Speaker 1: Welcomed Unobscured, a production of I Heart Radio and Aaron Minkey.
Speaker 1: Today's guest interview is author and journalist Mary Gabriel. Her
Speaker 1: books have been finalists for the Pulitzer Prize, the National
Speaker 1: Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award. For
Speaker 1: nearly two decades, she worked in Washington and London as
Speaker 1: an editor for Reuter's. Her biography of Victoria Woodhall Notorious
Speaker 1: Victoria isn't the only book that sent Mary Gabriel into
Speaker 1: the past, though. She also wrote a dual biography on
Speaker 1: Carl and Jenny Marks, and when researcher Carl Nellis talked
Speaker 1: with Mary, they explored beyond the life of Victoria Woodhall's
Speaker 1: radical comrades to discuss how Mrs Satan's political career fits
Speaker 1: into the bigger picture. It's a fascinating interview and I
Speaker 1: can't wait to share it with you. So without further ado,
Speaker 1: here's Mary Gabriel. This is the Unobscured Interview series for
Speaker 1: season two. I'm Aaron Mankey as spiritualist. You know, I
Speaker 1: think from our point of view, you think of someone
Speaker 1: raising tables and sitting in a darkened room with a
Speaker 1: group of people communing with the dead, and that was
Speaker 1: part of it. But really interestingly, spiritualism in the nineteenth
Speaker 1: century was away for people who didn't have a political
Speaker 1: or a social voice i e. Women to have one
Speaker 1: and um, so that's in the case of Victoria Woodhall,
Speaker 1: that that's what spiritual spiritualism was for her, and what
Speaker 1: that meant was that she could almost act as a
Speaker 1: therapist or any of the spiritualist healers who were traveling
Speaker 1: around the country almost acted as spiritualists I mean sorry,
Speaker 1: as as therapists to the word working class or the poor,
Speaker 1: or the the itinerant farm farm worker who they would
Speaker 1: roll up in a caravan and say, you know, would
Speaker 1: you like to speak to your dead mother? Well, everyone
Speaker 1: wants to talk to their dead mother about the problems
Speaker 1: they're currently having. In so in the course of that dialogue,
Speaker 1: someone like Victoria would hear the concerns of these people
Speaker 1: and then not necessarily having tapped into the dead mother's
Speaker 1: ideas or the dead mother's advice, but she herself with
Speaker 1: an offer her own advice, which would be um based
Speaker 1: on her own experience which was troubled, um, but also
Speaker 1: based on the people she she'd met along the way.
Speaker 1: So so basically spiritualism was a big communications network, not
Speaker 1: necessarily with people from the beyond, but very much among
Speaker 1: a desperate crowd within the United States at that time.
Speaker 1: And it's really it was probably one of the colonels
Speaker 1: or one of those seeds for the entire US women's
Speaker 1: rights movement because these women started talking among themselves about
Speaker 1: themselves and discovered that they all sort of had similar
Speaker 1: problems and that those similar problems were all based in
Speaker 1: in repressive or oppressive social situations i e. Marriage. So
Speaker 1: you've already touched on this a little bit, but um,
Speaker 1: when people were coming to a science, what kinds of
Speaker 1: questions were they asking? What were they looking for to
Speaker 1: get out of it? There are all kinds of varieties there,
Speaker 1: But what are the things that you really picked up
Speaker 1: on is you read these documents and the periodicals and
Speaker 1: the things that were recording spiritualist experiences. Yeah, it was
Speaker 1: really you know, there were two kinds. There were the
Speaker 1: seances and in spiritualism had the literally the Barnum and
Speaker 1: Bailey kind of aspect where you know, you had a
Speaker 1: woman or a woman with a group of people in
Speaker 1: a room and they'd hear tappings and um and the
Speaker 1: tappings would indicate um um, a communication with a spirit,
Speaker 1: you know, a spirit with a bizarre name like Mr.
Speaker 1: Split Foot was one, and and he would offer advice
Speaker 1: on you know, our our dead family members happy? Now
Speaker 1: are they? Are they still with you? Do they approve
Speaker 1: of what you're doing? But the kind of spiritualism that
Speaker 1: a woman like Victoria Woodholl would practice as she traveled
Speaker 1: around the country um hearing people's troubles was a much
Speaker 1: more basic kind of almost like a advice columnists that
Speaker 1: you might have in a newspaper today. Um. You know.
Speaker 1: She she would set up in a hotel and she
Speaker 1: didn't have seances per se. She had one and one
Speaker 1: one on one encounters with people who would come in
Speaker 1: with maybe physical maladies or um problems in their marriage,
Speaker 1: problems with their children's financial problems, you know, just the
Speaker 1: basic things that that a person would go to a
Speaker 1: priest or a a therapist or uh, you know, a
Speaker 1: politician if they so dared and and and you know,
Speaker 1: describe their situation and ask for help. These people knew
Speaker 1: Victoria wasn't equipped to provide them with actual help, but
Speaker 1: in many cases it was just enough for just to
Speaker 1: have someone to listen to what they had to say,
Speaker 1: and that in itself was empowering both for them and
Speaker 1: for her. And uh for spiritualists, Um, that kind of conversation,
Speaker 1: you can imagine the the the experience that they would
Speaker 1: after a few years, the experience they would build, you know,
Speaker 1: and the kind of advice that they could then offer,
Speaker 1: and how it became very social and very political because
Speaker 1: they knew so many people were suffering from the same
Speaker 1: problems and so um, it was very much the kind
Speaker 1: of thing that you see in films where people, you know,
Speaker 1: go in and expect miracles and have apparitions and appear
Speaker 1: and you know, a lot of kind of smoke and
Speaker 1: mirrors literally was crystal balls, etcetera. But but there was
Speaker 1: also a very basic and very human and of very
Speaker 1: warm and generous spirit um behind the kind of spirituals
Speaker 1: and that would haul practice and that was one person
Speaker 1: helping another person. Now, the reason it was called spiritualism,
Speaker 1: and the reason why a woman would have to resort
Speaker 1: to something as as kind of outlandish as that rather
Speaker 1: than just say tell me what your problems are and
Speaker 1: I'll tell you what I think, was because women weren't
Speaker 1: supposed to have a political voice or a social voice.
