 1: that a woman actually ran for president in eighteen seventy two.

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Speaker 1: You know, she was written out of history. So I

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Speaker 1: tried to resurrect her, you know, place her where she belonged.

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Speaker 1: With the Cones Sisters. They were among the most important

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Speaker 1: modern art collectors in the world at the turn of

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Speaker 1: the century, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, I'm sorry,

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Speaker 1: at the beginning of the twentieth century. And their story

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Speaker 1: was written out of history because of a personal peak

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Speaker 1: when Alice Toklas wrote the story of Gertrude Stein. I'm

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Speaker 1: sorry when Gergis John wrote the story of L. S. B. Toklis.

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Speaker 1: But um, the Cone Sisters were written out of history

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Speaker 1: because collecting became something that men did. Women shopped for paintings,

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Speaker 1: but men collected them. And so I wanted to show

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Speaker 1: what the Cones had done, which was build one of

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Speaker 1: the major materi eston h collections in the world, not

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Speaker 1: just in the United States. Um. They were these two

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Speaker 1: eccentric Victorian sisters. Um. And then with Marx, you know,

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Speaker 1: the Marks story has been told primarily as a story

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Speaker 1: of a man from his neck up, in other words,

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Speaker 1: the brain of Marks. And I wanted to describe the

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Speaker 1: man Marks, and to do that, I thought it was

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Speaker 1: best to put him in the environment of his family,

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Speaker 1: with his wife and children. And so I started by

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Speaker 1: thinking I would tell just their story. But you know,

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Speaker 1: Marx was the elephant in the room, and I needed

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Speaker 1: to tell his story if I could describe their story.

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Speaker 1: And so and then with the Ninth Street Women, it's

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Speaker 1: the story of five abstract expressionists women painters. And and

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Speaker 1: again you know that the biggest revolution in American art

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Speaker 1: history occurred in the forties and fifties in New York,

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Speaker 1: and that has been the story of a handful of men,

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Speaker 1: when in fact it was a teeming group of people,

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Speaker 1: and among them were some really important women who with

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Speaker 1: out without home, the movement would wouldn't have occurred. So

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Speaker 1: what I try to do is go back into history

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Speaker 1: and and kind of if if we've seen, you know,

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Speaker 1: fill the cup, We've got half the cup so far.

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Speaker 1: Let's get the rest of the coup. Let's fill it up.

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Speaker 1: And that's usually the story of women. So that's kind

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Speaker 1: of the thread that runs through all of these books.

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Speaker 1: So let's on that note, let's dive in to Victoria

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Speaker 1: Woodhole story and just start with, how would you answer

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Speaker 1: the question who was Victoria Woodhall? M Victoria Woodhall was

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Speaker 1: really one of the bravest American women to surface UM

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Speaker 1: in the nineteenth century, and one of the women who

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Speaker 1: we know least about who we've studied the least. She

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Speaker 1: was the product of a Ohio family fairly dirt poor.

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Speaker 1: Her father was a h petty criminal, her mother was

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Speaker 1: probably certifiably insane and had had children every two years

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Speaker 1: for a twenty year period. In Victoria was her sixth daughter.

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Speaker 1: And the story was one you know, sort of that's

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Speaker 1: been It could have been repeated throughout the country, UM

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Speaker 1: by hundreds, if not thousands of families, UM struggling to

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Speaker 1: make ends meet, UM, no true prospects, no property, they

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Speaker 1: didn't own any property, they had no future. And this child, Victoria,

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Speaker 1: through a vivid imagination and an incredible drive created one.

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Speaker 1: She created her own opportunity, and she carried this family

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Speaker 1: with her. And so what she did was um go

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Speaker 1: from absolutely zero. And I talked about the where she

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Speaker 1: was born, which was a shack on the side of

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Speaker 1: a hill and a small town in Ohio. She went

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Speaker 1: from there to to a series of first that were

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Speaker 1: truly remarkable. She was the first woman to have a

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Speaker 1: Wall Street brokerage firm. She was the first woman to

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Speaker 1: address a congressional committee in Washington. She was the first

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Speaker 1: woman to run for president, and she was completely neglected

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Speaker 1: historically because she was literally too hot to handle. She

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Speaker 1: was so far advanced of her time. She would still

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Speaker 1: be considered radical today. She would have kind of fit

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Speaker 1: more comfortably in the nineteen seventies feminist period than she

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Speaker 1: did in the nineteenth century. So Victoria Woodhall is quite

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Speaker 1: quite simply someone we should all know about because the

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Speaker 1: issue she spoke to and about in those days were

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Speaker 1: ones we're still dealing with today. M hm. So in

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Speaker 1: that early life that you've started to touch on, what

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Speaker 1: kind of a religious background or upbringing did she have

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Speaker 1: in this struggling family. Yeah, her mother was a religious

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Speaker 1: Zealot and um, I would imagine based on where they

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Speaker 1: were in Ohio. I could never pin down what exactly

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Speaker 1: congregation they were part of, but it would have been

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Speaker 1: some sort of um no doubt Protestant, probably loose and tradition,

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Speaker 1: and but it was bordered, but it bordered always on

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Speaker 1: the always on spiritualism. Not that her mother ever practiced spiritualism,

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Speaker 1: where she did later in life, but not when when

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Speaker 1: Victoria was growing up. Although the mother always thought she

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Speaker 1: could commune with spirits, and so that's where Victoria got

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Speaker 1: that idea. Basically, the mother would go out and kind

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Speaker 1: of have hallucinations, um and you know, shout to the

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Speaker 1: skies her problems about her husband and called her, you know,

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Speaker 1: said what she was doing was speaking to to to

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Speaker 1: spirits from another world of her dead relatives or her

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Speaker 1: dead children. And Victoria absorbed that idea. But uh so

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Speaker 1: that so the family was not traditionally religious. It was

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Speaker 1: a very eccentric clan as far as that goes. But

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Speaker 1: but Victoria absorbed those ideas and and built on them.

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Speaker 1: And she had a real flair for drama. So she

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Speaker 1: would regale the local children in the town with with

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Speaker 1: her ability to speak to spirits and orate on profound matters.

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Speaker 1: And then uh, as I described the book, when she

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Speaker 1: when her her crowd started getting restless, she would change

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Speaker 1: the subject and start talking about cowboys and Indians. But

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Speaker 1: in other way she she always knew how to play

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Speaker 1: to the crowd. Um. But the family was mainly Buckland.

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Speaker 1: Her father was a notorious thief arsonist. Uh He called

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Speaker 1: himself a lawyer, but his main his main connection to

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Speaker 1: the law was breaking it. And they were always they

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Speaker 1: from the time she was a little girl. They would

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Speaker 1: have to escape the law for various reasons, and usually

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Speaker 1: buck was behind whatever scheme was illegal, and whatever scheme

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Speaker 1: Um forced them to leave. So I wouldn't say that

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Speaker 1: Victoria was ever a religious person in the traditional sense

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Speaker 1: as impious, but she had a great respect for surprisingly.

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Speaker 1: Growing up with the father she did and in the

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Speaker 1: household she did, she had a very great respect for morality,

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Speaker 1: which is also very ironic because later in life what

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Speaker 1: did her in was charges of immorality. But she had

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Speaker 1: this real um from the time she was a young girl.

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Speaker 1: She had a very strong sense of justice, and that's

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Speaker 1: what actually was the start of her political life. Some

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Speaker 1: of your work has been kind of on transatlantic connections

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Speaker 1: between radical groups. And when Victoria's ten, we come to

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Speaker 1: the year eight which historians of spiritualism, uh look at

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Speaker 1: for what happened in Hydesville, New York with the Fox Sisters,

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Speaker 1: but it's a year of ferment across nations, borders, oceans. Um,

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Speaker 1: can you talk a little bit about transatlantic context for

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Speaker 1: what was going on in Europe in that year? What

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Speaker 1: else was going on in the United States? M hmm. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: Eighteen forty was one of those years in history where

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Speaker 1: it would be difficult to find a place on the planet, Uh,

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Speaker 1: that that something major wasn't happening. Europe was on fire.

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Speaker 1: It was the only eighteen forty It was a movement

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Speaker 1: called Springtime of the People, and the people in Europe

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Speaker 1: actually revolted against their kings, their governments, and uh, it

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Speaker 1: was the first and only European wide revolt of the

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Speaker 1: people against their rulers. And this was the result um

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Speaker 1: of again this idea that society was changing fundamentally under

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Speaker 1: people's feet, and yet the rulers, the kings, couldn't see that,

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Speaker 1: They couldn't or didn't want to see see it, chose

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Speaker 1: not to see it. They were happy enough to fill

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Speaker 1: their coffers with the proceeds of industrialization, but they didn't

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Speaker 1: want to make the social changes that were required. They

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Speaker 1: didn't want to allow business people into government, for example,

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Speaker 1: in order to legislate UM what the terms industrialists needed

398
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Speaker 1: to to to expand, to do cross border trade UM

399
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Speaker 1: and and in the United States, part of the background

400
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Speaker 1: to this what would become the Civil War UM in

401
00:24:12,680 --> 00:24:16,359
Speaker 1: about twelve years after was was this notion that the

402
00:24:16,720 --> 00:24:20,680
Speaker 1: tensions between the agrarian south and the industrial north, and

403
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Speaker 1: that the the inability to reconcile what was the old

404
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Speaker 1: way of living in a new way of living, you know,

405
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Speaker 1: the obvious path of the future. And so the people

406
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Speaker 1: who were caught in the middle of this UM the

407
00:24:36,560 --> 00:24:41,639
Speaker 1: everyday folks, you know, the the farmers, the small trades people,

408
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Speaker 1: the people who were forced off their lands and moved

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Speaker 1: into cities, were being buffeted by forces that were so

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Speaker 1: much greater than them. UM. In Europe, they fled to

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Speaker 1: the cities and started filling you know, tenements and factories

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Speaker 1: with their work. But in the United States, that sort

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Speaker 1: of development hadn't really occurred yet, and so UM we

414
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Speaker 1: didn't have that kind of mass movement. But but definitely

415
00:25:05,520 --> 00:25:09,359
Speaker 1: there was an earthquake happening under people's feet, a societal

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00:25:09,480 --> 00:25:14,880
Speaker 1: change that was was so profound that people sought relief

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Speaker 1: and answers and shelter literally in large tense um at

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Speaker 1: the front of which was usually a preacher shouting about,

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Speaker 1: you know, don't worry about this life. The next one

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Speaker 1: is going to be better. And so that was a

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Speaker 1: very top down that was a very patriarchal kind of

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Speaker 1: response to the changes in society through through more traditional

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Speaker 1: religion and through these itinerant preachers. Where the spiritualists came

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Speaker 1: in was uh, this sort of one on one, woman

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Speaker 1: to woman, much more domestic kind of response to the changes.

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Speaker 1: And in a way, I think, you know, there was

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Speaker 1: the show, there was the weekly show in the tense

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Speaker 1: with the preachers and the songs and the you know,

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Speaker 1: uh fall going down and thrashing around, but the the

430
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Speaker 1: actual what spiritualists could offer was it was a much

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Speaker 1: deeper and much more immediate sort of help, you know,

432
00:26:11,160 --> 00:26:15,359
Speaker 1: and an actual earthly help, whereas the preachers could promise,

433
00:26:15,400 --> 00:26:18,000
Speaker 1: you know something a high in the sky and the

434
00:26:18,320 --> 00:26:21,680
Speaker 1: Fox Sisters in New York were a phenomenon that um.

435
00:26:21,840 --> 00:26:24,159
Speaker 1: They were part of the Barnum and Bailey tradition, you

436
00:26:24,200 --> 00:26:28,800
Speaker 1: know that I described earlier. Um they were they were

437
00:26:28,880 --> 00:26:31,960
Speaker 1: able to hear a spirit in a house. They lived

438
00:26:31,960 --> 00:26:35,360
Speaker 1: in a house where I think it was a traveling

439
00:26:35,359 --> 00:26:38,320
Speaker 1: salesman had been murdered, and so they could they they

440
00:26:38,359 --> 00:26:41,440
Speaker 1: said that they could hear spirits and that the spirit

441
00:26:41,440 --> 00:26:43,720
Speaker 1: would tap on the table, and this started. They got

442
00:26:43,800 --> 00:26:48,400
Speaker 1: the publicity around them was so widespread that they started

443
00:26:48,440 --> 00:26:51,040
Speaker 1: sort of a phenomenon that appeared in every state in

444
00:26:51,080 --> 00:26:55,639
Speaker 1: the country, was multiple so called fox sisters hearing tappings.

445
00:26:55,680 --> 00:26:58,640
Speaker 1: And it was really just a way for poor families

446
00:26:58,640 --> 00:27:01,600
Speaker 1: to make money. They charged it allar visit, which was

447
00:27:01,640 --> 00:27:04,280
Speaker 1: a huge amount of money in those days, and it

448
00:27:04,359 --> 00:27:08,679
Speaker 1: was also a way to um to eventually um uh.

449
00:27:11,200 --> 00:27:13,440
Speaker 1: It was also a way for this sort of spiritualism

450
00:27:13,440 --> 00:27:17,320
Speaker 1: to develop, this the kind of therapeutic spiritualism. And so

451
00:27:17,680 --> 00:27:22,199
Speaker 1: there was the Barnman Bailey Fox Sisters tapping um, the

452
00:27:22,280 --> 00:27:27,560
Speaker 1: very kind of dramatic um communication with you know, dazzling spirits.

453
00:27:27,880 --> 00:27:32,680
Speaker 1: And then the offshoot of that, the much more practical um,

454
00:27:32,760 --> 00:27:35,159
Speaker 1: the much more practical development that a rose out of

455
00:27:35,160 --> 00:27:38,840
Speaker 1: that was the spiritualism that Victoria would hall practice. Her

456
00:27:38,920 --> 00:27:41,440
Speaker 1: father was thrilled about the when he had learned about

457
00:27:41,440 --> 00:27:44,479
Speaker 1: the Fox Sisters because he had two daughters, Victoria and

458
00:27:44,560 --> 00:27:51,240
Speaker 1: her younger sister Tenny who tennessee who um Buck Clafland decided, great,

459
00:27:51,359 --> 00:27:53,480
Speaker 1: you know they can both commune with spirits. There's no

460
00:27:53,560 --> 00:27:56,440
Speaker 1: problem about that. UM. I can set up up a

461
00:27:56,560 --> 00:27:59,159
Speaker 1: hotel and charge a dollar a dollar a visit and

462
00:27:59,160 --> 00:28:02,760
Speaker 1: they can, you know, make miracles. And his his advice

463
00:28:02,800 --> 00:28:06,280
Speaker 1: to Victoria was be a good listener child, and which

464
00:28:06,320 --> 00:28:08,159
Speaker 1: is what she did. She started when she was I

465
00:28:08,200 --> 00:28:13,240
Speaker 1: think thirteen and UM and started entertaining adults, listening to

466
00:28:13,280 --> 00:28:16,240
Speaker 1: adults problems, and by the time she was fifteen she

467
00:28:16,359 --> 00:28:19,680
Speaker 1: was an expert on what ailed UM mostly women who

468
00:28:19,720 --> 00:28:23,760
Speaker 1: came to hear her and and so so that's really UM.

469
00:28:23,800 --> 00:28:27,119
Speaker 1: There were sort of two levels of UH, two levels

470
00:28:27,160 --> 00:28:33,000
Speaker 1: of religious experience and the revival movement and spiritualism that

471
00:28:33,119 --> 00:28:38,520
Speaker 1: was available and widespread through mostly the middle of the

472
00:28:38,600 --> 00:28:42,600
Speaker 1: United States through the middle of that century. But eight

473
00:28:43,120 --> 00:28:45,880
Speaker 1: UM was really the pivotal year because it was when

474
00:28:45,880 --> 00:28:50,400
Speaker 1: the Fox Sisters emerged. It was also when the women's

475
00:28:50,480 --> 00:28:54,240
Speaker 1: rights movement emerged in Seneca Falls, New York, also Upstate

476
00:28:54,320 --> 00:28:58,920
Speaker 1: New York, and that was where women again started talking

477
00:28:58,920 --> 00:29:02,320
Speaker 1: to each other and deciding that it wasn't just a

478
00:29:02,360 --> 00:29:04,880
Speaker 1: matter of getting the vote, that there needed to be

479
00:29:04,920 --> 00:29:09,000
Speaker 1: a fundamental declaration of rights for women UM drawn up

480
00:29:09,160 --> 00:29:13,640
Speaker 1: and and hopefully decimated, and all hopefully brought to the

481
00:29:13,640 --> 00:29:16,280
Speaker 1: attention of Congress, so that women could once and for

482
00:29:16,360 --> 00:29:19,920
Speaker 1: all have the rights equal to men in this country.

483
00:29:19,920 --> 00:29:23,680
Speaker 1: So it was a year that of profound change and

484
00:29:23,920 --> 00:29:28,280
Speaker 1: um and fascinating and revolutionary. And you can see exactly

485
00:29:28,320 --> 00:29:31,920
Speaker 1: why it happened, because the plates under society were shifting

486
00:29:32,480 --> 00:29:36,400
Speaker 1: and the fallout was going to be enormous, both socially

487
00:29:36,440 --> 00:29:40,720
Speaker 1: and politically, and people had to go somewhere to look

488
00:29:40,760 --> 00:29:43,160
Speaker 1: for answers. And so as they always did, as Carl

489
00:29:43,200 --> 00:29:45,840
Speaker 1: Mark said, religion is the opium of the people, and

490
00:29:45,880 --> 00:29:49,480
Speaker 1: so they sought solace and religion. And as you just said,

491
00:29:49,560 --> 00:29:53,240
Speaker 1: Victoria kind of took part in both aspects of spiritualism.

492
00:29:53,240 --> 00:29:55,480
Speaker 1: There were times when she was working, especially under Buck,

493
00:29:56,000 --> 00:29:59,760
Speaker 1: in the kind of spectacle of spiritualism. UM. But she

494
00:30:00,120 --> 00:30:03,720
Speaker 1: so over the course of her life recorded that she

495
00:30:03,880 --> 00:30:06,000
Speaker 1: heard from the spirits and they guided her, and they

496
00:30:06,000 --> 00:30:08,120
Speaker 1: directed her. Can you talk a little bit about that

497
00:30:08,160 --> 00:30:13,480
Speaker 1: more private side of Victoria's belief in spirit communication? Um,

498
00:30:14,000 --> 00:30:16,280
Speaker 1: was it real? Was it true? Did she really believe

499
00:30:16,360 --> 00:30:21,240
Speaker 1: she was hearing from spirits? And how did that influence

500
00:30:21,360 --> 00:30:23,760
Speaker 1: her decision? Who were they? What did they say to her?

501
00:30:23,920 --> 00:30:27,400
Speaker 1: Those kinds of things. I think she really did believe it,

502
00:30:27,440 --> 00:30:28,960
Speaker 1: you know. I I've thought about that, and she was

503
00:30:29,000 --> 00:30:33,760
Speaker 1: a very smart woman, but she also had I guess

504
00:30:33,800 --> 00:30:37,040
Speaker 1: it was I mean, who knows, maybe she did, you know,

505
00:30:39,240 --> 00:30:41,880
Speaker 1: I I you know, my instinct is that she didn't,

506
00:30:41,920 --> 00:30:43,640
Speaker 1: but she really believed she did. And I think it

507
00:30:43,720 --> 00:30:47,920
Speaker 1: stemmed from, as I said, her mother's, you know, experiences

508
00:30:47,920 --> 00:30:51,720
Speaker 1: with speaking to this spirit world. But also I think

509
00:30:51,760 --> 00:30:54,880
Speaker 1: it was just a way of retreating her home life

510
00:30:54,920 --> 00:30:58,560
Speaker 1: was so utterly dysfunctional. I mean, her father was violent,

511
00:30:59,080 --> 00:31:01,680
Speaker 1: her mother was in saying, you know, there were children

512
00:31:01,720 --> 00:31:05,840
Speaker 1: crawling out of every cupboard. Um, they had no money,

513
00:31:06,040 --> 00:31:09,600
Speaker 1: and I think when she was a young girl, to escape,

514
00:31:09,800 --> 00:31:14,160
Speaker 1: she would sometimes try to have conversations with two of

515
00:31:14,240 --> 00:31:18,760
Speaker 1: her sisters who had died as children. And you can

516
00:31:18,800 --> 00:31:20,560
Speaker 1: see where that would happen. I mean, she had nowhere

517
00:31:20,600 --> 00:31:22,080
Speaker 1: to go and no one to talk to so she

518
00:31:22,120 --> 00:31:24,600
Speaker 1: sawt solace in what she thought was a conversation with

519
00:31:24,640 --> 00:31:29,000
Speaker 1: dead people. Um. And then when she at different times

520
00:31:29,000 --> 00:31:31,400
Speaker 1: of her life, she spoke to different kinds of spirits.

521
00:31:31,520 --> 00:31:35,880
Speaker 1: And one time she was in San Francisco, she eventually

522
00:31:35,920 --> 00:31:41,560
Speaker 1: married a fellow who I'll describe later, but she needed

523
00:31:41,600 --> 00:31:44,920
Speaker 1: to decide whether she should go back to Ohio or

524
00:31:45,000 --> 00:31:47,720
Speaker 1: stay in San Francisco, which was a very difficult place

525
00:31:47,760 --> 00:31:51,640
Speaker 1: to her to live in. Her situation was extremely dangerous

526
00:31:51,680 --> 00:31:56,400
Speaker 1: and trying, and Victoria felt that she heard her sister

527
00:31:56,520 --> 00:32:00,720
Speaker 1: Tenny call her across those miles and speak to her

528
00:32:00,720 --> 00:32:03,240
Speaker 1: in spirit for him and say come home. And so

529
00:32:03,280 --> 00:32:06,120
Speaker 1: she followed that advice. And then the most famous case

530
00:32:06,640 --> 00:32:10,160
Speaker 1: was when Victoria was at her wits end, you know,

531
00:32:10,280 --> 00:32:12,400
Speaker 1: she would she had been traveling around after the Civil

532
00:32:12,400 --> 00:32:16,600
Speaker 1: War through the United States, giving advice, seeing the horrors,

533
00:32:16,720 --> 00:32:19,040
Speaker 1: you know, the absolute devastation of what was left in

534
00:32:19,040 --> 00:32:22,120
Speaker 1: its wake, and she knew she needed to do something

535
00:32:22,160 --> 00:32:26,840
Speaker 1: because by this time she was completely politicized. And she

536
00:32:29,120 --> 00:32:34,480
Speaker 1: thought she heard the spirit of the Greek order DeMatha

537
00:32:34,520 --> 00:32:38,280
Speaker 1: scenes and she said that he spoke to her and

538
00:32:38,320 --> 00:32:42,400
Speaker 1: gave her not just the the idea go to New York,

539
00:32:42,880 --> 00:32:45,040
Speaker 1: but an address where she should go to in New

540
00:32:45,120 --> 00:32:48,280
Speaker 1: York as specific house on Great Jones Street. And so

541
00:32:48,400 --> 00:32:51,640
Speaker 1: Victoria did. And she said when she arrived, you know,

542
00:32:52,520 --> 00:32:55,120
Speaker 1: the house was ready waiting for her. So at various

543
00:32:55,120 --> 00:32:58,040
Speaker 1: points in her life, you know, really crucial points, some

544
00:32:58,040 --> 00:33:01,200
Speaker 1: some might say points of breakdown, she thought she was

545
00:33:01,240 --> 00:33:04,480
Speaker 1: speaking to the spirit world. You know, maybe she thought

546
00:33:04,520 --> 00:33:07,680
Speaker 1: she was. Whatever happened helped her get to the next

547
00:33:07,680 --> 00:33:10,840
Speaker 1: place and helped her survive. And and she never found

548
00:33:10,880 --> 00:33:13,840
Speaker 1: herself despite and you know, a life that was difficult

549
00:33:13,840 --> 00:33:16,920
Speaker 1: in the extreme, that lasted a long time. Um, she

550
00:33:17,040 --> 00:33:19,480
Speaker 1: never got to the point that she gave up, you know,

551
00:33:19,520 --> 00:33:23,600
Speaker 1: she lost her her strength or she gave into some

552
00:33:24,040 --> 00:33:26,479
Speaker 1: kind of collapse. And so it could be that she

553
00:33:26,520 --> 00:33:30,440
Speaker 1: believed that these spirits helped her through. Can I say

554
00:33:30,440 --> 00:33:33,400
Speaker 1: one thing. I want to go back to um. The

555
00:33:33,480 --> 00:33:38,480
Speaker 1: whole idea of the purpose of religion and kind of

556
00:33:38,480 --> 00:33:41,120
Speaker 1: a greater, greater people's lives at the beginning of the

557
00:33:41,200 --> 00:33:45,440
Speaker 1: nineteenth century, okay, Um, the idea that religion was a

558
00:33:45,920 --> 00:33:49,160
Speaker 1: was a safe place for people to have difficult consideration

559
00:33:49,280 --> 00:33:52,720
Speaker 1: or difficult discussions is a really fascinating one. At this

560
00:33:52,720 --> 00:33:55,400
Speaker 1: period at the beginning of the nineteenth century, because it

561
00:33:55,440 --> 00:33:58,840
Speaker 1: wasn't just that it was a place where you could confess,

562
00:33:59,240 --> 00:34:02,440
Speaker 1: you know, confess your sins or confess your troubles. It

563
00:34:02,520 --> 00:34:05,880
Speaker 1: was a place where people like Carl Marx, even you know,

564
00:34:05,960 --> 00:34:11,279
Speaker 1: politicians and great thinkers would would couch their political discussions

565
00:34:11,320 --> 00:34:14,680
Speaker 1: because at this time, the things they were saying, the

566
00:34:14,760 --> 00:34:17,400
Speaker 1: changes they knew that had to occur in societies in

567
00:34:17,480 --> 00:34:20,480
Speaker 1: order to make the step to a fully industrialized or

568
00:34:20,480 --> 00:34:25,560
Speaker 1: a fully capitalist world. Um they couldn't say publicly because

569
00:34:25,560 --> 00:34:28,200
Speaker 1: they would be against the law, you know, they would

570
00:34:28,239 --> 00:34:32,040
Speaker 1: be treason ass um uh to the king, to be

571
00:34:32,040 --> 00:34:36,240
Speaker 1: considered treason as to the king. So Marks, for example,

572
00:34:36,320 --> 00:34:43,200
Speaker 1: had a had a newspaper in Cologne in mid late thirties,

573
00:34:43,280 --> 00:34:49,320
Speaker 1: early forties, eighteen forties that was supposedly ostensibly a discussion

574
00:34:49,320 --> 00:34:53,640
Speaker 1: of theological subjects. But anyone who knew the words that

575
00:34:53,680 --> 00:34:55,600
Speaker 1: he was using, or knew the language, or knew who

576
00:34:55,640 --> 00:34:58,279
Speaker 1: he was, could scratch the surface just a little bit

577
00:34:58,320 --> 00:35:00,320
Speaker 1: and see that what he was talking about was rebel solution,

578
00:35:00,400 --> 00:35:03,440
Speaker 1: political revolution, having nothing to do with religion, in fact,

579
00:35:03,520 --> 00:35:06,960
Speaker 1: quite a contrary. So it's fascinating that people from all

580
00:35:07,120 --> 00:35:11,040
Speaker 1: levels of society used used religion as kind of an

581
00:35:11,120 --> 00:35:15,319
Speaker 1: umbrella to either hide under to seek solace from, or

582
00:35:15,400 --> 00:35:18,560
Speaker 1: to use as a mask to just to um to

583
00:35:18,760 --> 00:35:22,240
Speaker 1: cover what they were actually going after, which was massive

584
00:35:22,280 --> 00:35:25,319
Speaker 1: political change. And the two kinds of modes of spiritualism

585
00:35:25,320 --> 00:35:27,239
Speaker 1: that you talked about almost have that dual nature where

586
00:35:27,239 --> 00:35:28,719
Speaker 1: there are people who are coming to it for the

587
00:35:28,840 --> 00:35:31,880
Speaker 1: private the kind of the solace, and then there are

588
00:35:31,920 --> 00:35:35,920
Speaker 1: those who use it as a vehicle for a show

589
00:35:36,200 --> 00:35:39,000
Speaker 1: to make some cash. Um. That kind of thing too,

590
00:35:39,040 --> 00:35:43,799
Speaker 1: that's really fascinating. Um jumping. Can we jump back into

591
00:35:43,840 --> 00:35:48,479
Speaker 1: this story of Victoria after her years into her teen

592
00:35:48,560 --> 00:35:53,319
Speaker 1: years living under Buck Laughland's thumb making money for the

593
00:35:53,360 --> 00:35:57,959
Speaker 1: family in the way that he demanded. Um, she meets

594
00:35:58,080 --> 00:36:01,239
Speaker 1: Canning wood Hall, right. Can you talk about who he

595
00:36:01,320 --> 00:36:04,040
Speaker 1: was and how they met and what came of it. Yeah.

596
00:36:04,719 --> 00:36:08,319
Speaker 1: By by the time Victoria was fifteen, she had three

597
00:36:08,440 --> 00:36:11,960
Speaker 1: years of education, so she was she was not illiterate,

598
00:36:11,960 --> 00:36:14,040
Speaker 1: which is interesting. I'm not quite sure who taught her

599
00:36:14,040 --> 00:36:17,719
Speaker 1: how to read, but she had had no formal education.

600
00:36:18,840 --> 00:36:21,960
Speaker 1: She had been living in the household that I've described

601
00:36:22,000 --> 00:36:26,240
Speaker 1: with a father and abusive father and insane mother, and

602
00:36:26,320 --> 00:36:29,040
Speaker 1: she was looking for a way out. Well. Traditionally, in

603
00:36:29,080 --> 00:36:32,120
Speaker 1: many societies to this day, the easiest ticket out of

604
00:36:32,160 --> 00:36:36,839
Speaker 1: a dysfunctional family as marriage, and that's what happened. Keening

605
00:36:36,880 --> 00:36:42,239
Speaker 1: Woodhall was supposedly a medical doctor who rolled into um

606
00:36:42,480 --> 00:36:45,400
Speaker 1: Mount Guillet, Ohio, where Victoria was living with her family,

607
00:36:46,080 --> 00:36:48,279
Speaker 1: and set up a practice. And Victoria was ill and

608
00:36:48,280 --> 00:36:51,719
Speaker 1: went to see him, and um, that's Kenny Woodhole was

609
00:36:51,760 --> 00:36:55,000
Speaker 1: in his early thirties and Victoria was fifteen, and he

610
00:36:55,160 --> 00:36:58,360
Speaker 1: started wooing her and told her that he was related

611
00:36:58,400 --> 00:37:00,279
Speaker 1: to the mayor of New York City and was a

612
00:37:00,360 --> 00:37:03,360
Speaker 1: relative of a judge in New York, and that he

613
00:37:03,480 --> 00:37:06,440
Speaker 1: was a practicing doctor, and in other words, he was

614
00:37:06,840 --> 00:37:11,239
Speaker 1: everything Victoria Woodhall wasn't. In fact, everything Victoria Woodhall had

615
00:37:11,320 --> 00:37:14,080
Speaker 1: dreamed of. He was and he was an escape hatch

616
00:37:14,280 --> 00:37:16,680
Speaker 1: from the life she lived. And so when she was

617
00:37:16,760 --> 00:37:20,080
Speaker 1: fifteen and she was just had just turned fifteen, he

618
00:37:20,280 --> 00:37:21,680
Speaker 1: was and I think he was thirty two at the

619
00:37:21,760 --> 00:37:27,399
Speaker 1: time they married, and Victoria soon discovered that the bill

620
00:37:27,480 --> 00:37:31,520
Speaker 1: of goods he sold her was a web of lies.

621
00:37:32,239 --> 00:37:36,320
Speaker 1: She he was not practicing or in any way qualified doctor.

622
00:37:36,840 --> 00:37:38,920
Speaker 1: He didn't had never met the mayor of New York.

623
00:37:39,040 --> 00:37:41,480
Speaker 1: He wasn't a relative of a judge. What he was

624
00:37:41,760 --> 00:37:46,400
Speaker 1: was a philandering drunk, and she was saddled to him

625
00:37:46,440 --> 00:37:48,439
Speaker 1: because law at the time said that when a woman

626
00:37:48,520 --> 00:37:51,440
Speaker 1: married a man, she became his property. And so Victoria

627
00:37:51,560 --> 00:37:54,200
Speaker 1: had no way out. And so she went from the

628
00:37:54,280 --> 00:37:57,480
Speaker 1: household of buck Claflin, which she had been supporting she

629
00:37:57,600 --> 00:38:01,480
Speaker 1: and Tennie by their spiritualist endeavors, to the household of

630
00:38:01,640 --> 00:38:04,759
Speaker 1: a of a thirty year old drunk who was now

631
00:38:04,880 --> 00:38:08,759
Speaker 1: her husband, who would be her master for life. And

632
00:38:09,280 --> 00:38:11,440
Speaker 1: at the age of fifteen, that must have been quite

633
00:38:11,520 --> 00:38:14,879
Speaker 1: a cruel awakening. It will only got worse because within

634
00:38:14,960 --> 00:38:16,840
Speaker 1: a year she was pregnant and gave birth to a

635
00:38:16,960 --> 00:38:21,600
Speaker 1: son who was mentally retarded. And Victoria that was the moment,

636
00:38:21,760 --> 00:38:24,120
Speaker 1: that was the seed of the Victoria wood Hall who

637
00:38:24,200 --> 00:38:28,720
Speaker 1: ran for president in eighteen seventy two. Um That marriage

638
00:38:28,760 --> 00:38:32,959
Speaker 1: and that birth taught that young girl, that uneducated young girl,

639
00:38:33,440 --> 00:38:36,440
Speaker 1: that there was something drastically wrong with the system that

640
00:38:36,520 --> 00:38:40,560
Speaker 1: would sanction that marriage, and that would not teach her

641
00:38:41,120 --> 00:38:43,279
Speaker 1: what she needed to know about taking care of her

642
00:38:43,360 --> 00:38:46,719
Speaker 1: body and ensuring in order to ensure that the child

643
00:38:46,840 --> 00:38:50,440
Speaker 1: she gave birth to was a healthy one. So Victoria's

644
00:38:50,520 --> 00:38:53,440
Speaker 1: story with Canning sort of went downhill from there, and she,

645
00:38:54,480 --> 00:38:56,360
Speaker 1: as she had with her family, and in fact with

646
00:38:56,480 --> 00:38:59,120
Speaker 1: her family in tol largely the two of them set

647
00:38:59,160 --> 00:39:05,160
Speaker 1: out on the road, um uh, continuing her her spiritualist counseling.

648
00:39:05,640 --> 00:39:08,560
Speaker 1: And you can imagine with that experience how much richer

649
00:39:08,920 --> 00:39:11,359
Speaker 1: the advice she would have given the women she met

650
00:39:11,440 --> 00:39:14,080
Speaker 1: on the road would have been. I mean, Victoria came

651
00:39:14,320 --> 00:39:17,040
Speaker 1: became an expert at many things, and she was tremendous

652
00:39:17,080 --> 00:39:19,440
Speaker 1: at many things. But I think probably if we had

653
00:39:19,480 --> 00:39:22,200
Speaker 1: had a tape of the conversation she had with the

654
00:39:22,400 --> 00:39:26,279
Speaker 1: clients she who were consulted her as a spiritualist, it

655
00:39:26,280 --> 00:39:29,160
Speaker 1: would have been fascinating. You know. She would have been, um,

656
00:39:29,680 --> 00:39:33,800
Speaker 1: you know, a therapist of you know, of the highest caliber.

657
00:39:33,960 --> 00:39:38,440
Speaker 1: She She was empathetic in the extreme, she was loving,

658
00:39:38,600 --> 00:39:42,960
Speaker 1: she was warm, she was exceedingly intelligent, and and I

659
00:39:43,080 --> 00:39:45,480
Speaker 1: think it would have been I wish I had always

660
00:39:45,560 --> 00:39:47,719
Speaker 1: hoped that there would have been at least one transcript

661
00:39:48,120 --> 00:39:52,000
Speaker 1: somewhere that existed of a conversation between Victoria Woodhall and

662
00:39:52,080 --> 00:39:55,239
Speaker 1: one of the people she who consulted her m hmm.

663
00:39:56,000 --> 00:39:59,600
Speaker 1: Now after she marries Kenny, uh, they she's separated from

664
00:39:59,600 --> 00:40:01,960
Speaker 1: her family. Two that she they moved to Chicago, she

665
00:40:02,080 --> 00:40:05,320
Speaker 1: and Kenning and that's where she has Byron, that that child,

666
00:40:05,400 --> 00:40:07,960
Speaker 1: that first child, and then from Chicago to go to

667
00:40:08,000 --> 00:40:11,120
Speaker 1: San Francisco. And you describe that so evocatively in your book.

668
00:40:11,640 --> 00:40:14,319
Speaker 1: Can you talk about and you mentioned this earlier, why

669
00:40:14,400 --> 00:40:17,320
Speaker 1: San Francisco was such a dangerous place for someone like

670
00:40:17,480 --> 00:40:20,120
Speaker 1: Victoria at the time. What was going on in that

671
00:40:20,440 --> 00:40:23,839
Speaker 1: city which wasn't even the quite a city yet um

672
00:40:24,760 --> 00:40:26,920
Speaker 1: that made it a place first the Victoria would go,

673
00:40:27,200 --> 00:40:29,680
Speaker 1: and then that the place that she would leave. You know,

674
00:40:29,760 --> 00:40:35,720
Speaker 1: it's amazing. San Francisco was another eight Um moment. Gold

675
00:40:35,840 --> 00:40:40,000
Speaker 1: was discovered in San Francisco in California, and people flocked

676
00:40:40,200 --> 00:40:43,400
Speaker 1: from all over the world. They rushed to California to

677
00:40:43,440 --> 00:40:46,360
Speaker 1: get in on it. And the first wave of people

678
00:40:46,400 --> 00:40:49,080
Speaker 1: who went, because it was such an unknown were men,

679
00:40:49,360 --> 00:40:54,680
Speaker 1: largely men um. But Victoria soon joined them and her

680
00:40:54,719 --> 00:40:58,880
Speaker 1: decision was based simply it was very pragmatic. She couldn't

681
00:40:58,920 --> 00:41:01,680
Speaker 1: continue as a ritualists and make the kind of money

682
00:41:01,760 --> 00:41:05,960
Speaker 1: she needed to support Caning Byron and her entire family,

683
00:41:06,320 --> 00:41:08,080
Speaker 1: and in fact, by this point she wanted to get

684
00:41:08,200 --> 00:41:12,120
Speaker 1: rid of her family because Buck had had some more

685
00:41:12,320 --> 00:41:15,200
Speaker 1: run ins with the law, and Victoria was old enough

686
00:41:15,239 --> 00:41:17,760
Speaker 1: now to realize that he was a scoundrel and always

687
00:41:17,800 --> 00:41:19,880
Speaker 1: would be. So she broke away and went to the

688
00:41:19,960 --> 00:41:24,160
Speaker 1: one place that promised possibly the hope that Caning could

689
00:41:24,360 --> 00:41:27,480
Speaker 1: in fact resurrect some kind of medical career in a

690
00:41:27,680 --> 00:41:31,480
Speaker 1: in a town like San Francisco, which was barely discernible

691
00:41:31,560 --> 00:41:33,480
Speaker 1: as a town. I mean it was it was just

692
00:41:33,640 --> 00:41:40,000
Speaker 1: beginning to have um cobblestone streets. It was a place where, um,

693
00:41:40,880 --> 00:41:43,319
Speaker 1: I think that the ratio of men was ten to one,

694
00:41:43,520 --> 00:41:47,880
Speaker 1: ten men to one woman. It was lawless. It was

695
00:41:49,840 --> 00:41:53,680
Speaker 1: the main motivation for people there was in a self enrichment.

696
00:41:54,120 --> 00:41:56,760
Speaker 1: That was the only thing that drove them. That and pleasure,

697
00:41:56,840 --> 00:42:00,239
Speaker 1: and so into this was into this came six senior

698
00:42:00,280 --> 00:42:03,800
Speaker 1: old Victoria Woodhall, her child, her one year old child,

699
00:42:04,400 --> 00:42:07,239
Speaker 1: and this drunken loud she carried around with her called

700
00:42:07,280 --> 00:42:10,000
Speaker 1: a husband. And she once again, you know, she did

701
00:42:10,080 --> 00:42:12,959
Speaker 1: the best she could. She went door to door trying

702
00:42:13,000 --> 00:42:17,359
Speaker 1: to find employment because Caning, with so many bars in town,

703
00:42:17,840 --> 00:42:20,200
Speaker 1: there was one area called the Barbary Coast, which is

704
00:42:20,239 --> 00:42:24,640
Speaker 1: where uh It's most notorious, early early claim to fame

705
00:42:24,760 --> 00:42:28,320
Speaker 1: was where the topless waitress was born. So caning, you know,

706
00:42:28,440 --> 00:42:30,640
Speaker 1: this was irresistible to him. He had bars and he

707
00:42:30,719 --> 00:42:33,840
Speaker 1: had women, and so he was a happy man. Victoria

708
00:42:34,640 --> 00:42:36,360
Speaker 1: got to work in order to support them, and so

709
00:42:36,480 --> 00:42:38,920
Speaker 1: she went door to door. Um. First, she worked as

710
00:42:38,920 --> 00:42:41,080
Speaker 1: a cigar girl for a little while, and the story

711
00:42:41,239 --> 00:42:44,120
Speaker 1: is that the proprietor told her she was too fine

712
00:42:44,200 --> 00:42:46,719
Speaker 1: to do that kind of work, which is essentially, no doubt,

713
00:42:46,760 --> 00:42:50,279
Speaker 1: probably some kind of form of prostitution and so um.

714
00:42:50,760 --> 00:42:54,320
Speaker 1: Victoria then found a job sewing for an actress, and

715
00:42:54,440 --> 00:42:56,360
Speaker 1: the actress said, you know, why don't you go on

716
00:42:56,480 --> 00:42:59,400
Speaker 1: the stage, which is what what Victoria did. Now, she

717
00:42:59,600 --> 00:43:02,399
Speaker 1: was a dramatist, but I don't know if she would

718
00:43:02,400 --> 00:43:04,440
Speaker 1: have been a very good actress because I don't think

719
00:43:04,560 --> 00:43:07,880
Speaker 1: she could have memorized other people's lines. I think she

720
00:43:08,040 --> 00:43:10,839
Speaker 1: was too much of her own personality, and so at

721
00:43:10,880 --> 00:43:13,120
Speaker 1: a certain point, though she was in several productions and

722
00:43:13,239 --> 00:43:16,680
Speaker 1: said she made money, that was when she heard the

723
00:43:16,719 --> 00:43:19,560
Speaker 1: call from Tenny to come back home. And it could

724
00:43:19,600 --> 00:43:21,520
Speaker 1: have just been that San Francisco in the life there

725
00:43:21,600 --> 00:43:23,839
Speaker 1: was overwhelming, you know it was. She was a small

726
00:43:23,920 --> 00:43:26,320
Speaker 1: town girl from Ohio, and though she had lived in Chicago,

727
00:43:26,440 --> 00:43:29,520
Speaker 1: which was one of the major cities in the United States. Um,

728
00:43:29,840 --> 00:43:32,479
Speaker 1: she still was I don't think prepared at that age.

729
00:43:32,520 --> 00:43:34,480
Speaker 1: I mean what sixteen year old could have been for

730
00:43:34,600 --> 00:43:37,719
Speaker 1: what she encountered there, given the responsibility she had for

731
00:43:37,840 --> 00:43:40,719
Speaker 1: her for her husband and child. And so she heard

732
00:43:40,800 --> 00:43:44,800
Speaker 1: Tenny speaking to her, and in Victoria's telling, she dropped

733
00:43:44,840 --> 00:43:48,560
Speaker 1: everything on the stage, left in her costume, grabbed canningwood

734
00:43:48,600 --> 00:43:51,239
Speaker 1: Hall and Byron, and took off back to Ohio to

735
00:43:51,360 --> 00:43:54,439
Speaker 1: be with her family and resume her career as a spiritualist.

736
00:43:56,320 --> 00:43:59,320
Speaker 1: And during the Civil War years, uh so this is

737
00:43:59,440 --> 00:44:01,560
Speaker 1: late eighteen if he's in then during the Civil War years,

738
00:44:01,880 --> 00:44:04,920
Speaker 1: she and Tenny are are doing this work as they

739
00:44:05,000 --> 00:44:09,520
Speaker 1: travel around the border States and the Midwest. So, after

740
00:44:09,640 --> 00:44:12,120
Speaker 1: a few years of traveling with the family and sometimes

741
00:44:12,160 --> 00:44:15,359
Speaker 1: stepping away from them, when she says that Tenny's um

742
00:44:15,640 --> 00:44:18,480
Speaker 1: talents are being prostituted, and you know, she's still committing

743
00:44:18,520 --> 00:44:23,600
Speaker 1: crimes for buck Um. There's a point where Victoria ends

744
00:44:23,640 --> 00:44:26,560
Speaker 1: up in St. Louis and she meets James Harvey Blood.

745
00:44:26,719 --> 00:44:29,839
Speaker 1: Can you describe who James Harvey Blood was and how

746
00:44:30,040 --> 00:44:33,000
Speaker 1: his relationship with Victoria became so important for both of them.

747
00:44:33,840 --> 00:44:36,960
Speaker 1: So in the years after the Civil Or, Victoria was

748
00:44:39,360 --> 00:44:41,759
Speaker 1: found herself in in St. Louis at one period, which

749
00:44:41,800 --> 00:44:43,760
Speaker 1: was a really interesting place for her to be because

750
00:44:44,160 --> 00:44:46,920
Speaker 1: it was kind of a hub of um. It was

751
00:44:46,920 --> 00:44:49,279
Speaker 1: a hub of spiritualism, but it was also a hub

752
00:44:49,360 --> 00:44:52,040
Speaker 1: of radicalism. There were a lot of German immigrants, and

753
00:44:52,160 --> 00:44:54,400
Speaker 1: one of the things that happened after that a lot

754
00:44:54,440 --> 00:44:57,400
Speaker 1: of the people who fled the conflicts in Europe landed

755
00:44:57,440 --> 00:44:59,720
Speaker 1: in the United States, and a lot of the German

756
00:45:00,040 --> 00:45:04,880
Speaker 1: article surprisingly went to St. Louis. So Victoria found herself

757
00:45:05,440 --> 00:45:08,759
Speaker 1: in this kind of stew of of people who were

758
00:45:09,000 --> 00:45:12,839
Speaker 1: engaged in spiritualism but also political reform, and she got

759
00:45:12,920 --> 00:45:16,680
Speaker 1: her first kind of introduction to revolutionary politics there. But

760
00:45:17,320 --> 00:45:20,920
Speaker 1: one one afternoon she was yet in a hotel um

761
00:45:22,360 --> 00:45:24,640
Speaker 1: in a room where she rented to work as a spiritualist,

762
00:45:24,719 --> 00:45:28,200
Speaker 1: and a Civil War veteran named James Harvey Blood walked

763
00:45:28,239 --> 00:45:33,040
Speaker 1: in and he had had some He was a decorated soldier.

764
00:45:33,560 --> 00:45:37,840
Speaker 1: He was a important spiritualist in St. Louis. He was

765
00:45:37,960 --> 00:45:43,320
Speaker 1: also a very radical reformer, though he was part of

766
00:45:43,400 --> 00:45:46,240
Speaker 1: city government. He was elected city auditor of St. Louis,

767
00:45:46,920 --> 00:45:49,840
Speaker 1: and he sat down because he was having personal problems

768
00:45:50,160 --> 00:45:55,480
Speaker 1: with his wife, no doubt, and started confiding in Victoria.

769
00:45:55,640 --> 00:45:59,440
Speaker 1: And I think Victoria saw in this man who physically

770
00:45:59,680 --> 00:46:04,520
Speaker 1: and intellectually was so superior to any of the men

771
00:46:05,160 --> 00:46:08,239
Speaker 1: who were involved in her life as as either her

772
00:46:08,360 --> 00:46:11,879
Speaker 1: in her husband, or her family or her brothers in law,

773
00:46:11,960 --> 00:46:14,960
Speaker 1: who are all just absolute cads um. She saw in

774
00:46:15,040 --> 00:46:18,200
Speaker 1: Colonel Harvey Blood, someone who was a wounded veteran who

775
00:46:18,239 --> 00:46:21,120
Speaker 1: had suffered through that war, who had come out of

776
00:46:21,160 --> 00:46:24,360
Speaker 1: it and continued to make something of himself, and also

777
00:46:24,520 --> 00:46:28,080
Speaker 1: was questioning, questioning in the way she did the basis

778
00:46:28,160 --> 00:46:31,160
Speaker 1: of society and the fairness of society, and the fairness

779
00:46:31,239 --> 00:46:35,880
Speaker 1: of marital relations, and the fairness of of the class

780
00:46:35,920 --> 00:46:39,120
Speaker 1: system in the United States, which you know, really is

781
00:46:39,200 --> 00:46:41,600
Speaker 1: something that Americans always deny, but was part of the

782
00:46:41,680 --> 00:46:45,760
Speaker 1: actual problems that were arising in the mid eighteenth century

783
00:46:45,800 --> 00:46:48,480
Speaker 1: and really came to to the forefront in the late

784
00:46:48,560 --> 00:46:53,560
Speaker 1: nineteenth century. And James Harvey Blood, in his discussion with Victoria,

785
00:46:54,800 --> 00:46:59,000
Speaker 1: must have absolutely won her over with whatever he said,

786
00:46:59,080 --> 00:47:01,600
Speaker 1: because by the end of the session she heard from

787
00:47:01,680 --> 00:47:04,320
Speaker 1: one of her spirit friends, and this time the spirit

788
00:47:04,440 --> 00:47:07,239
Speaker 1: told her to tell James Harvey Blood that she saw

789
00:47:07,640 --> 00:47:10,280
Speaker 1: that the two of them, that their future was connected,

790
00:47:10,320 --> 00:47:12,320
Speaker 1: and that they would that they would marry. Now, this

791
00:47:12,480 --> 00:47:14,400
Speaker 1: was quite an interesting thing to say, because he was

792
00:47:14,480 --> 00:47:16,480
Speaker 1: married and had a child, and she was married and

793
00:47:16,560 --> 00:47:19,719
Speaker 1: had a child, and in mid century America, saying that

794
00:47:19,800 --> 00:47:21,560
Speaker 1: kind of thing to a strange man in a darkened

795
00:47:21,640 --> 00:47:24,520
Speaker 1: room would only lead to one conclusion, which would be

796
00:47:24,600 --> 00:47:26,839
Speaker 1: that you were some kind of prostitute. But in fact,

797
00:47:26,960 --> 00:47:30,640
Speaker 1: Victoria was sincere. She saw that she could actually do

798
00:47:30,960 --> 00:47:33,560
Speaker 1: with this man something she wanted to do, which at

799
00:47:33,640 --> 00:47:37,960
Speaker 1: this point was actually starting to kind of a colonel

800
00:47:38,120 --> 00:47:41,040
Speaker 1: was forming in her mind that she wanted to be

801
00:47:41,160 --> 00:47:44,400
Speaker 1: somehow involved in a social movement that that tried to

802
00:47:44,520 --> 00:47:48,520
Speaker 1: reform the marital relations, which she thought was the actual

803
00:47:48,719 --> 00:47:52,399
Speaker 1: fundamental problem in society. She thought that all of all

804
00:47:52,520 --> 00:47:56,320
Speaker 1: social problems were rooted in bad marriages, and so Blood,

805
00:47:56,600 --> 00:47:59,680
Speaker 1: Luckily for Victoria, who probably Blood was probably as a

806
00:48:00,040 --> 00:48:02,000
Speaker 1: kind of swept away by her as she was by him,

807
00:48:02,760 --> 00:48:05,040
Speaker 1: left the room and agreed and was in a very

808
00:48:05,080 --> 00:48:09,200
Speaker 1: short time. They had each left their their respective spouses

809
00:48:09,760 --> 00:48:13,200
Speaker 1: um and went traveling together in a caravan, which was

810
00:48:13,239 --> 00:48:16,160
Speaker 1: basically kind of a getting to know each other trip um.

811
00:48:16,560 --> 00:48:19,040
Speaker 1: She worked as a spiritualist, but it was it was

812
00:48:19,120 --> 00:48:22,520
Speaker 1: a completely different environment from anything she had experienced before.

813
00:48:22,560 --> 00:48:26,640
Speaker 1: There was a freedom to their relationship and an intellectual

814
00:48:26,760 --> 00:48:29,680
Speaker 1: exchange that she had never had with anyone. And I

815
00:48:29,760 --> 00:48:32,680
Speaker 1: think that this was the moment when Victoria Woodhall as

816
00:48:32,760 --> 00:48:34,680
Speaker 1: we came to know her, as as the world came

817
00:48:34,719 --> 00:48:38,719
Speaker 1: to know her, was born. And actually Blood was her

818
00:48:38,760 --> 00:48:41,680
Speaker 1: first teacher. She had several teachers through her her through

819
00:48:41,760 --> 00:48:45,760
Speaker 1: her life, but he was probably the most important because

820
00:48:46,160 --> 00:48:50,840
Speaker 1: he gave her the history, the historical knowledge, and the

821
00:48:52,360 --> 00:48:56,279
Speaker 1: the political sort of lessons, the political science lessons she

822
00:48:56,400 --> 00:49:00,880
Speaker 1: needed to give words to the sorts of things that

823
00:49:01,000 --> 00:49:04,000
Speaker 1: she was feeling, the inkling she had. She knew something

824
00:49:04,120 --> 00:49:06,920
Speaker 1: was wrong, but Victoria didn't have a means of expressing it,

825
00:49:07,440 --> 00:49:11,160
Speaker 1: and Blood gave her a way of doing them. And

826
00:49:11,280 --> 00:49:14,759
Speaker 1: it's that Victoria wood Halt now in conversation with James

827
00:49:14,880 --> 00:49:19,120
Speaker 1: blood Um taking a you know, building up a critical

828
00:49:19,239 --> 00:49:22,520
Speaker 1: vocabulary for the world around her, who ends up going

829
00:49:22,760 --> 00:49:27,040
Speaker 1: to New York. As you mentioned earlier, Demosthenes speaks to her,

830
00:49:27,840 --> 00:49:32,400
Speaker 1: gives her an address, and she and Tenny and then

831
00:49:32,480 --> 00:49:36,400
Speaker 1: the Clafland clan following along arrive in New York. And

832
00:49:36,680 --> 00:49:41,239
Speaker 1: it's not very long before they meet Cornelius Vanderbilt, which

833
00:49:42,000 --> 00:49:44,520
Speaker 1: is a wild turn of events for them. Can you

834
00:49:44,640 --> 00:49:48,399
Speaker 1: talk about, uh, their life in New York and how

835
00:49:48,480 --> 00:49:52,200
Speaker 1: they ended up getting in with Vanderbilt When they arrived

836
00:49:52,239 --> 00:49:54,600
Speaker 1: in New York, you know, they had no connections there

837
00:49:55,040 --> 00:49:57,040
Speaker 1: and so and it was, as you say, the entire

838
00:49:57,080 --> 00:50:02,920
Speaker 1: Clafland clan followed, um and uh So Victoria and Tenny

839
00:50:03,040 --> 00:50:05,719
Speaker 1: got to work doing what they did best. They're they're

840
00:50:05,760 --> 00:50:08,640
Speaker 1: only sure way of making money, which was working as spiritualists,

841
00:50:09,120 --> 00:50:11,160
Speaker 1: and Tenny was an expert of laying out of hands,

842
00:50:11,239 --> 00:50:16,880
Speaker 1: and Victoria was the spiritualist advisor. And h. Buck Claflin

843
00:50:17,160 --> 00:50:18,759
Speaker 1: did what he did, which would go out and try

844
00:50:18,800 --> 00:50:22,960
Speaker 1: to recruit clients. Now, it's it's difficult to imagine someone

845
00:50:23,200 --> 00:50:27,320
Speaker 1: like Cornelia's Vanderbilt actually being accessible to someone like buck Claflin.

846
00:50:27,680 --> 00:50:31,080
Speaker 1: But in those days, Um, the world was so much smaller.

847
00:50:31,760 --> 00:50:34,920
Speaker 1: New York was so small and and and actually a

848
00:50:35,000 --> 00:50:41,960
Speaker 1: guy like Vanderbilt. Though he was financially, you know, fabulously wealthy, socially,

849
00:50:42,040 --> 00:50:45,359
Speaker 1: he wasn't that much farther up the social scale than

850
00:50:45,600 --> 00:50:47,800
Speaker 1: than the Claflands. You know. Kind of the robber barons

851
00:50:47,840 --> 00:50:51,279
Speaker 1: of the of the late nineteenth century in America, we're

852
00:50:51,320 --> 00:50:54,759
Speaker 1: pretty much, um, how can I say this politely? They

853
00:50:54,800 --> 00:50:58,160
Speaker 1: were pretty much con men and and and really they weren't.

854
00:50:58,800 --> 00:51:02,800
Speaker 1: They weren't the kind of um uh, they didn't have

855
00:51:02,840 --> 00:51:04,959
Speaker 1: a sort of noble they were. They weren't. They weren't

856
00:51:05,000 --> 00:51:09,600
Speaker 1: an aristocracy. Let me say that the the the the

857
00:51:09,760 --> 00:51:13,840
Speaker 1: robber barons of America were the product of Jacksonian America.

858
00:51:13,920 --> 00:51:18,040
Speaker 1: Actually they were. They were men all men who literally

859
00:51:18,120 --> 00:51:21,239
Speaker 1: picked themselves us, whether bootstrapped, found a way to make

860
00:51:21,320 --> 00:51:24,520
Speaker 1: some money, and by hook or crook, legal or illegal,

861
00:51:25,120 --> 00:51:29,400
Speaker 1: um a master of fortune. And so Buck found Cornelius

862
00:51:29,480 --> 00:51:33,160
Speaker 1: Vanderbilt knew somehow, through whatever spiritual is grapevine, that he

863
00:51:33,280 --> 00:51:36,799
Speaker 1: believed in spirits, and he went to see them because

864
00:51:36,840 --> 00:51:39,880
Speaker 1: he also knew that Vanderbilt had just lost his wife,

865
00:51:40,440 --> 00:51:43,040
Speaker 1: and so he was he was chagrined and lonely, and

866
00:51:43,120 --> 00:51:46,040
Speaker 1: he was in his seventies. And Buck could offer him

867
00:51:46,200 --> 00:51:50,160
Speaker 1: the services of his daughters, Victoria to soothe his mind,

868
00:51:50,440 --> 00:51:53,520
Speaker 1: to calm his mind, and talk to his dead wife,

869
00:51:53,560 --> 00:51:57,040
Speaker 1: who could then communicate with Vanderbilt and Tenny to take

870
00:51:57,120 --> 00:52:00,480
Speaker 1: care of the old man's physical loneliness, which is what

871
00:52:00,600 --> 00:52:04,759
Speaker 1: she did. And it's it's absolutely um hilarious when you

872
00:52:04,840 --> 00:52:06,960
Speaker 1: think about. You know, Vanderbilt would have been in his

873
00:52:07,600 --> 00:52:10,560
Speaker 1: in his seventies, Tenny was in her early twenties, and

874
00:52:10,640 --> 00:52:16,120
Speaker 1: she was this rambunctious, you know, vivacious, wonderful creature, completely mad,

875
00:52:16,400 --> 00:52:20,480
Speaker 1: full of life, up for any adventure, and she revived

876
00:52:20,560 --> 00:52:22,840
Speaker 1: his spirits. Probably just by laying eyes on her was

877
00:52:23,000 --> 00:52:26,160
Speaker 1: enough for him. And and Victoria then spoke to her

878
00:52:26,640 --> 00:52:29,720
Speaker 1: from this vast experience she had, and what she shared

879
00:52:29,800 --> 00:52:32,400
Speaker 1: with him was not only a belief in spiritualism, but

880
00:52:32,600 --> 00:52:35,920
Speaker 1: he too had a son who he believed was um

881
00:52:36,080 --> 00:52:39,160
Speaker 1: not well as a result of of the fact that

882
00:52:39,239 --> 00:52:42,320
Speaker 1: he married his first cousin. And so Vanderbilt had always

883
00:52:42,400 --> 00:52:47,400
Speaker 1: blamed himself for his son, his son's uh problems, and

884
00:52:48,239 --> 00:52:51,520
Speaker 1: and so Victoria could counsel him from the position of

885
00:52:51,600 --> 00:52:54,200
Speaker 1: her own experience with that in that regard, and so

886
00:52:54,400 --> 00:52:58,239
Speaker 1: they became confidence of Cornelius Vanderbilt one of the most

887
00:52:58,320 --> 00:53:02,200
Speaker 1: important and wealthiest man in America, And you know, it's

888
00:53:02,280 --> 00:53:05,239
Speaker 1: one of these incredible American stories that you know, they

889
00:53:05,320 --> 00:53:08,799
Speaker 1: went literally overnight from being no One in New York

890
00:53:08,960 --> 00:53:12,040
Speaker 1: to being within the circle where all of the powerful

891
00:53:12,080 --> 00:53:15,880
Speaker 1: decisions are made. And Vanderbilt began to give them financial advice,

892
00:53:16,520 --> 00:53:20,560
Speaker 1: which led to one of Victoria's first first you know

893
00:53:20,680 --> 00:53:24,680
Speaker 1: that this Wall Strip brokerage from that she Antennie opened. Yeah,

894
00:53:24,760 --> 00:53:27,520
Speaker 1: can you describe what the steps were for them getting

895
00:53:27,560 --> 00:53:30,839
Speaker 1: to that point and and maybe how the Gold Ring

896
00:53:30,920 --> 00:53:33,680
Speaker 1: and Black Friday of eighteen sixty nine played a role

897
00:53:34,200 --> 00:53:39,200
Speaker 1: in them becoming successful. Stock broke the the whole cowboy

898
00:53:39,280 --> 00:53:42,400
Speaker 1: atmosphere of Wall Street. It was an entirely male universe.

899
00:53:42,680 --> 00:53:45,400
Speaker 1: The idea of a woman being a Wall Street trainer

900
00:53:45,560 --> 00:53:50,040
Speaker 1: was unthinkable, and I think sometimes I in researching this

901
00:53:50,160 --> 00:53:52,839
Speaker 1: and in writing about it and reading, you know, going

902
00:53:52,920 --> 00:53:55,840
Speaker 1: back and reading this book again, I think for Vanderbilt

903
00:53:55,880 --> 00:53:57,680
Speaker 1: may have been just having a good laugh, you know,

904
00:53:58,160 --> 00:54:01,799
Speaker 1: sending the likes of Tenny and Victoria Uh into that atmosphere,

905
00:54:01,880 --> 00:54:04,960
Speaker 1: you know, to Delmonico's, which was the restaurant where they

906
00:54:05,040 --> 00:54:07,480
Speaker 1: all the traders eight and where there was a stock ticker,

907
00:54:07,640 --> 00:54:09,920
Speaker 1: you know, going at all at all hours, and and

908
00:54:10,040 --> 00:54:13,000
Speaker 1: to have them sitting in a carriage outside the stock exchange,

909
00:54:13,520 --> 00:54:17,200
Speaker 1: you know, exchanging tips with the brokers. It was all

910
00:54:17,280 --> 00:54:20,920
Speaker 1: great theater. But Victoria took it very seriously because she

911
00:54:21,080 --> 00:54:22,960
Speaker 1: knew this was a way, I mean, this was a

912
00:54:23,040 --> 00:54:25,439
Speaker 1: paradise for her, because this was a way she could

913
00:54:25,480 --> 00:54:28,040
Speaker 1: make a lot of money in a very short time.

914
00:54:28,520 --> 00:54:31,840
Speaker 1: And so Vanderbilt Um started giving them tips which they

915
00:54:31,920 --> 00:54:35,520
Speaker 1: couldn't go into the stock exchange to actually make the transactions.

916
00:54:35,840 --> 00:54:37,360
Speaker 1: They would have to have a man go in and

917
00:54:37,440 --> 00:54:41,200
Speaker 1: make it for them. Um. In one particular Friday, which

918
00:54:41,280 --> 00:54:48,360
Speaker 1: was uh in eight sixty nine, there was a scheme

919
00:54:48,520 --> 00:54:51,120
Speaker 1: cot Ulyssius S. Grant was the President of the United

920
00:54:51,120 --> 00:54:53,680
Speaker 1: States at the time, and he was his administration was

921
00:54:53,760 --> 00:54:57,520
Speaker 1: exceedingly corrupt, and two of the traders, two of the

922
00:54:57,600 --> 00:55:01,440
Speaker 1: big traders on Wall Street, Gym Fiskin and Jay Gould

923
00:55:01,960 --> 00:55:07,719
Speaker 1: had Um knew that every week Grant sold a lot

924
00:55:07,800 --> 00:55:10,359
Speaker 1: of gold on the market to try to keep kind

925
00:55:10,360 --> 00:55:13,560
Speaker 1: of keep the coffers, the Unit States coffers, government coffers full,

926
00:55:13,760 --> 00:55:17,440
Speaker 1: and it was a weekly sort of release of precious

927
00:55:17,480 --> 00:55:22,120
Speaker 1: metals to enrich the government. Through a an acquaintance, they

928
00:55:22,200 --> 00:55:26,600
Speaker 1: decided to try to convince Grant not to sell, and

929
00:55:26,760 --> 00:55:29,800
Speaker 1: so that would drive up the price of gold and

930
00:55:29,840 --> 00:55:32,080
Speaker 1: it would become even more precious than it normally was.

931
00:55:32,440 --> 00:55:35,279
Speaker 1: And so Jay Gold and gem Fisk, knowing that this

932
00:55:35,400 --> 00:55:37,080
Speaker 1: was going to happen, could buy up a lot of

933
00:55:37,120 --> 00:55:40,919
Speaker 1: the gold and have it at a lower price. When

934
00:55:41,000 --> 00:55:43,879
Speaker 1: this picket was turned off, when when Grant would stop selling,

935
00:55:44,480 --> 00:55:46,920
Speaker 1: well that happened. But then Grant learned of the scheme,

936
00:55:47,160 --> 00:55:50,080
Speaker 1: and so in a counter move, he opened the flood

937
00:55:50,120 --> 00:55:52,720
Speaker 1: again and the gold started pouring out onto the market.

938
00:55:53,840 --> 00:55:55,719
Speaker 1: Branderbilt had been privy to all of this, and so

939
00:55:55,880 --> 00:55:59,400
Speaker 1: he told Kent Tenny and in Victoria that this was

940
00:55:59,440 --> 00:56:01,200
Speaker 1: going to happen. And so on the day this Black

941
00:56:01,320 --> 00:56:05,400
Speaker 1: Friday in eighteen sixty nine occurred, Victoria was there buying

942
00:56:05,480 --> 00:56:09,280
Speaker 1: up gold. It was dropping in price, dropping like a stone.

943
00:56:09,920 --> 00:56:13,239
Speaker 1: And in that day she amassed a sizeable fortune, in fact,

944
00:56:13,280 --> 00:56:15,920
Speaker 1: such a fortune that she could use it to finance

945
00:56:16,040 --> 00:56:18,439
Speaker 1: not only her crazy family and her life in New York,

946
00:56:18,880 --> 00:56:21,840
Speaker 1: but she could start a newspaper, she could start a brokerage,

947
00:56:21,880 --> 00:56:25,600
Speaker 1: firm she could. She basically set herself up for for

948
00:56:25,880 --> 00:56:29,000
Speaker 1: what would become a political career two years later, three

949
00:56:29,080 --> 00:56:33,440
Speaker 1: years later. And there's also I didn't put this in

950
00:56:33,560 --> 00:56:35,680
Speaker 1: my questions to you, but I realized after I'd send

951
00:56:35,719 --> 00:56:37,640
Speaker 1: them to you that we should talk about this UM

952
00:56:37,760 --> 00:56:41,880
Speaker 1: eight sixty nine. There's also the Women's Rights Convention in Washington,

953
00:56:42,040 --> 00:56:45,279
Speaker 1: d C. And Victoria goes, can you describe that a

954
00:56:45,320 --> 00:56:50,080
Speaker 1: little bit? Victoria was basically a communicator, and she she

955
00:56:50,280 --> 00:56:53,320
Speaker 1: knew the message that the most important message that she

956
00:56:53,480 --> 00:56:56,440
Speaker 1: had learned through her own experiences in life, through her

957
00:56:56,480 --> 00:56:59,520
Speaker 1: relationship with Blood, through all of the women and men

958
00:56:59,640 --> 00:57:01,960
Speaker 1: that she met as a spiritualist, through the many years

959
00:57:02,040 --> 00:57:05,560
Speaker 1: she traveled throughout the United States, was the need for

960
00:57:06,080 --> 00:57:12,000
Speaker 1: fundamental social reform, personal personal reform at a personal level

961
00:57:12,040 --> 00:57:14,880
Speaker 1: between a husband and a wife that could only occur

962
00:57:15,160 --> 00:57:19,080
Speaker 1: through legislation if women had equal rights. And so Victoria

963
00:57:19,480 --> 00:57:22,280
Speaker 1: was scheming with Blood. They needed to have some kind

964
00:57:22,320 --> 00:57:26,920
Speaker 1: of political platform. They needed to have possibly a newspaper,

965
00:57:27,120 --> 00:57:30,360
Speaker 1: you know, to disseminate this information. They needed to be

966
00:57:30,440 --> 00:57:33,120
Speaker 1: aligned with the political party. But none of the parties

967
00:57:33,160 --> 00:57:35,880
Speaker 1: that were available at that time or had any power

968
00:57:35,960 --> 00:57:37,760
Speaker 1: at that time would have been radical enough for them.

969
00:57:38,400 --> 00:57:40,960
Speaker 1: And so Victoria knew of the women's rights movement, but

970
00:57:41,040 --> 00:57:44,000
Speaker 1: she had had actually no exchange with them at that point.

971
00:57:44,080 --> 00:57:46,360
Speaker 1: In the eighteen sixty nine, and so there was a

972
00:57:46,440 --> 00:57:49,800
Speaker 1: convention of women in Washington, d C. An annual convention,

973
00:57:50,280 --> 00:57:52,080
Speaker 1: and she went there just to get a lay of

974
00:57:52,120 --> 00:57:54,640
Speaker 1: the land, just to see what was happening. Um. She

975
00:57:54,720 --> 00:57:58,040
Speaker 1: went purely as a spectator, and what she saw was

976
00:57:58,120 --> 00:58:01,400
Speaker 1: a lot of earnest women aking to each other about

977
00:58:01,480 --> 00:58:05,840
Speaker 1: each other, but having absolutely no impact on Capitol Hill,

978
00:58:05,960 --> 00:58:08,240
Speaker 1: you know, on the US Congress, which was just a

979
00:58:08,280 --> 00:58:11,000
Speaker 1: few blocks away from where they were meeting. And so

980
00:58:11,440 --> 00:58:16,920
Speaker 1: Victoria left that left that um that session, realizing that

981
00:58:17,560 --> 00:58:19,960
Speaker 1: these women could talk to each other, you know until

982
00:58:21,000 --> 00:58:25,440
Speaker 1: the until these women could continue talking to each other,

983
00:58:26,280 --> 00:58:29,240
Speaker 1: but would never have any impact because no one was

984
00:58:29,280 --> 00:58:33,560
Speaker 1: paying attention. And Victoria knew she was a great propagandist,

985
00:58:33,640 --> 00:58:36,680
Speaker 1: and she knew that in order to get the attention

986
00:58:36,760 --> 00:58:39,360
Speaker 1: of Congress, she would need to make a huge splash.

987
00:58:39,920 --> 00:58:43,560
Speaker 1: And so she left that meeting not having actually made

988
00:58:43,600 --> 00:58:50,640
Speaker 1: any connections with the Women's The Women's movement leaders back

989
00:58:50,720 --> 00:58:53,480
Speaker 1: to New York with blood and they decided to um

990
00:58:56,000 --> 00:58:59,160
Speaker 1: to create a newspaper would hold on Clafland's weekly, because

991
00:58:59,240 --> 00:59:02,720
Speaker 1: that would be her voice, and in in doing so,

992
00:59:03,320 --> 00:59:07,680
Speaker 1: Victoria announced what could only be reckless, if not crazy,

993
00:59:08,600 --> 00:59:11,520
Speaker 1: that she was going to run for president. A woman

994
00:59:11,640 --> 00:59:13,840
Speaker 1: was going to run for president, the woman who had

995
00:59:13,880 --> 00:59:15,919
Speaker 1: been the first who by this point was the first

996
00:59:16,000 --> 00:59:18,480
Speaker 1: broker on Wall Street, a woman who had the backing

997
00:59:18,520 --> 00:59:23,120
Speaker 1: of Cornelius Vanderbilt, who had her own newspaper in New York. Uh,

998
00:59:23,360 --> 00:59:25,960
Speaker 1: this caught the attention, This was irresistible to the New

999
00:59:26,080 --> 00:59:28,560
Speaker 1: York press, and the stories were carried all the way

1000
00:59:28,600 --> 00:59:32,120
Speaker 1: to Washington. At this point, nobody really paid attention to her,

1001
00:59:32,160 --> 00:59:34,600
Speaker 1: but she was deadly earnest. And you know, whether she

1002
00:59:34,680 --> 00:59:37,919
Speaker 1: thought she was actually going to be president as another question.

1003
00:59:38,000 --> 00:59:40,320
Speaker 1: I don't think she ever really assumed that that would happen.

1004
00:59:40,600 --> 00:59:42,600
Speaker 1: But she just needed to make a statement that was

1005
00:59:42,720 --> 00:59:45,280
Speaker 1: bold enough and broad enough and loud enough that she

1006
00:59:45,320 --> 00:59:48,280
Speaker 1: could get the attention not only of people in New York,

1007
00:59:48,320 --> 00:59:52,000
Speaker 1: but the women's movement and hopefully members of Congress. Can

1008
00:59:52,040 --> 00:59:55,200
Speaker 1: you say a little more about Now we're into the seventies,

1009
00:59:55,360 --> 00:59:59,480
Speaker 1: can you say a little more about the breath of

1010
00:59:59,560 --> 01:00:01,480
Speaker 1: the women's movement and its work kind of what was

1011
01:00:01,520 --> 01:00:04,160
Speaker 1: going on there and put it maybe in conversation with

1012
01:00:04,520 --> 01:00:07,680
Speaker 1: you mentioned at the beginning of our conversation growing labor

1013
01:00:07,800 --> 01:00:12,160
Speaker 1: radicalism and and how these forces were impacting and shaping

1014
01:00:12,240 --> 01:00:16,240
Speaker 1: each other, and what Victoria saw in the political landscape

1015
01:00:16,240 --> 01:00:17,560
Speaker 1: when she looked at at what was going on in

1016
01:00:17,640 --> 01:00:21,800
Speaker 1: American life. Yeah. One of the interesting things that happened,

1017
01:00:22,080 --> 01:00:25,560
Speaker 1: you know, the evolution Victoria's own personal evolution from a

1018
01:00:25,640 --> 01:00:29,920
Speaker 1: spiritual is talking one on one two people um to

1019
01:00:30,280 --> 01:00:33,760
Speaker 1: a woman who's out on a platform declaring herself president

1020
01:00:34,200 --> 01:00:38,400
Speaker 1: candidate for president, actually mirrored what was happening more broadly socially.

1021
01:00:38,440 --> 01:00:41,480
Speaker 1: And it's really fascinating because the kind of conversations that

1022
01:00:41,560 --> 01:00:45,120
Speaker 1: were murmured, you know, before the Civil War, um in

1023
01:00:45,200 --> 01:00:48,040
Speaker 1: the in the in the in the eighteen forties, and

1024
01:00:48,120 --> 01:00:51,520
Speaker 1: the kind of revolutions that occurred in eighty eight, and

1025
01:00:51,600 --> 01:00:55,320
Speaker 1: the discussions and the political arguments that began to heat

1026
01:00:55,400 --> 01:00:57,720
Speaker 1: up erupted of course in the Civil War in the

1027
01:00:57,800 --> 01:01:00,560
Speaker 1: United States, but afterwards they didn't die down, and in fact,

1028
01:01:01,000 --> 01:01:04,000
Speaker 1: groups coalesced and one of the most powerful groups, two

1029
01:01:04,000 --> 01:01:06,919
Speaker 1: of the most powerful groups to coal US. We were

1030
01:01:07,040 --> 01:01:10,040
Speaker 1: labor unions, and this was something that was happening in Europe.

1031
01:01:10,080 --> 01:01:11,800
Speaker 1: And in fact, once again we can talk about Carl

1032
01:01:11,880 --> 01:01:14,959
Speaker 1: Marx because he had formed in eighteen sixty four something

1033
01:01:15,000 --> 01:01:18,520
Speaker 1: called the International working Men's Association, and the goal was

1034
01:01:19,760 --> 01:01:23,960
Speaker 1: trade had become cross border, and corporations and industrialists were

1035
01:01:24,000 --> 01:01:27,400
Speaker 1: working as kind of a party or almost a union

1036
01:01:27,440 --> 01:01:33,360
Speaker 1: among themselves to keep money and power consolidated across borders.

1037
01:01:33,400 --> 01:01:37,720
Speaker 1: But at the level of industrialists and unions started forming.

1038
01:01:38,080 --> 01:01:42,880
Speaker 1: Marks was among the most vocal and prominent supporters of

1039
01:01:43,000 --> 01:01:46,480
Speaker 1: labor unions and that idea, their idea and his idea

1040
01:01:46,680 --> 01:01:50,920
Speaker 1: was if industrialists are going to form associations to protect

1041
01:01:51,000 --> 01:01:54,320
Speaker 1: one another across borders and across industry, then workers had

1042
01:01:54,400 --> 01:01:58,080
Speaker 1: to do the same. And so uh he started this

1043
01:01:58,200 --> 01:02:03,040
Speaker 1: International working Man's Association, which had UH sections throughout Europe

1044
01:02:03,200 --> 01:02:07,560
Speaker 1: and the United States, and Victoria became part of that.

1045
01:02:08,320 --> 01:02:11,120
Speaker 1: And which is such a wonderful idea that the idea

1046
01:02:11,160 --> 01:02:14,080
Speaker 1: that Victoria Woodhall is teaming up with Carl Marx. Karl

1047
01:02:14,120 --> 01:02:17,600
Speaker 1: Marx knew nothing of Victoria woodhallum she was she was

1048
01:02:17,720 --> 01:02:20,640
Speaker 1: part of the New York section and in fact She was,

1049
01:02:20,760 --> 01:02:23,120
Speaker 1: of course head of the New York Sections Section twelve.

1050
01:02:23,680 --> 01:02:26,440
Speaker 1: But this was all unbeknownst to Mars. Marx had his own,

1051
01:02:26,680 --> 01:02:28,320
Speaker 1: you know, he had troubles of his own without dealing

1052
01:02:28,400 --> 01:02:31,440
Speaker 1: with that Victoria Woodhall. But at the same time, the

1053
01:02:31,520 --> 01:02:35,760
Speaker 1: women's movement, that was another center of political and social

1054
01:02:35,880 --> 01:02:39,240
Speaker 1: power that was emerging, and there were factions within the

1055
01:02:39,640 --> 01:02:43,280
Speaker 1: women's movement. There was the veterans out of eighteen forty eight,

1056
01:02:43,440 --> 01:02:46,480
Speaker 1: out of the Seneca Falls meeting, who were pushing, you know,

1057
01:02:46,800 --> 01:02:49,440
Speaker 1: towards the vote. They thought that the path to women's

1058
01:02:49,480 --> 01:02:53,240
Speaker 1: liberation and to equality in society was through giving women

1059
01:02:53,280 --> 01:02:58,120
Speaker 1: the right to vote. There was another section that thought

1060
01:02:58,200 --> 01:03:00,400
Speaker 1: that that was much too bold, that women shouldn't be

1061
01:03:00,440 --> 01:03:02,520
Speaker 1: in the political arena, that that was a dirty place,

1062
01:03:02,960 --> 01:03:06,200
Speaker 1: you know, for men, and that they should that women

1063
01:03:06,240 --> 01:03:09,520
Speaker 1: should more quietly, behind the scenes, try to influence their

1064
01:03:09,600 --> 01:03:13,800
Speaker 1: husband's toward equality. Well, Victoria, coming out of that eighteen

1065
01:03:13,880 --> 01:03:17,200
Speaker 1: sixty nine meeting, said neither would do the work, neither

1066
01:03:17,240 --> 01:03:19,240
Speaker 1: would be good enough or strong enough, or would actually

1067
01:03:19,320 --> 01:03:22,640
Speaker 1: touch the core of the problems. She said that until

1068
01:03:22,720 --> 01:03:26,800
Speaker 1: women actually owned their own bodies, actually owned the right

1069
01:03:26,880 --> 01:03:30,680
Speaker 1: to their own bodies. Um, there could be no such

1070
01:03:30,760 --> 01:03:33,160
Speaker 1: thing as women right, women's rights. If they had the vote,

1071
01:03:33,160 --> 01:03:35,000
Speaker 1: it wouldn't make any difference as long as they were

1072
01:03:35,040 --> 01:03:37,160
Speaker 1: still the property of a man, whether it be their

1073
01:03:37,200 --> 01:03:39,840
Speaker 1: father or their husband. And so she came in with

1074
01:03:39,960 --> 01:03:44,960
Speaker 1: an incredibly radical platform, um and talked about women in

1075
01:03:45,040 --> 01:03:48,080
Speaker 1: a way that really polite society had never heard and

1076
01:03:48,200 --> 01:03:51,640
Speaker 1: certainly had never been discussed by the women's rights movements.

1077
01:03:51,680 --> 01:03:55,120
Speaker 1: So she was sort of this meeting place, through her

1078
01:03:55,200 --> 01:03:58,240
Speaker 1: newspaper and through her work in New York, kind of

1079
01:03:58,280 --> 01:04:03,520
Speaker 1: the place where radical labor and radical women's rights came together.

1080
01:04:03,760 --> 01:04:09,680
Speaker 1: And and she was, you know, became, uh, the sort

1081
01:04:09,720 --> 01:04:13,720
Speaker 1: of titular head of that. And right, she wasn't declaring

1082
01:04:13,800 --> 01:04:17,600
Speaker 1: herself a candidate for president on her own. She was

1083
01:04:17,600 --> 01:04:20,560
Speaker 1: a member of the Equal Rights Party. Can you talk

1084
01:04:20,600 --> 01:04:22,360
Speaker 1: about the Equal Rights Party and how it relates to

1085
01:04:22,400 --> 01:04:24,120
Speaker 1: the i w A and some of the other things

1086
01:04:24,160 --> 01:04:28,760
Speaker 1: that were going on. Yeah, the Equal Rights Party was uh,

1087
01:04:30,280 --> 01:04:33,720
Speaker 1: actually just formed out of the labor movement, the spiritualist

1088
01:04:33,840 --> 01:04:37,040
Speaker 1: It was a kind of an umbrella party for radical reformers.

1089
01:04:37,240 --> 01:04:40,960
Speaker 1: And these were the people who, um would never fit

1090
01:04:41,040 --> 01:04:44,600
Speaker 1: comfortably in the in the parties as the political parties

1091
01:04:44,680 --> 01:04:49,920
Speaker 1: as he existed, and Victoria once again, they were sort

1092
01:04:49,960 --> 01:04:53,360
Speaker 1: of the there was the same constituency, constituency she would

1093
01:04:53,360 --> 01:04:56,360
Speaker 1: have talked to as a spiritualist in the earlier years.

1094
01:04:56,640 --> 01:04:58,680
Speaker 1: They were the working people. They were the they were

1095
01:04:58,760 --> 01:05:02,080
Speaker 1: the laborers. They were the people who you know, whose

1096
01:05:02,160 --> 01:05:04,840
Speaker 1: bodies filled the tenements. They were the people who were

1097
01:05:04,840 --> 01:05:07,520
Speaker 1: at the losing end of this new industrial system and

1098
01:05:08,080 --> 01:05:12,800
Speaker 1: the very system that the industrialists and the religious leaders,

1099
01:05:12,840 --> 01:05:15,360
Speaker 1: the preachers like Henry Ward Beecher, who will talk about

1100
01:05:16,040 --> 01:05:18,680
Speaker 1: the people who are the politicians you know in Washington,

1101
01:05:19,360 --> 01:05:24,840
Speaker 1: who supposedly represented who supposedly we're looking out for, but

1102
01:05:24,920 --> 01:05:29,000
Speaker 1: in fact had absolute disdain for. And so Victorian's victorious

1103
01:05:29,080 --> 01:05:32,440
Speaker 1: party gave voice to these people and gave power to them.

1104
01:05:32,600 --> 01:05:35,440
Speaker 1: And and she said, you know, I will be your leader.

1105
01:05:35,600 --> 01:05:38,040
Speaker 1: And where she thought she was actually going to lead them,

1106
01:05:38,160 --> 01:05:39,680
Speaker 1: or where they thought she was going to lead them,

1107
01:05:39,760 --> 01:05:41,920
Speaker 1: was never very clear, but it was just enough that

1108
01:05:42,040 --> 01:05:44,880
Speaker 1: someone was speaking for them and speaking so boldly. You know,

1109
01:05:45,040 --> 01:05:47,600
Speaker 1: she was a young woman still, she was in her thirties,

1110
01:05:47,920 --> 01:05:51,640
Speaker 1: early thirties, and she was out on a platform speaking

1111
01:05:51,720 --> 01:05:56,200
Speaker 1: in the kind of English that um that the working

1112
01:05:56,240 --> 01:06:00,240
Speaker 1: classes could understand speaking of her own travails. So she

1113
01:06:00,640 --> 01:06:04,040
Speaker 1: she imparted to them the idea that she wasn't speaking

1114
01:06:04,280 --> 01:06:06,720
Speaker 1: at them, she was speaking with them and for them.

1115
01:06:06,840 --> 01:06:09,960
Speaker 1: And so she she became an extremely powerful figure. And

1116
01:06:10,040 --> 01:06:14,280
Speaker 1: in fact, some of the members of the women's movement,

1117
01:06:14,640 --> 01:06:17,400
Speaker 1: the Old Guard Elizabeth, Katie Stanton and Susan B. Anthony,

1118
01:06:17,760 --> 01:06:21,800
Speaker 1: who were very actually very radical in their own way,

1119
01:06:22,000 --> 01:06:24,800
Speaker 1: would never have gone as far as Victoria. But they

1120
01:06:24,880 --> 01:06:27,920
Speaker 1: saw in her a generational shift. You know, she was

1121
01:06:28,440 --> 01:06:31,440
Speaker 1: she was about thirty years younger than Susan B. Anthony,

1122
01:06:31,640 --> 01:06:35,040
Speaker 1: and and so they saw in her the problems of

1123
01:06:35,080 --> 01:06:37,320
Speaker 1: the future. And in fact they saw that rightly because

1124
01:06:38,040 --> 01:06:40,880
Speaker 1: the women they spoke to were the wives of um

1125
01:06:42,040 --> 01:06:45,920
Speaker 1: um sort of gentleman farmers, you know, the wives of

1126
01:06:46,360 --> 01:06:50,520
Speaker 1: business small business owners, the wives of ministers, the wives

1127
01:06:50,560 --> 01:06:54,800
Speaker 1: of academics. The women Victoria spoke to were why were

1128
01:06:54,840 --> 01:06:56,960
Speaker 1: women who are actually working yet, you know, who had

1129
01:06:57,440 --> 01:07:00,800
Speaker 1: been forced to join this industrial workforce. Who were the

1130
01:07:01,080 --> 01:07:05,200
Speaker 1: new telephone operators and telegraph operators and the type you

1131
01:07:05,280 --> 01:07:08,400
Speaker 1: know who manned the typewriters, And they were a new

1132
01:07:08,480 --> 01:07:10,800
Speaker 1: labor force who no one had had to deal with before,

1133
01:07:10,880 --> 01:07:12,600
Speaker 1: and no one quite knew what to do with and

1134
01:07:13,000 --> 01:07:14,880
Speaker 1: you know, so they had all new issues which we

1135
01:07:14,960 --> 01:07:17,400
Speaker 1: are talking about even today, you know, child care and

1136
01:07:17,960 --> 01:07:20,080
Speaker 1: maternity leave and all those kinds of things. I mean,

1137
01:07:20,160 --> 01:07:23,360
Speaker 1: this was brand new. Victoria Saul saw all of those

1138
01:07:23,400 --> 01:07:25,800
Speaker 1: problems because she had lived them, and so it was

1139
01:07:25,880 --> 01:07:28,200
Speaker 1: just her. She She was a really wonderful kind of

1140
01:07:28,880 --> 01:07:35,280
Speaker 1: unifying figure that anyone with the foresight just to recognize it,

1141
01:07:35,320 --> 01:07:37,880
Speaker 1: could have seen that she was. She was where politics

1142
01:07:37,960 --> 01:07:40,320
Speaker 1: had to go, she was where the women's movement had

1143
01:07:40,400 --> 01:07:42,760
Speaker 1: to go. And yet she was very threatening, as you

1144
01:07:42,800 --> 01:07:45,320
Speaker 1: can imagine, to the powers that be because at this

1145
01:07:45,560 --> 01:07:51,240
Speaker 1: time Victoria's political career kind of began eighteen seventy eight

1146
01:07:51,440 --> 01:07:54,920
Speaker 1: seventy one and really blossomed in eighteen seventy two. This

1147
01:07:55,160 --> 01:07:59,560
Speaker 1: was another time in Europe where the streets were exploding. Um.

1148
01:07:59,720 --> 01:08:05,080
Speaker 1: In eighteen seventy Paris had um had been under bombardment.

1149
01:08:05,120 --> 01:08:07,320
Speaker 1: There was a Franco Prussian war, which I won't get into,

1150
01:08:07,440 --> 01:08:11,400
Speaker 1: but it had left Paris besieged and the French government

1151
01:08:12,360 --> 01:08:15,120
Speaker 1: basically the europe the powers in Europe left the Parisians

1152
01:08:16,360 --> 01:08:21,160
Speaker 1: to their own devices. They the pressure had won and

1153
01:08:22,200 --> 01:08:25,160
Speaker 1: the Prussian forces were surrounding Paris, and the Parisians had

1154
01:08:25,240 --> 01:08:27,479
Speaker 1: to decide, what do we do, you know, how do

1155
01:08:27,600 --> 01:08:30,200
Speaker 1: we survive? How do we keep literally the Prussians out

1156
01:08:30,240 --> 01:08:33,160
Speaker 1: of the city. And so they formed what was a commune,

1157
01:08:33,600 --> 01:08:37,960
Speaker 1: and within this city a rebellion occurred. Paris is often

1158
01:08:38,080 --> 01:08:42,240
Speaker 1: the home of revolution, and this was another case of that,

1159
01:08:42,439 --> 01:08:46,240
Speaker 1: where a seed among people who had absolutely nothing, who

1160
01:08:46,320 --> 01:08:48,920
Speaker 1: had been starved, you know, we're eating rats. At this point,

1161
01:08:49,800 --> 01:08:54,680
Speaker 1: a seat of rebellion rose that actually threatened, was so

1162
01:08:54,880 --> 01:09:00,839
Speaker 1: threatening and so powerful and so violent, um that headlines

1163
01:09:00,880 --> 01:09:04,920
Speaker 1: around the world, including in the United States, were were

1164
01:09:05,760 --> 01:09:10,280
Speaker 1: full of fear and trembling over this new populist, this

1165
01:09:10,439 --> 01:09:14,600
Speaker 1: working class, this class associated with Marx and his International

1166
01:09:14,680 --> 01:09:18,439
Speaker 1: working Man's Association, who were who were rising up and

1167
01:09:18,560 --> 01:09:21,720
Speaker 1: taking control of this city and who threatened, you know,

1168
01:09:21,880 --> 01:09:26,120
Speaker 1: the stability of France post Postpression War, post post Franco

1169
01:09:26,200 --> 01:09:30,519
Speaker 1: Pression War France. And they were wild rumors in the

1170
01:09:30,640 --> 01:09:33,919
Speaker 1: United States and throughout Europe about the spread of this revolution.

1171
01:09:34,360 --> 01:09:39,800
Speaker 1: And so against that backdrop, Victoria was actually preaching revolution. Now,

1172
01:09:40,120 --> 01:09:42,280
Speaker 1: some of this was coming from blood, some of it

1173
01:09:42,439 --> 01:09:45,880
Speaker 1: was coming from the International Workingman's Association that she was

1174
01:09:45,920 --> 01:09:48,559
Speaker 1: aligned with UM, and some of it was coming from

1175
01:09:48,600 --> 01:09:51,679
Speaker 1: her own experience. And what she was saying was absolute

1176
01:09:51,800 --> 01:09:54,080
Speaker 1: cat nip to the audience she was speaking to, because

1177
01:09:54,520 --> 01:09:57,640
Speaker 1: they wanted nothing so much as a revolution, because they

1178
01:09:57,680 --> 01:10:00,320
Speaker 1: were suffering, and they were starving, and they were working,

1179
01:10:00,400 --> 01:10:04,400
Speaker 1: you know, seven days a week for for for wages

1180
01:10:04,439 --> 01:10:07,400
Speaker 1: that didn't feed them that quid with which they couldn't

1181
01:10:07,400 --> 01:10:12,479
Speaker 1: feed their families. And so Victoria was exceedingly dangerous. Not

1182
01:10:12,600 --> 01:10:15,160
Speaker 1: only was she out there speaking to large audiences and

1183
01:10:15,479 --> 01:10:19,240
Speaker 1: accumulating greater and greater crowds, but she did so with

1184
01:10:19,479 --> 01:10:22,960
Speaker 1: flair and beauty and intelligence and and uh, and she

1185
01:10:23,040 --> 01:10:27,599
Speaker 1: started to become very threatening. Some of her significant, well

1186
01:10:27,640 --> 01:10:33,000
Speaker 1: known collaborators we were men, were Stephen Pearl Andrews and

1187
01:10:33,240 --> 01:10:36,599
Speaker 1: Benjamin Butler. Can you talk about how those two guys

1188
01:10:36,760 --> 01:10:41,360
Speaker 1: played a role in her, her politics, her publishing, what

1189
01:10:41,560 --> 01:10:44,840
Speaker 1: they brought to their collaborations with Victoria, and and what

1190
01:10:45,040 --> 01:10:50,280
Speaker 1: she took from from them. Yeah, Yeah, it's throughout Victoria's

1191
01:10:50,320 --> 01:10:53,240
Speaker 1: life She's had she had several really important mentors. So

1192
01:10:53,320 --> 01:10:57,360
Speaker 1: one was blood, uh. The other in finance was Cornelius Vanderbilt.

1193
01:10:58,080 --> 01:11:03,479
Speaker 1: Stephen Pearl Andrews was her kind of genius for publishing

1194
01:11:03,520 --> 01:11:06,560
Speaker 1: in the publishing sphere. She had. She had started the

1195
01:11:06,600 --> 01:11:08,800
Speaker 1: newspaper with blood and and it was open to all

1196
01:11:08,880 --> 01:11:11,559
Speaker 1: kinds of radical ideas, and it was really a clear

1197
01:11:11,600 --> 01:11:13,280
Speaker 1: it was it was kind of a what we know

1198
01:11:13,479 --> 01:11:17,360
Speaker 1: today and an aggregator, you know. She would allow anybody

1199
01:11:17,439 --> 01:11:20,240
Speaker 1: to print whatever they would publish whatever they wanted in

1200
01:11:20,320 --> 01:11:23,280
Speaker 1: her newspaper. She was all for all for press freedom

1201
01:11:23,600 --> 01:11:25,880
Speaker 1: and letting any kind of voice who wanted to be

1202
01:11:25,960 --> 01:11:29,559
Speaker 1: published speak. And in fact she was the first. Her

1203
01:11:29,600 --> 01:11:31,920
Speaker 1: newspaper was the first in the United States to publish

1204
01:11:31,960 --> 01:11:36,000
Speaker 1: the Communist Manifesto. So she was not um, she was

1205
01:11:36,080 --> 01:11:40,080
Speaker 1: not afraid of of diverse and radical voices in her

1206
01:11:40,160 --> 01:11:43,120
Speaker 1: in her newspaper. Stephen Pearl Andrews had been kind of

1207
01:11:43,479 --> 01:11:45,720
Speaker 1: in semi retirement for a while. He was one of

1208
01:11:45,840 --> 01:11:49,200
Speaker 1: these fringe figures in the United States who would dabbled

1209
01:11:49,200 --> 01:11:54,800
Speaker 1: in everything philosophy, journalism, academics, a bit of politics. And

1210
01:11:54,960 --> 01:11:58,160
Speaker 1: he saw in this newspaper but he had a lot

1211
01:11:58,400 --> 01:12:00,320
Speaker 1: to say, He had a lot to get off as chest,

1212
01:12:00,680 --> 01:12:03,080
Speaker 1: and he saw in this newspaper and in Victorious circle

1213
01:12:03,400 --> 01:12:05,800
Speaker 1: a place where he could do that. And so he

1214
01:12:05,920 --> 01:12:08,360
Speaker 1: came to her as a journalist and said, you know,

1215
01:12:08,520 --> 01:12:11,080
Speaker 1: I can help you edit this paper. And in fact,

1216
01:12:11,280 --> 01:12:14,439
Speaker 1: she was so busy launching her political career um and

1217
01:12:14,520 --> 01:12:16,720
Speaker 1: juggling so many things, that she kind of handed it

1218
01:12:16,840 --> 01:12:20,799
Speaker 1: off to him with blood supervising, and Stephen Pearl Andrews

1219
01:12:21,600 --> 01:12:25,280
Speaker 1: under his Under his direction, the Woodhull and Kathleen's Clafland's

1220
01:12:25,280 --> 01:12:29,160
Speaker 1: Weekly became an incredible muckraking organ. He was afraid of

1221
01:12:29,240 --> 01:12:30,800
Speaker 1: no one. Of course, he had nothing to lose. It

1222
01:12:30,880 --> 01:12:34,360
Speaker 1: wasn't his newspaper. All he risked was being thrown in

1223
01:12:34,439 --> 01:12:37,880
Speaker 1: jail for libel. But he went after corporations, he went

1224
01:12:37,960 --> 01:12:44,759
Speaker 1: after industrialists. He even went after the most important preacher

1225
01:12:44,840 --> 01:12:49,400
Speaker 1: in the country, Henry Ward Beecher, who was this sanctimonious

1226
01:12:49,520 --> 01:12:55,040
Speaker 1: powerhouse in Brooklyn. Uh, the head of the famous Beecher clan,

1227
01:12:55,200 --> 01:12:58,080
Speaker 1: who whoo, who were on the right side of all

1228
01:12:58,200 --> 01:13:01,880
Speaker 1: issues and above reproach um. Stephen Pearl Andrews was the

1229
01:13:01,960 --> 01:13:05,760
Speaker 1: first one to kind of hint at in her newspaper

1230
01:13:05,880 --> 01:13:10,800
Speaker 1: that uh Beecher was not all he seemed, and so Victoria,

1231
01:13:11,160 --> 01:13:14,320
Speaker 1: through him Victoria learned kind of the art of unmasking

1232
01:13:14,920 --> 01:13:19,240
Speaker 1: these hypocrites, which which was also something she really understood,

1233
01:13:19,320 --> 01:13:23,000
Speaker 1: because she thought society was hypocritical to its core, that

1234
01:13:23,200 --> 01:13:27,840
Speaker 1: men were given liberties and rights that women could never exercise,

1235
01:13:28,040 --> 01:13:30,639
Speaker 1: and and she couldn't understand, you know, how that could

1236
01:13:30,680 --> 01:13:33,719
Speaker 1: be allowed in what was called a democracy. So Stephen

1237
01:13:33,760 --> 01:13:37,880
Speaker 1: Pearl Andrews was her her man in publishing. Benjamin Butler

1238
01:13:38,360 --> 01:13:41,680
Speaker 1: was her mentor in all things Washington politics. He was

1239
01:13:41,720 --> 01:13:45,120
Speaker 1: a Massachusetts congressman who was kind of one of these figures.

1240
01:13:45,160 --> 01:13:47,360
Speaker 1: I often tried to think of who he would have

1241
01:13:47,400 --> 01:13:50,000
Speaker 1: been in contemporary terms. And when I was writing this,

1242
01:13:50,160 --> 01:13:52,280
Speaker 1: it was the heyday of the it was the Clinton,

1243
01:13:52,439 --> 01:13:54,840
Speaker 1: the Bill Clinton administration, and I kind of thought of

1244
01:13:55,080 --> 01:13:57,760
Speaker 1: as a left wing New Gingridge type figure. You know.

1245
01:13:57,880 --> 01:14:01,519
Speaker 1: He was someone a real polemius pist who everyone knew

1246
01:14:01,520 --> 01:14:04,120
Speaker 1: about and nobody was that crazy about on any side

1247
01:14:04,120 --> 01:14:06,240
Speaker 1: of the issues, but you couldn't ignore him. And so

1248
01:14:06,360 --> 01:14:10,920
Speaker 1: Benjamin Butler gave Victoria access to Congress, access to the

1249
01:14:11,000 --> 01:14:15,679
Speaker 1: House Judiciary Committee, where she delivered a speech demanding women's

1250
01:14:15,760 --> 01:14:17,720
Speaker 1: rights and became the first woman to ever do that

1251
01:14:18,080 --> 01:14:23,080
Speaker 1: in US history, and and he gave her um quick

1252
01:14:23,120 --> 01:14:26,599
Speaker 1: tutorial in in the in the in the workings of Washington,

1253
01:14:26,760 --> 01:14:29,960
Speaker 1: in lobbying, in the power structure, in who she had

1254
01:14:30,080 --> 01:14:32,000
Speaker 1: to read and who she had to reach in order

1255
01:14:32,040 --> 01:14:37,559
Speaker 1: to make a difference. And and she in seventy one

1256
01:14:37,600 --> 01:14:42,320
Speaker 1: she went to Washington address the committee, unbeknownst to address

1257
01:14:42,360 --> 01:14:46,920
Speaker 1: the House Judicial Judiciary Committee with Butler's with Butler's help,

1258
01:14:47,400 --> 01:14:50,839
Speaker 1: and unbeknownst to the Women's Suffragettes who were the women's

1259
01:14:50,880 --> 01:14:53,800
Speaker 1: rights movement who were gathered in Washington at that same

1260
01:14:53,880 --> 01:14:56,479
Speaker 1: time to once again have their convention, to once again

1261
01:14:56,520 --> 01:14:59,599
Speaker 1: speak to each other. Victoria out of nowhere, had gained

1262
01:14:59,600 --> 01:15:01,920
Speaker 1: access to Congress, something that they hadn't been able to

1263
01:15:02,000 --> 01:15:05,479
Speaker 1: do since. And so this was another way of her

1264
01:15:06,080 --> 01:15:09,640
Speaker 1: making a huge, dramatic move that thrust her into the

1265
01:15:09,760 --> 01:15:12,120
Speaker 1: limelight and in fact to the top of the She

1266
01:15:12,240 --> 01:15:15,000
Speaker 1: went from being no one in the women's rights movement

1267
01:15:15,080 --> 01:15:18,000
Speaker 1: to being, you know, one of the most important players.

1268
01:15:18,080 --> 01:15:21,720
Speaker 1: And so Butler helped put her there. Can you say

1269
01:15:21,720 --> 01:15:24,559
Speaker 1: a little more about the relationship between the women's rights

1270
01:15:24,640 --> 01:15:29,200
Speaker 1: movements and spiritualism at this point in the in the

1271
01:15:29,640 --> 01:15:34,760
Speaker 1: seventies especially, I'm thinking about the advocacy from some spiritualists

1272
01:15:34,760 --> 01:15:38,920
Speaker 1: like Victoria for what they were calling free love. Can

1273
01:15:38,960 --> 01:15:40,840
Speaker 1: you talk about what free love meant and how it

1274
01:15:41,479 --> 01:15:44,719
Speaker 1: you know, either created friends or enemies in the women's

1275
01:15:44,800 --> 01:15:49,880
Speaker 1: rights movement. Yeah, so one of one of the one

1276
01:15:49,960 --> 01:15:56,680
Speaker 1: of the the third rail of American politics, um of

1277
01:15:56,840 --> 01:16:00,680
Speaker 1: actually American social life for social dis course was something

1278
01:16:00,760 --> 01:16:06,240
Speaker 1: called free love at that time, and Victoria Um was

1279
01:16:06,280 --> 01:16:09,120
Speaker 1: accused of being the high priestess of free love. And

1280
01:16:09,760 --> 01:16:14,160
Speaker 1: spiritualism had sort of evolved. Spiritualism became by the eighteen

1281
01:16:14,240 --> 01:16:19,400
Speaker 1: seventies became a huge tent that accepted all manner of reformers,

1282
01:16:19,560 --> 01:16:22,760
Speaker 1: and Victoria was one of them. And Victoria's specialty was,

1283
01:16:22,840 --> 01:16:26,080
Speaker 1: of course social reform, and the social reform she preached

1284
01:16:26,680 --> 01:16:30,679
Speaker 1: was was one in which she said, you know, every

1285
01:16:30,760 --> 01:16:33,439
Speaker 1: individual should have the right to love who they want,

1286
01:16:33,880 --> 01:16:37,719
Speaker 1: when they want, for however long they want, without society

1287
01:16:37,840 --> 01:16:41,679
Speaker 1: having the right to pass judgment on her or her

1288
01:16:41,920 --> 01:16:43,840
Speaker 1: or him or in any way make that illegal. In

1289
01:16:43,920 --> 01:16:47,040
Speaker 1: other words, there should be divorce laws. You know, women

1290
01:16:47,040 --> 01:16:49,519
Speaker 1: should be able to get a divorce, women should have

1291
01:16:50,040 --> 01:16:53,439
Speaker 1: property rights, um, Men should be able to leave abusive

1292
01:16:53,439 --> 01:16:56,840
Speaker 1: relationships as well without any kind of uh, without any

1293
01:16:56,920 --> 01:17:00,439
Speaker 1: kind of stain. Victoria spoke the kind of language that

1294
01:17:00,520 --> 01:17:03,439
Speaker 1: we speak today. You know, the society she envisioned was

1295
01:17:03,479 --> 01:17:06,320
Speaker 1: pretty much the one we have where well, to a

1296
01:17:06,400 --> 01:17:10,679
Speaker 1: certain extent, whereas where governments stay as much as possible

1297
01:17:10,760 --> 01:17:13,040
Speaker 1: out of out of a person's personal life, or which

1298
01:17:13,040 --> 01:17:16,320
Speaker 1: she would call out of a person's bedroom. Her critics,

1299
01:17:16,400 --> 01:17:19,040
Speaker 1: who by now we're growing because they were so terrified

1300
01:17:19,120 --> 01:17:23,160
Speaker 1: of her for political reasons, we're quick to label that

1301
01:17:23,360 --> 01:17:26,280
Speaker 1: free love. And in fact, the Spiritualists were often denounced

1302
01:17:26,360 --> 01:17:30,040
Speaker 1: as being free lovers. Now you know that phrase free love,

1303
01:17:30,120 --> 01:17:33,320
Speaker 1: you can imagine what Middle America would have thought of that.

1304
01:17:33,479 --> 01:17:36,080
Speaker 1: You know, America was still a very pious country, a

1305
01:17:36,200 --> 01:17:39,880
Speaker 1: very Christian country, and a very supposedly moral country, even

1306
01:17:39,960 --> 01:17:45,240
Speaker 1: though you know, prostitution was rife. Um, you know, marriages

1307
01:17:45,280 --> 01:17:49,200
Speaker 1: were full of abuse, sexual and physical. You know, it's

1308
01:17:49,400 --> 01:17:51,839
Speaker 1: it's the same old story where there's a surface narrative

1309
01:17:51,880 --> 01:17:54,680
Speaker 1: and then there's what actually happens behind closed doors. And

1310
01:17:54,800 --> 01:17:58,479
Speaker 1: so the free love handle was someone that was given

1311
01:17:58,840 --> 01:18:03,519
Speaker 1: Victoria in order to discredit her, and she never really

1312
01:18:03,640 --> 01:18:05,360
Speaker 1: shied away from that. In fact, in one of her

1313
01:18:05,400 --> 01:18:09,360
Speaker 1: most famous speeches, she said, because of the hypocrisy of that,

1314
01:18:09,600 --> 01:18:11,360
Speaker 1: you know, because of the hypocrisy of the people who

1315
01:18:11,400 --> 01:18:14,400
Speaker 1: were calling her a free lover who she knew, you know,

1316
01:18:14,520 --> 01:18:19,439
Speaker 1: were men who were engaged in extramarital affairs, you know,

1317
01:18:19,479 --> 01:18:23,640
Speaker 1: who frequented prostitutes, who were drunks or or leeches. And

1318
01:18:24,760 --> 01:18:27,559
Speaker 1: she declared, in one of her most famous New York speeches,

1319
01:18:27,600 --> 01:18:29,640
Speaker 1: you know, yes, I'm a free lover, you know, and

1320
01:18:29,880 --> 01:18:31,960
Speaker 1: and no one has the right to tell me that

1321
01:18:32,080 --> 01:18:34,240
Speaker 1: I can't be. And when you think about it, it's

1322
01:18:34,280 --> 01:18:37,000
Speaker 1: such a basic claim. It's such a basic human right,

1323
01:18:37,080 --> 01:18:39,439
Speaker 1: you know, that you should be able to love whom

1324
01:18:39,520 --> 01:18:41,760
Speaker 1: you choose. And she wasn't even talking in those days

1325
01:18:41,800 --> 01:18:44,639
Speaker 1: about gay rights. She was just talking about the actual,

1326
01:18:45,520 --> 01:18:51,120
Speaker 1: the actual ability of a woman to declare herself, um

1327
01:18:51,280 --> 01:18:53,720
Speaker 1: to be the to be, to be in a relationship

1328
01:18:53,800 --> 01:18:57,800
Speaker 1: when she wanted, without any regard for the legal legal

1329
01:18:57,880 --> 01:19:05,800
Speaker 1: limit limitations or strictures. And so Victoria, um ah, Victoria

1330
01:19:06,000 --> 01:19:09,639
Speaker 1: and the spiritualists, because the Spiritualists were also becoming part

1331
01:19:09,720 --> 01:19:13,639
Speaker 1: of the political reform movement, the labor movement, although albeit

1332
01:19:13,880 --> 01:19:15,640
Speaker 1: at kind of the nutcase side of it, you know,

1333
01:19:15,760 --> 01:19:19,360
Speaker 1: the Marxist of this world were appalled by the idea

1334
01:19:19,400 --> 01:19:25,280
Speaker 1: of spiritualist embracing um the tenants of the International Workingman's Association,

1335
01:19:25,280 --> 01:19:27,800
Speaker 1: because they were so Marks was so afraid of being

1336
01:19:28,280 --> 01:19:32,080
Speaker 1: discredited by this group um, which he of course had

1337
01:19:32,120 --> 01:19:34,280
Speaker 1: no truck with, because he was much too much a

1338
01:19:34,360 --> 01:19:37,160
Speaker 1: materialist to think that he was. Anyone could get any

1339
01:19:37,240 --> 01:19:39,320
Speaker 1: kind of message from someone beyond the grave, but whether

1340
01:19:39,400 --> 01:19:43,599
Speaker 1: it be a dead spouse or a god, and so um.

1341
01:19:45,400 --> 01:19:50,360
Speaker 1: The the spiritualists, though to the normal mainstream politician in

1342
01:19:50,360 --> 01:19:52,840
Speaker 1: the United States, were a dangerous group. They were an

1343
01:19:52,880 --> 01:19:55,360
Speaker 1: outlying group, but they were growing group and a growing

1344
01:19:55,439 --> 01:19:58,320
Speaker 1: political force. And so to tire them with the label

1345
01:19:58,360 --> 01:20:01,559
Speaker 1: free lovers and to te Toria with that label um

1346
01:20:01,680 --> 01:20:04,320
Speaker 1: went a long way to discredit them among people who

1347
01:20:04,439 --> 01:20:07,120
Speaker 1: might have been listening. You know. But we're taken aback

1348
01:20:07,160 --> 01:20:09,559
Speaker 1: by that, and certainly wouldn't want to be associated. When

1349
01:20:09,600 --> 01:20:13,680
Speaker 1: we come to Victoria and Claplands or woodhul on Claughland's

1350
01:20:13,680 --> 01:20:19,920
Speaker 1: weekly publishing, The Beach or Tilton Affair, can you talk about, uh,

1351
01:20:20,400 --> 01:20:23,439
Speaker 1: maybe in the life of the publication you talked about

1352
01:20:23,479 --> 01:20:26,160
Speaker 1: how it was kind of an aggregator, a grab bag.

1353
01:20:26,200 --> 01:20:28,960
Speaker 1: All kinds of things were going into it. Can you

1354
01:20:29,000 --> 01:20:32,800
Speaker 1: talk about what hit those pages that was such a

1355
01:20:32,880 --> 01:20:39,840
Speaker 1: big deal and why? Yeah, Um, Victoria in the in

1356
01:20:39,960 --> 01:20:43,840
Speaker 1: the eight seven, in the early eighteen seventies, eighteen seventy one. Um,

1357
01:20:44,040 --> 01:20:47,920
Speaker 1: she was under so much pressure, um and under and

1358
01:20:48,000 --> 01:20:50,479
Speaker 1: being so criticized from so many quarters. Because as soon

1359
01:20:50,560 --> 01:20:54,360
Speaker 1: as she became a radical radical politically, all of the

1360
01:20:54,439 --> 01:20:57,600
Speaker 1: people who tolerated her, the wall streets, the Vanderbilts of

1361
01:20:57,680 --> 01:21:00,760
Speaker 1: this world, Um, the kind of up across New York

1362
01:21:00,880 --> 01:21:03,080
Speaker 1: society who thought of her as a novelty, you know,

1363
01:21:03,200 --> 01:21:06,200
Speaker 1: a lovely novelty with a you know, with an engaging

1364
01:21:06,280 --> 01:21:11,160
Speaker 1: personality and a curious message of women's rights, started to

1365
01:21:11,240 --> 01:21:15,760
Speaker 1: abandon her because she became politically dangerous. Um and and

1366
01:21:15,880 --> 01:21:19,000
Speaker 1: it infuriated her because she knew all of their secrets

1367
01:21:19,400 --> 01:21:22,920
Speaker 1: and she knew, um that she was going to go

1368
01:21:23,040 --> 01:21:26,360
Speaker 1: down because she had no she had no backer, she

1369
01:21:26,439 --> 01:21:30,640
Speaker 1: had no supporters within the establishment to help her or

1370
01:21:30,720 --> 01:21:35,160
Speaker 1: defend her. And and she had come across um Henry

1371
01:21:35,160 --> 01:21:39,960
Speaker 1: Beecher's uh sorry, Henry Ward Beecher, who was the probably

1372
01:21:40,000 --> 01:21:41,640
Speaker 1: the most he was kind of the Billy Graham of

1373
01:21:41,720 --> 01:21:43,960
Speaker 1: his time. He was the most prominent preacher in America,

1374
01:21:44,680 --> 01:21:49,400
Speaker 1: absolutely untouchable figure. And she knew from the women's rights

1375
01:21:49,479 --> 01:21:53,000
Speaker 1: grape Brian and from the Grapevine in New York that

1376
01:21:53,160 --> 01:21:55,880
Speaker 1: not only had he been having affairs with his parishioners

1377
01:21:55,960 --> 01:22:00,240
Speaker 1: for decades, but that he had actually had enough fair

1378
01:22:00,680 --> 01:22:04,120
Speaker 1: by his closest associate, had an affair with the with

1379
01:22:04,280 --> 01:22:07,599
Speaker 1: the wife of his closest associate, Theater Tilton, and had

1380
01:22:08,000 --> 01:22:11,400
Speaker 1: impregnated her, and the wife either had a miscarriage or

1381
01:22:11,400 --> 01:22:15,000
Speaker 1: an abortion. Now that kind of a scandal in that

1382
01:22:15,479 --> 01:22:20,639
Speaker 1: period of America, when not only was the power structure

1383
01:22:20,720 --> 01:22:22,600
Speaker 1: kind of under siege with the you know, with the

1384
01:22:22,680 --> 01:22:25,639
Speaker 1: threat of the Commune, but it was also the period

1385
01:22:25,680 --> 01:22:29,240
Speaker 1: of the Grant Ulysses Grant administration, which you know, was

1386
01:22:29,439 --> 01:22:33,439
Speaker 1: rife with corruption and um, and so the stability that

1387
01:22:33,600 --> 01:22:36,360
Speaker 1: might have come from Washington wasn't there. So all all

1388
01:22:36,479 --> 01:22:39,560
Speaker 1: aspects of American life were under threat. The idea that

1389
01:22:39,680 --> 01:22:43,160
Speaker 1: the top religious figure in the country was also fallible,

1390
01:22:43,200 --> 01:22:46,559
Speaker 1: in fact, not just fallible, you know, but but um

1391
01:22:46,840 --> 01:22:50,360
Speaker 1: but a liar and allege was would be would be

1392
01:22:50,479 --> 01:22:53,240
Speaker 1: a powerful statement for her to make. But she hung

1393
01:22:53,320 --> 01:22:56,040
Speaker 1: back she didn't. She didn't use that information against him

1394
01:22:56,760 --> 01:23:01,240
Speaker 1: until it got to the point that Victoria was absolutely desperate,

1395
01:23:01,880 --> 01:23:05,000
Speaker 1: and so she didn't expose Beecher. What she did was

1396
01:23:05,080 --> 01:23:07,400
Speaker 1: she wrote a letter in the New York Times to

1397
01:23:07,520 --> 01:23:10,640
Speaker 1: describe the hypocrisy of American culture. And she said that

1398
01:23:11,880 --> 01:23:14,599
Speaker 1: you know, she knows personally of a powerful preacher who

1399
01:23:15,160 --> 01:23:17,760
Speaker 1: practices free love, but is too timid to preach it,

1400
01:23:18,280 --> 01:23:20,840
Speaker 1: to to declare it, and that she wishes that the

1401
01:23:20,920 --> 01:23:24,240
Speaker 1: people who believed as she did that men and women

1402
01:23:24,280 --> 01:23:27,000
Speaker 1: should be free um in the in the domestic and

1403
01:23:27,120 --> 01:23:30,880
Speaker 1: social and personal arena um, that they should come forward.

1404
01:23:31,000 --> 01:23:33,759
Speaker 1: If they did that, then then you know her position

1405
01:23:33,760 --> 01:23:39,920
Speaker 1: would be more secure. Um. Of course, that threats, so called,

1406
01:23:40,000 --> 01:23:43,120
Speaker 1: that very veiled threat was met by Beecher and his

1407
01:23:43,280 --> 01:23:49,400
Speaker 1: group um with with absolute terror. Beacher's sisters were Harriet

1408
01:23:49,439 --> 01:23:52,720
Speaker 1: Beecher Stowe, the author of Uncle Tom's Kavin, and a

1409
01:23:52,800 --> 01:23:55,960
Speaker 1: woman named Catherine Beecher, who had written, although she was

1410
01:23:56,360 --> 01:23:59,519
Speaker 1: unmarried and childless, had written was which was considered the

1411
01:23:59,560 --> 01:24:02,840
Speaker 1: kind of ATR. Spock's manual on child rearing at that

1412
01:24:03,000 --> 01:24:05,720
Speaker 1: point in American history. And so these were women with

1413
01:24:05,920 --> 01:24:09,479
Speaker 1: exceedingly powerful voices. So the three of them got together

1414
01:24:09,600 --> 01:24:16,320
Speaker 1: to destroy Victoria and Victoria. Harry Beacher still ran a

1415
01:24:16,400 --> 01:24:22,759
Speaker 1: serial in a magazine called um uh god care anyway.

1416
01:24:22,800 --> 01:24:25,519
Speaker 1: There was a character and a Harriet Beacher still ran

1417
01:24:25,560 --> 01:24:28,360
Speaker 1: a ran a serial in a magazine with a character

1418
01:24:28,439 --> 01:24:31,160
Speaker 1: called Audacia Dang your eyes and the and the person

1419
01:24:31,280 --> 01:24:34,880
Speaker 1: was absolutely recognizable as Victoria. And it was mocking, and

1420
01:24:34,960 --> 01:24:39,240
Speaker 1: it was cruel and Victoria, um there were There was

1421
01:24:39,280 --> 01:24:41,439
Speaker 1: a lot of Victoria what would swallow? But that went

1422
01:24:41,520 --> 01:24:45,400
Speaker 1: too far, and so Victoria decided that she would challenge

1423
01:24:46,520 --> 01:24:48,880
Speaker 1: Henry Ward Beecher. She was going to give a speech

1424
01:24:48,920 --> 01:24:50,840
Speaker 1: on free love, the one I mentioned earlier where she

1425
01:24:50,880 --> 01:24:53,559
Speaker 1: declared herself a free lover. And she said to Henry

1426
01:24:53,560 --> 01:24:56,559
Speaker 1: Ward Beecher, if you present me in this speech, if

1427
01:24:56,600 --> 01:25:00,559
Speaker 1: you come out on the stage with me, I won't.

1428
01:25:00,640 --> 01:25:03,200
Speaker 1: I'll keep your secret. I want you to declare who

1429
01:25:03,280 --> 01:25:06,200
Speaker 1: you are by presenting me. And Henry ward Beacher and

1430
01:25:06,280 --> 01:25:09,439
Speaker 1: his sniveling, according to Victoria's sniveling on his couch, said

1431
01:25:09,520 --> 01:25:12,320
Speaker 1: I can't do that, but I'll pay for the I'll

1432
01:25:12,360 --> 01:25:15,120
Speaker 1: pay for the evening. I'll give you two hundred thousand

1433
01:25:15,160 --> 01:25:18,360
Speaker 1: dollars or or no, sorry, I'll give you twenty dollars

1434
01:25:18,479 --> 01:25:21,960
Speaker 1: to pay for the evening, um for you to rent

1435
01:25:21,960 --> 01:25:25,040
Speaker 1: Apollo Hall for the event, but I can't be there myself.

1436
01:25:25,400 --> 01:25:28,479
Speaker 1: So she said, I'll I'll assume you're going to come.

1437
01:25:28,640 --> 01:25:30,280
Speaker 1: She didn't take no for answer. I'll assume you're going

1438
01:25:30,320 --> 01:25:32,280
Speaker 1: to come, and if you don't come, then I'm not

1439
01:25:32,360 --> 01:25:36,920
Speaker 1: responsible for the consequences and so um. Henry Ward Beacher

1440
01:25:37,000 --> 01:25:39,080
Speaker 1: proved himself not to be courageous enough to do with.

1441
01:25:39,200 --> 01:25:41,479
Speaker 1: Then she proceeded to do, which was declare herself a

1442
01:25:41,520 --> 01:25:45,799
Speaker 1: free lover. And uh. The wrath that fell upon Victoria

1443
01:25:45,880 --> 01:25:50,880
Speaker 1: after that was sensational, and so in her newspaper and

1444
01:25:51,479 --> 01:25:56,320
Speaker 1: November and I'm sorry. In October two she decided to

1445
01:25:56,479 --> 01:26:00,120
Speaker 1: tell the story of the Beach your Tilton affair, and

1446
01:26:00,240 --> 01:26:04,120
Speaker 1: in black and white in this newspaper um she went

1447
01:26:04,160 --> 01:26:07,920
Speaker 1: into all the gory details and exposed him for who

1448
01:26:08,000 --> 01:26:11,280
Speaker 1: he was and brought down this house of cards, which was,

1449
01:26:12,479 --> 01:26:17,439
Speaker 1: you know, the Beecher family, the Congregational Church in Brooklyn,

1450
01:26:17,960 --> 01:26:22,559
Speaker 1: the religious pillar upon which so much of the moral

1451
01:26:22,720 --> 01:26:26,960
Speaker 1: American myth was built. She brought it down in that article,

1452
01:26:27,120 --> 01:26:30,519
Speaker 1: and the the issue flew off the stands. They couldn't

1453
01:26:30,600 --> 01:26:34,360
Speaker 1: keep it. Uh, everyone wanted to read it. No one

1454
01:26:34,439 --> 01:26:37,400
Speaker 1: wanted to report it, but everyone wanted to repeat it.

1455
01:26:37,520 --> 01:26:44,200
Speaker 1: And so Victoria, in taking that rash step, basically um

1456
01:26:45,400 --> 01:26:49,040
Speaker 1: ended her political career. Ironically, it was the month before

1457
01:26:49,120 --> 01:26:51,479
Speaker 1: she was on the ballot as a presidential candidate that

1458
01:26:51,640 --> 01:26:53,960
Speaker 1: she that she wrote this piece, or that she allowed

1459
01:26:54,000 --> 01:26:56,360
Speaker 1: this piece to be published in her in her newspaper,

1460
01:26:56,920 --> 01:27:00,880
Speaker 1: And on the morning of the election day, she was

1461
01:27:00,960 --> 01:27:07,080
Speaker 1: in jail for having distributed that newspaper through the mail,

1462
01:27:07,920 --> 01:27:13,679
Speaker 1: thereby breaking US violating US obscenity laws by mailing obscene material.

1463
01:27:13,840 --> 01:27:16,479
Speaker 1: Obscene material being the story of the Beach your Tilton affair,

1464
01:27:16,560 --> 01:27:18,840
Speaker 1: which everyone was trying to cover up. So it was

1465
01:27:18,920 --> 01:27:21,439
Speaker 1: a bold and reckless move on her part. But she

1466
01:27:21,520 --> 01:27:23,599
Speaker 1: did what she set out to do, which was exposed

1467
01:27:23,600 --> 01:27:27,160
Speaker 1: the hypocrisy in American society. No, it's it's a seven.

1468
01:27:27,200 --> 01:27:30,439
Speaker 1: A couple of years later that Victoria leaves the United States,

1469
01:27:30,680 --> 01:27:32,360
Speaker 1: can you talk about what her life was like an

1470
01:27:32,439 --> 01:27:38,080
Speaker 1: intervening years those couple of years before she finally goes Yeah,

1471
01:27:38,240 --> 01:27:42,960
Speaker 1: Victoria was fairly discredited politically among the society. She had

1472
01:27:43,040 --> 01:27:44,800
Speaker 1: come to know, in her early years in New York,

1473
01:27:44,880 --> 01:27:48,120
Speaker 1: and the women's rights movement really wanted nothing to do

1474
01:27:48,240 --> 01:27:52,519
Speaker 1: with her because with exposing the Tilton Beach your scandal,

1475
01:27:53,240 --> 01:27:56,080
Speaker 1: she she had she had gone too far, and she

1476
01:27:56,320 --> 01:27:59,439
Speaker 1: was a liability, of political liability for the women's movement.

1477
01:28:00,120 --> 01:28:02,920
Speaker 1: And so Victoria was on her own, and she retreated

1478
01:28:03,000 --> 01:28:05,040
Speaker 1: where she knew she would still be welcome, which would

1479
01:28:05,040 --> 01:28:07,600
Speaker 1: be to the Spiritualist And so she became one of

1480
01:28:07,680 --> 01:28:10,519
Speaker 1: the great speakers on the Spiritualist circuit. And and she

1481
01:28:10,800 --> 01:28:13,400
Speaker 1: was more bold than she ever had been. And she

1482
01:28:13,520 --> 01:28:16,400
Speaker 1: basically had nothing to lose because she had lost just

1483
01:28:16,479 --> 01:28:20,880
Speaker 1: about everything. And she told it as she saw it, um,

1484
01:28:21,040 --> 01:28:25,320
Speaker 1: and her speeches um were um, you know, filled to

1485
01:28:25,360 --> 01:28:29,960
Speaker 1: capacity wherever she went. But by eye she was really exhausted.

1486
01:28:30,160 --> 01:28:36,280
Speaker 1: And so um Cornelius Vanderbilt had died and his son's

1487
01:28:36,920 --> 01:28:42,200
Speaker 1: his family was so afraid that Victoria or that Tenney,

1488
01:28:42,240 --> 01:28:44,479
Speaker 1: who had been the old man's lover, was going to

1489
01:28:44,600 --> 01:28:47,640
Speaker 1: try to claim some kind of of money from him,

1490
01:28:47,760 --> 01:28:50,080
Speaker 1: or that they would then go and expose Vanderbilt for

1491
01:28:50,160 --> 01:28:54,839
Speaker 1: what he was um that they paid, literally paid Victoria

1492
01:28:54,960 --> 01:28:59,519
Speaker 1: and Tenny to leave town. And so Victoria decided to

1493
01:28:59,600 --> 01:29:03,920
Speaker 1: take that whole crazy Clafland client with her to England, UM,

1494
01:29:04,120 --> 01:29:07,679
Speaker 1: and there she went to re establish herself. Victoria sought

1495
01:29:07,760 --> 01:29:09,320
Speaker 1: to leave the United States to go as far as

1496
01:29:09,400 --> 01:29:13,439
Speaker 1: England because she needed to escape the the Tilton m

1497
01:29:14,000 --> 01:29:18,480
Speaker 1: beat Your scandal. She had emerged from it, you know, wounded, devastated,

1498
01:29:18,880 --> 01:29:21,680
Speaker 1: she had lost everything. Henry Ward Beacher had not. He

1499
01:29:22,000 --> 01:29:24,439
Speaker 1: was still as powerful as he ever had been. In fact,

1500
01:29:24,520 --> 01:29:26,400
Speaker 1: he had been working on a book on the life

1501
01:29:26,439 --> 01:29:29,640
Speaker 1: of Christ, so he was still um, the figure, the

1502
01:29:29,720 --> 01:29:34,080
Speaker 1: moral authority in the United States. So Victoria in retreat.

1503
01:29:34,160 --> 01:29:36,400
Speaker 1: It was one of the few times she actually ever retreated,

1504
01:29:36,640 --> 01:29:39,439
Speaker 1: but it was just exhaustion on her part. She she

1505
01:29:39,560 --> 01:29:42,519
Speaker 1: went to England and tried to re establish herself there

1506
01:29:42,800 --> 01:29:45,519
Speaker 1: among the spiritualists UM and as a as a as

1507
01:29:45,560 --> 01:29:51,120
Speaker 1: a speaker in that country and in the audience, I mean,

1508
01:29:51,240 --> 01:29:53,960
Speaker 1: as happened to her time and again. She was such

1509
01:29:54,040 --> 01:29:58,519
Speaker 1: a such a um, such a magnetic figure that in

1510
01:29:58,640 --> 01:30:01,439
Speaker 1: the audience there was a gentleman, a banker from an old,

1511
01:30:02,040 --> 01:30:06,400
Speaker 1: well established British banking family, UM, a man named John

1512
01:30:06,439 --> 01:30:10,720
Speaker 1: Biddolf Martin, who heard her and was so moved by

1513
01:30:10,800 --> 01:30:14,680
Speaker 1: what she said that he began to court her, and

1514
01:30:15,560 --> 01:30:23,120
Speaker 1: this was exactly the kind of um sanctuary that Victoria needed.

1515
01:30:24,040 --> 01:30:27,200
Speaker 1: Luckily for her, John Martin was not your average banker.

1516
01:30:27,360 --> 01:30:30,000
Speaker 1: His closest relative had been a sister who had just died,

1517
01:30:30,400 --> 01:30:32,400
Speaker 1: and she had been a spiritualist, and she had been

1518
01:30:32,439 --> 01:30:35,840
Speaker 1: a women's rights advocate. And John Martin himself was a

1519
01:30:36,120 --> 01:30:40,600
Speaker 1: was a social reformer. So Victoria literally fell into this

1520
01:30:40,760 --> 01:30:46,240
Speaker 1: man's arms, and and they they were married, and she

1521
01:30:46,920 --> 01:30:51,320
Speaker 1: became not I wouldn't say a pillar of British society,

1522
01:30:51,360 --> 01:30:55,160
Speaker 1: of British kind of upper class society. But she became

1523
01:30:56,800 --> 01:31:00,799
Speaker 1: one of those American women who appear out of nowhere,

1524
01:31:00,880 --> 01:31:02,880
Speaker 1: out of New York. Usually they came with a bundle

1525
01:31:02,920 --> 01:31:06,240
Speaker 1: of cash to try to to in order to save

1526
01:31:06,320 --> 01:31:09,960
Speaker 1: a dying aristocratic family or to save them from ruin.

1527
01:31:10,560 --> 01:31:14,760
Speaker 1: Victoria came to save a lonely banker from his solitude.

1528
01:31:14,920 --> 01:31:18,200
Speaker 1: And so she lived in England, uh for for many

1529
01:31:18,280 --> 01:31:24,760
Speaker 1: years until her death in and Um. Yes, and and

1530
01:31:24,880 --> 01:31:28,720
Speaker 1: she lived a retired existence in comparison to how she

1531
01:31:28,760 --> 01:31:31,479
Speaker 1: lived in the United States, but one that was actually

1532
01:31:31,560 --> 01:31:34,080
Speaker 1: befitting a woman of her age in those times. But

1533
01:31:34,200 --> 01:31:36,559
Speaker 1: she was in no way less radical and in fact,

1534
01:31:37,479 --> 01:31:40,000
Speaker 1: UH she was part of the spiritualist movement UM and

1535
01:31:40,160 --> 01:31:42,640
Speaker 1: she was also part of the eugenics movement, which was

1536
01:31:42,800 --> 01:31:46,680
Speaker 1: very interesting and it makes sense why she would be

1537
01:31:46,800 --> 01:31:49,120
Speaker 1: because when you think about what motivated her when she

1538
01:31:49,240 --> 01:31:53,200
Speaker 1: was a fifteen year old girl, her first political lesson

1539
01:31:53,760 --> 01:31:57,760
Speaker 1: was that women should women should be instructed how to

1540
01:31:57,880 --> 01:32:00,920
Speaker 1: take care of themselves physically so they can make sure

1541
01:32:01,040 --> 01:32:03,080
Speaker 1: that they have a child who is healthy. And that

1542
01:32:03,320 --> 01:32:07,240
Speaker 1: that little Colonel was something that followed Victoria all her life,

1543
01:32:07,360 --> 01:32:12,120
Speaker 1: that life lesson, that was her mission. Even as an

1544
01:32:12,160 --> 01:32:15,080
Speaker 1: older woman when she was in London UM in the

1545
01:32:15,320 --> 01:32:18,840
Speaker 1: in the beginning of the twentieth century, she she was

1546
01:32:18,880 --> 01:32:24,240
Speaker 1: an advocate of eugenics because she thought that until people

1547
01:32:24,400 --> 01:32:29,760
Speaker 1: understood the actually the mechanics of their bodies UM and

1548
01:32:29,840 --> 01:32:33,719
Speaker 1: still they understood health, UH and well being, that society

1549
01:32:33,760 --> 01:32:37,360
Speaker 1: would always produce an underclass that was poor. And it

1550
01:32:37,520 --> 01:32:40,639
Speaker 1: wasn't that she was trying to create a master race

1551
01:32:40,760 --> 01:32:44,040
Speaker 1: by any means. What she did was she just used

1552
01:32:44,080 --> 01:32:47,040
Speaker 1: that information she had gotten all those years as a spiritualist,

1553
01:32:48,040 --> 01:32:52,080
Speaker 1: and and and the tales of woe that parents told

1554
01:32:52,160 --> 01:32:55,160
Speaker 1: her parents who had no money and and came and

1555
01:32:55,439 --> 01:32:58,599
Speaker 1: you know, described their children who were dying young, who

1556
01:32:58,640 --> 01:33:02,919
Speaker 1: were dying at birth, or who lived with um physical

1557
01:33:03,080 --> 01:33:08,000
Speaker 1: or or or mental ailments. And that and in Victoria

1558
01:33:08,080 --> 01:33:11,000
Speaker 1: and her own self education had come to learn. And

1559
01:33:11,360 --> 01:33:14,840
Speaker 1: also when she got to England, she she studied more

1560
01:33:15,200 --> 01:33:20,400
Speaker 1: the idea that if people understood health, physical health, then

1561
01:33:21,080 --> 01:33:24,360
Speaker 1: and if poorer women could be told and given health

1562
01:33:24,400 --> 01:33:26,040
Speaker 1: care and could be told how to take care of

1563
01:33:26,120 --> 01:33:31,080
Speaker 1: themselves and given proper nutritional information, that this group of people,

1564
01:33:31,160 --> 01:33:34,800
Speaker 1: this under class, might not be condemned to generation after

1565
01:33:34,920 --> 01:33:37,880
Speaker 1: generation of poverty. And so that's what what what drew

1566
01:33:38,439 --> 01:33:41,840
Speaker 1: Victoria to that movement, and it's absolutely understandable is the

1567
01:33:41,960 --> 01:33:46,360
Speaker 1: thread throughout her political life, throughout her spiritual life, and

1568
01:33:46,479 --> 01:33:49,479
Speaker 1: into her and into her old age. Now, that year

1569
01:33:50,600 --> 01:33:54,320
Speaker 1: when Victoria does leave the United States, h it's also

1570
01:33:54,520 --> 01:33:58,840
Speaker 1: a critical year for for the movements in America that

1571
01:33:58,880 --> 01:34:02,080
Speaker 1: I wanted to build the world Victoria and Vision. Can

1572
01:34:02,120 --> 01:34:05,080
Speaker 1: you talk a little more about what happened in that

1573
01:34:05,720 --> 01:34:09,400
Speaker 1: year when Victoria had felt like she lost and was leaving,

1574
01:34:09,840 --> 01:34:15,200
Speaker 1: what else happened in her radical circles that that shaped

1575
01:34:15,600 --> 01:34:18,679
Speaker 1: how much of that world they imagined they would achieve

1576
01:34:19,280 --> 01:34:22,120
Speaker 1: in the evolution of the labor movement and UM the

1577
01:34:22,280 --> 01:34:25,639
Speaker 1: radical political movements UM in Europe and the United States

1578
01:34:25,720 --> 01:34:29,599
Speaker 1: by the late eighteen seventies, the second generation of labor

1579
01:34:29,720 --> 01:34:33,479
Speaker 1: radicals who would have been kind of Victoria's age, UM.

1580
01:34:33,560 --> 01:34:37,599
Speaker 1: You know, she's a second generation UM feminists. They didn't

1581
01:34:37,600 --> 01:34:40,599
Speaker 1: call themselves feminists of the second generation women's rights advocate.

1582
01:34:41,280 --> 01:34:44,120
Speaker 1: The second generation labor activists in Europe and the United

1583
01:34:44,160 --> 01:34:47,919
Speaker 1: States were much more radical UM than the first generation

1584
01:34:47,960 --> 01:34:51,320
Speaker 1: were then then let's say Karl Marxist generation. They were

1585
01:34:51,400 --> 01:34:55,839
Speaker 1: the second generation who were operating in the eighteen seventies,

1586
01:34:56,160 --> 01:34:58,720
Speaker 1: were taking their fight to the street. And part of

1587
01:34:58,800 --> 01:35:00,799
Speaker 1: it were lessons that they had and from the commune,

1588
01:35:00,800 --> 01:35:03,840
Speaker 1: from the communities in the early seventies in Paris. But

1589
01:35:04,000 --> 01:35:07,519
Speaker 1: part of it was just UM the frustration of the

1590
01:35:08,800 --> 01:35:13,000
Speaker 1: working the labor movement, which saw its efforts to combine

1591
01:35:13,240 --> 01:35:17,240
Speaker 1: and to grow as a political force being stifled by

1592
01:35:17,360 --> 01:35:21,880
Speaker 1: this powerful beast which was called capitalism, which interestingly enough,

1593
01:35:22,360 --> 01:35:26,519
Speaker 1: had only actually begun being called capitalism UM in the

1594
01:35:26,640 --> 01:35:29,320
Speaker 1: in the mid century. So this was an entirely new

1595
01:35:29,840 --> 01:35:32,840
Speaker 1: phenomenon that people only were beginning to grapple with this

1596
01:35:33,120 --> 01:35:37,559
Speaker 1: this mammoth force that was controlling people's lives and chewing

1597
01:35:38,120 --> 01:35:42,240
Speaker 1: workers up and spitting them out without you know, shedding

1598
01:35:42,280 --> 01:35:46,200
Speaker 1: a tear. And so the labor movement became very radical

1599
01:35:46,280 --> 01:35:48,320
Speaker 1: in the seventies. In the years between eighteen seventy seven

1600
01:35:48,360 --> 01:35:52,120
Speaker 1: and eighteen when Victoria was in England, she had lost

1601
01:35:52,200 --> 01:35:54,320
Speaker 1: touch with what was happening in the United States and

1602
01:35:55,080 --> 01:35:58,120
Speaker 1: she had been off the stage. She had been off

1603
01:35:58,240 --> 01:36:01,280
Speaker 1: the off the kind of political radar and the women's

1604
01:36:01,320 --> 01:36:04,840
Speaker 1: rights radar um and had actually taken refuge in this

1605
01:36:04,960 --> 01:36:08,160
Speaker 1: kind of bourgeois existence she had in London with her

1606
01:36:08,200 --> 01:36:12,000
Speaker 1: new husband. And she went back to the United States.

1607
01:36:12,080 --> 01:36:13,960
Speaker 1: She decided that she wanted to get back on the

1608
01:36:14,040 --> 01:36:17,880
Speaker 1: circuit because she had revived herself and she there's certain

1609
01:36:17,920 --> 01:36:22,880
Speaker 1: things happened, and she uh had had a a brush

1610
01:36:22,960 --> 01:36:27,160
Speaker 1: with the with the British Museum, a libel suit where

1611
01:36:27,240 --> 01:36:30,960
Speaker 1: she um she had sued the British Museum because it

1612
01:36:31,080 --> 01:36:36,200
Speaker 1: contained several several pamphlets pertaining to the Beecher Tilton scandal,

1613
01:36:36,400 --> 01:36:39,280
Speaker 1: and and Victoria wanted that out of her life. You know,

1614
01:36:39,360 --> 01:36:40,800
Speaker 1: she had moved to England to get rid of that,

1615
01:36:40,880 --> 01:36:43,800
Speaker 1: and so she she she sued the British Museum for

1616
01:36:43,840 --> 01:36:47,360
Speaker 1: a libel because they had these pamphlets. And so the

1617
01:36:47,640 --> 01:36:51,960
Speaker 1: result of that lawsuit was mixed a judge rule that yes,

1618
01:36:52,439 --> 01:36:55,360
Speaker 1: Victoria had been libeled by these pamphlets, that she was

1619
01:36:55,479 --> 01:36:59,040
Speaker 1: not this free lover and this wanton woman described in

1620
01:36:59,120 --> 01:37:01,920
Speaker 1: these brochures of these documents that came out of New

1621
01:37:02,040 --> 01:37:05,200
Speaker 1: York Um that were in the British Museum's possession, but

1622
01:37:05,320 --> 01:37:08,040
Speaker 1: that the museum itself was not guilty of liabel. Well, Victoria,

1623
01:37:08,120 --> 01:37:10,640
Speaker 1: in her way declared it a victory entirely for her

1624
01:37:10,960 --> 01:37:13,599
Speaker 1: for herself, and so she felt now that she had

1625
01:37:14,040 --> 01:37:17,280
Speaker 1: finally put that scandal behind her. She felt that that

1626
01:37:17,439 --> 01:37:19,800
Speaker 1: was kind of the bookmark um at the end of

1627
01:37:19,840 --> 01:37:21,800
Speaker 1: the Batriot Tilton scandal, she could go back to the

1628
01:37:21,920 --> 01:37:25,040
Speaker 1: United States and maybe revived not a political career, but

1629
01:37:25,080 --> 01:37:27,559
Speaker 1: at least a speaking career, become a relevant voice again.

1630
01:37:28,400 --> 01:37:31,599
Speaker 1: But she arrived in the United States to an entirely

1631
01:37:31,680 --> 01:37:37,080
Speaker 1: different scene. It had moved beyond her argument. The women's

1632
01:37:37,160 --> 01:37:40,519
Speaker 1: rights movement was now focused entirely on getting the vote

1633
01:37:40,560 --> 01:37:46,160
Speaker 1: for women. The political movement was the the was radical

1634
01:37:46,320 --> 01:37:49,880
Speaker 1: and looked at her as a kind of a middle aged,

1635
01:37:50,720 --> 01:37:52,840
Speaker 1: wealthy woman. You know, that's how she appeared, and in

1636
01:37:52,960 --> 01:37:54,800
Speaker 1: fact that's who she was. You know, her spirit was

1637
01:37:54,840 --> 01:37:58,439
Speaker 1: still Victoria Woodhall, but people had also forgotten her. So

1638
01:37:58,560 --> 01:38:01,680
Speaker 1: the audience she had previs Lee was not there. And

1639
01:38:01,760 --> 01:38:04,160
Speaker 1: it was kind of a sad coda to her to

1640
01:38:04,280 --> 01:38:07,920
Speaker 1: her career because her one and only lecture there fell flat,

1641
01:38:08,439 --> 01:38:11,040
Speaker 1: and so she canceled. She made some excuses and canceled

1642
01:38:11,080 --> 01:38:15,080
Speaker 1: her tour and retreated to England and John Martin, her husband,

1643
01:38:15,120 --> 01:38:18,840
Speaker 1: had a family property in the in Gloucestershire and the

1644
01:38:18,920 --> 01:38:23,320
Speaker 1: west of England, and she she literally would move there

1645
01:38:23,600 --> 01:38:26,280
Speaker 1: and live in this grand house up on a hill

1646
01:38:27,080 --> 01:38:29,639
Speaker 1: and wage for the rest of her life, wage very

1647
01:38:29,880 --> 01:38:36,040
Speaker 1: small battles for education, for UM, driving for drives, for

1648
01:38:36,160 --> 01:38:39,439
Speaker 1: women's rights to drive, of all things UM. She got

1649
01:38:39,560 --> 01:38:43,960
Speaker 1: involved in UM in minor scuffles with local authorities. She

1650
01:38:44,120 --> 01:38:46,920
Speaker 1: was still that fighter, is still Victoria Woodhall, but her

1651
01:38:47,040 --> 01:38:52,560
Speaker 1: days of trying to change basically America and by and

1652
01:38:53,280 --> 01:38:56,720
Speaker 1: and the world were were well passed her. So in

1653
01:38:56,920 --> 01:38:59,920
Speaker 1: kind of thinking from the end of her life back

1654
01:39:00,160 --> 01:39:04,599
Speaker 1: can summing it up, do you do you see any

1655
01:39:05,040 --> 01:39:08,639
Speaker 1: peers for Victoria in kind of the sweep of American history.

1656
01:39:08,720 --> 01:39:11,400
Speaker 1: I mean, with all these firsts with you mentioned her courage,

1657
01:39:11,720 --> 01:39:15,240
Speaker 1: with her sensitivity, with being so far ahead of her time. Um,

1658
01:39:15,720 --> 01:39:20,920
Speaker 1: she's a remarkable person. Um. Are there any others people

1659
01:39:21,040 --> 01:39:22,560
Speaker 1: kind of stand with her? Or does she kind of

1660
01:39:22,600 --> 01:39:26,960
Speaker 1: stand alone? To you? In my mind, she stands alone.

1661
01:39:27,040 --> 01:39:29,160
Speaker 1: You know. When I was writing about her, whenever you

1662
01:39:29,280 --> 01:39:33,680
Speaker 1: write history, you know, you refer to your own experiences

1663
01:39:33,720 --> 01:39:36,360
Speaker 1: and people you you know, contemporary and so at this

1664
01:39:36,400 --> 01:39:37,759
Speaker 1: time when I was writing, it was during the Clinton

1665
01:39:37,760 --> 01:39:40,840
Speaker 1: administration and Hillary Clinton was out there, and I'd sometimes think,

1666
01:39:40,920 --> 01:39:43,439
Speaker 1: you know, is she a Hillary Clinton type of figure?

1667
01:39:43,880 --> 01:39:46,800
Speaker 1: But no, I mean Victoria was really there are there

1668
01:39:46,840 --> 01:39:49,000
Speaker 1: are and and as I said you know before, there

1669
01:39:49,120 --> 01:39:52,599
Speaker 1: is a there's a wealth of history that hasn't been told,

1670
01:39:52,680 --> 01:39:55,519
Speaker 1: and most of it is you know, minorities and women's stories.

1671
01:39:56,160 --> 01:39:59,120
Speaker 1: But um, and so no doubt there are other Victoria

1672
01:39:59,160 --> 01:40:02,719
Speaker 1: Woodhalls out there. Um. But in my mind, she's unique

1673
01:40:02,800 --> 01:40:06,720
Speaker 1: in that she was such a singular figure that was

1674
01:40:06,960 --> 01:40:09,760
Speaker 1: powerful on her own. I mean, when you think about it,

1675
01:40:09,880 --> 01:40:13,160
Speaker 1: she had people who educated her along the way, but

1676
01:40:13,760 --> 01:40:17,800
Speaker 1: the energy that propelled her for decades was her own

1677
01:40:18,400 --> 01:40:21,880
Speaker 1: based on nothing but her own will, her own spirit,

1678
01:40:22,240 --> 01:40:25,400
Speaker 1: her own sense of justice, her own sense of righting,

1679
01:40:25,720 --> 01:40:29,080
Speaker 1: you know, wrongs wrongs on a massive scale, and and

1680
01:40:29,560 --> 01:40:31,519
Speaker 1: the fact that she was able to do that and

1681
01:40:32,400 --> 01:40:37,280
Speaker 1: and to have the courage and um and to make

1682
01:40:37,360 --> 01:40:39,880
Speaker 1: such an impact at a time when women didn't even

1683
01:40:39,920 --> 01:40:42,000
Speaker 1: have a voice. So it's not just that she was

1684
01:40:42,760 --> 01:40:47,720
Speaker 1: about breaking barriers, she actually broke the barriers. Now, you know,

1685
01:40:48,080 --> 01:40:51,880
Speaker 1: she was reckless, she wasn't shrewd politically, and so she

1686
01:40:52,080 --> 01:40:54,599
Speaker 1: was easily dismissed by you know, because she went too

1687
01:40:54,680 --> 01:40:57,320
Speaker 1: far and she wasn't a very good chess player. But

1688
01:40:57,439 --> 01:41:00,519
Speaker 1: I think as a historical figure in American an American

1689
01:41:01,920 --> 01:41:06,840
Speaker 1: feminist history, I think that she stands alone, and and

1690
01:41:07,160 --> 01:41:10,320
Speaker 1: I think that she's someone who deserves even more more

1691
01:41:10,400 --> 01:41:12,559
Speaker 1: research than I did. I think that to look at her,

1692
01:41:13,760 --> 01:41:15,559
Speaker 1: you know, kind of as you're kind of talking about

1693
01:41:15,600 --> 01:41:18,760
Speaker 1: it across disciplines, you know, it's not just as a spiritualist,

1694
01:41:18,840 --> 01:41:21,479
Speaker 1: not just as a politician, it's not just as women's right.

1695
01:41:21,520 --> 01:41:24,080
Speaker 1: Yet to really embed her in what was going on

1696
01:41:24,360 --> 01:41:27,680
Speaker 1: at the time makes you appreciate her even more. And

1697
01:41:28,360 --> 01:41:30,479
Speaker 1: and I think that for what we're going through today.

1698
01:41:32,640 --> 01:41:36,599
Speaker 1: Um you know, we're at a place now where we're

1699
01:41:36,600 --> 01:41:41,040
Speaker 1: going through another revolution that's really comparable to the Industrial

1700
01:41:41,160 --> 01:41:45,960
Speaker 1: Revolution in scale and profound impact on society. And and

1701
01:41:46,120 --> 01:41:49,200
Speaker 1: one of the interesting things is, you know that historically,

1702
01:41:49,280 --> 01:41:52,400
Speaker 1: when people are scared because of changes they have no

1703
01:41:52,520 --> 01:41:55,600
Speaker 1: control over or they don't understand, they seek solace and

1704
01:41:56,000 --> 01:41:58,600
Speaker 1: spiritualism or religion or something. I don't really see that

1705
01:41:58,720 --> 01:42:01,599
Speaker 1: happening now, and I maybe you do. I was racking

1706
01:42:01,680 --> 01:42:03,800
Speaker 1: my brain to think that if there's that kind of

1707
01:42:03,840 --> 01:42:06,599
Speaker 1: a revival now, but it's interestingly, I don't think it's happening.

1708
01:42:06,640 --> 01:42:13,800
Speaker 1: But um ah, but Victoria kind of speaks to us

1709
01:42:13,920 --> 01:42:18,880
Speaker 1: again because unbelievably, the very rights she was talking about,

1710
01:42:18,920 --> 01:42:21,640
Speaker 1: you know, while women can vote, and while women do

1711
01:42:21,880 --> 01:42:24,599
Speaker 1: have rights to property ownership and they're not the property

1712
01:42:24,640 --> 01:42:28,760
Speaker 1: of their husbands, you know, we're still talking about abortion rights,

1713
01:42:28,920 --> 01:42:32,240
Speaker 1: and we're still talking about you know, gay rights, and

1714
01:42:32,280 --> 01:42:36,640
Speaker 1: we're still talking about government interference in personal lives. And

1715
01:42:36,840 --> 01:42:41,639
Speaker 1: so the the war she was waging then she could

1716
01:42:41,680 --> 01:42:45,240
Speaker 1: be waging today, you know, basically almost using the same language,

1717
01:42:45,240 --> 01:42:49,479
Speaker 1: which is really both sad and kind of interesting. Uh,

1718
01:42:49,960 --> 01:42:51,599
Speaker 1: you know, and so I think that she's a very

1719
01:42:51,680 --> 01:42:54,800
Speaker 1: pertinent figure for us to study at this moment. And

1720
01:42:54,880 --> 01:42:58,120
Speaker 1: that period of history is a fascinating one for us

1721
01:42:58,160 --> 01:43:00,679
Speaker 1: to look at because of the because of the changes

1722
01:43:00,720 --> 01:43:03,200
Speaker 1: that were occurring, and the fact that you know, where

1723
01:43:03,479 --> 01:43:07,880
Speaker 1: society was at eighteen no one could have predicted where

1724
01:43:07,880 --> 01:43:11,560
Speaker 1: it would have been even in eighteen seventy, and so

1725
01:43:12,120 --> 01:43:15,800
Speaker 1: where we are today. You know, we sometimes think is

1726
01:43:15,880 --> 01:43:18,000
Speaker 1: this over? You know, is the mayhem, the kind of

1727
01:43:18,040 --> 01:43:21,560
Speaker 1: the social mayhem, the technological breakthroughs? Is it over? You know,

1728
01:43:21,760 --> 01:43:24,719
Speaker 1: it's far from over, and we've got a long way ahead.

1729
01:43:24,760 --> 01:43:27,880
Speaker 1: And so um, it's it's interesting to see who the

1730
01:43:28,000 --> 01:43:30,960
Speaker 1: Victoria wood Halls might be today and who what are

1731
01:43:31,000 --> 01:43:34,720
Speaker 1: they saying, and and how and where who should we

1732
01:43:34,800 --> 01:43:38,519
Speaker 1: listen to and what directions are they pointing pointing in um,

1733
01:43:38,800 --> 01:43:43,160
Speaker 1: And you know, she came out of nowhere, and and

1734
01:43:43,280 --> 01:43:45,519
Speaker 1: maybe the next Victoria wood Hall is just out there

1735
01:43:45,560 --> 01:43:58,160
Speaker 1: writing a blog somewhere. Hey, folks, it's Aaron here. I

1736
01:43:58,200 --> 01:44:01,160
Speaker 1: hope today's interview helped you deep in your understanding of

1737
01:44:01,360 --> 01:44:04,600
Speaker 1: everything involved in the world of spiritualism. But we're not

1738
01:44:04,800 --> 01:44:07,479
Speaker 1: done yet. We have more interviews to share with you,

1739
01:44:07,720 --> 01:44:10,720
Speaker 1: So stick around after this brief sponsor break to hear

1740
01:44:10,760 --> 01:44:22,200
Speaker 1: a preview of next week's interview. Next time on un Obscured.

1741
01:44:23,120 --> 01:44:25,760
Speaker 1: I think I've always been I don't know if you'd

1742
01:44:25,760 --> 01:44:30,360
Speaker 1: say gifted, but at least fascinated by outliers. These are

1743
01:44:30,439 --> 01:44:34,719
Speaker 1: the wildest of the wild folks. I think I've always

1744
01:44:34,920 --> 01:44:37,759
Speaker 1: been able to, I don't know, walk along the beach

1745
01:44:38,000 --> 01:44:42,599
Speaker 1: sand and find some odd thing that other people don't notice,

1746
01:44:42,880 --> 01:44:47,240
Speaker 1: or some piece of glass that looks shiny. Uh. And

1747
01:44:47,320 --> 01:44:51,120
Speaker 1: these are definitely those kinds of people, you know, within

1748
01:44:51,200 --> 01:44:54,880
Speaker 1: the wide range of the spiritualist movement, I seem to

1749
01:44:54,960 --> 01:44:57,320
Speaker 1: be able to find, you know, the toad and the

1750
01:44:57,400 --> 01:45:00,679
Speaker 1: hole or the serpent in the garden, if you might say.

1751
01:45:01,920 --> 01:45:05,320
Speaker 1: And I think by looking at those outliers, you can

1752
01:45:05,439 --> 01:45:10,000
Speaker 1: see stuff that's true within the movement, but maybe harder

1753
01:45:10,080 --> 01:45:16,400
Speaker 1: to see if that's true in potential, and that leads

1754
01:45:16,439 --> 01:45:21,080
Speaker 1: you into questioning main narrative about what spiritualism was and

1755
01:45:21,680 --> 01:45:40,719
Speaker 1: trying to follow its logic. A Lot Obscured was created

1756
01:45:40,760 --> 01:45:44,360
Speaker 1: by me Aaron Manky and produced by Matt Frederick, Alex Williams,

1757
01:45:44,479 --> 01:45:48,280
Speaker 1: and Josh Thayne in partnership with I Heart Radio. Research

1758
01:45:48,360 --> 01:45:50,360
Speaker 1: and writing for this season is all the work of

1759
01:45:50,439 --> 01:45:53,200
Speaker 1: my right hand man Carl Nellis and the brilliant Chad

1760
01:45:53,280 --> 01:45:56,840
Speaker 1: Lawson composed the brand new soundtrack. Learn more about our

1761
01:45:56,880 --> 01:46:00,840
Speaker 1: contributing historians, source material and links to are other shows

1762
01:46:01,000 --> 01:46:05,280
Speaker 1: over at history unobscured dot com and until next time,

1763
01:46:06,000 --> 01:46:15,840
Speaker 1: thanks for listening. Unobscured is a production of I Heart

1764
01:46:15,920 --> 01:46:18,519
Speaker 1: Radio and Aaron Monkey. For more podcasts for My heart Radio,

1765
01:46:18,640 --> 01:46:21,080
Speaker 1: visit i heeart Radio, app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you

1766
01:46:21,160 --> 01:46:22,280
Speaker 1: listen to your favorite shows.