Speaker 1: They weren't supposed to extend themselves to that extent. And
Speaker 1: for a woman to set up a shop in a
Speaker 1: darkened room in a hotel and have strangers come in
Speaker 1: and give her a dollar and then she would offer advice,
Speaker 1: if she said that that advice was coming from her
Speaker 1: without the guidance of a spirit, it would really be
Speaker 1: um it would be outrageous, it would be it would
Speaker 1: be it would be more than society could bear, because
Speaker 1: that was not the role of a woman. But if
Speaker 1: she said, I'm hearing the voices you know, from your mother,
Speaker 1: and she's telling me to tell you, you know, your
Speaker 1: husband is a drunk, you have to leave him. It's
Speaker 1: good for the children, it's good for you, then society
Speaker 1: could could have a sanction that and the woman who
Speaker 1: was hearing the advice could then say, you know, okay,
Speaker 1: and act on it if she wished to. So it's
Speaker 1: really interesting, isn't it that it was. It was kind
Speaker 1: of a charade that was allowed to play out that
Speaker 1: a woman like Victoria could give advice who just about
Speaker 1: everybody knew was giving advice based on her own experience.
Speaker 1: Um As woman to woman, but they but people would
Speaker 1: pretend that this voice was that this that this advice
Speaker 1: was coming from you know, another world, another another kind
Speaker 1: of um, a spirit world beyond one that we could see,
Speaker 1: and that this charade was allowed to play, was allowed
Speaker 1: to play out so that she could have a voice
Speaker 1: and that women could hear it. So it was a
Speaker 1: fascinating period. And one of the other you mentioned the
Speaker 1: priesthood and some of the roles that a traditional religious
Speaker 1: figures would would play in this kind of almost a
Speaker 1: therapeutic kind of mode for for people who would come.
Speaker 1: But one of the other kind of movements that was
Speaker 1: happening at the time and leading up to the eighteen
Speaker 1: forties was the practice of animal magnetism mesmerism. Uh, some
Speaker 1: of those um discourses that were considered to be kind
Speaker 1: of horizons of science about the mind and the person
Speaker 1: that also were practiced and often demonstrated publicly in a
Speaker 1: kind of a therapeutic mode. Can you talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about how those practices set up a foundation for
Speaker 1: what became spiritualism. Yeah, that's very interesting because it was
Speaker 1: It's one of the fascinating, fascinating aspects of what you're
Speaker 1: talking about and also the spiritualism I was speaking of
Speaker 1: with Victoria is that this all occurred in an in
Speaker 1: a climate of technological and industrial advancement and change. You know, suddenly,
Speaker 1: you know, trains were speeding through virgin countryside at unheard
Speaker 1: of speeds, and a telegraph could be sent from one
Speaker 1: place to another, you know, without anyone actually physically carrying it.
Speaker 1: And it was it was a time when um people
Speaker 1: didn't quite understand what was happening to them, that the
Speaker 1: society and the the the industry and the manufacturing and
Speaker 1: the way of life was changing so radically that people
Speaker 1: sought explanations for that through either through either spiritualism or
Speaker 1: through the sort of laying on of hands and things
Speaker 1: that you describe. And and so one actually was a
Speaker 1: physical manifestation of these these social and industrial changes and
Speaker 1: the technological changes that were occurring, which was the lilying
Speaker 1: out of hands the mesmerism, and the other was just
Speaker 1: actually helping people cope with the changes that the massive
Speaker 1: changes in their lives. And one of the reasons why
Speaker 1: both of those were more readily accepted than perhaps they
Speaker 1: would have been thirty y years, you know, thirty years previously,
Speaker 1: was because people could see in their everyday lives changes,
Speaker 1: massive changes that that amountages speed and ways of communication
Speaker 1: that had never existed before. And and and so if that
Speaker 1: could happen, then maybe it was actually possible for for
Speaker 1: people to heal by just touching you, or for someone
Speaker 1: to give advice from a figure who existed outside a
Speaker 1: realm you could see. M hmm. And one of the
Speaker 1: technologies that was so crucial to the spread of all
Speaker 1: these ideas was, um, the explosion of cheap fast printing,
Speaker 1: and there's all these periodicals that just kind of burst
Speaker 1: onto the scene, and they were crucial to mesmerism, to
Speaker 1: those sciences, but also to spiritualism. Can you talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about the role that periodicals played kind of
Speaker 1: in American life, um in the in the middle of
Speaker 1: the nineteenth century, but kind of across that period. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was really fascinating, and um, it wasn't just in
Speaker 1: the United States, it was in Europe as well. Suddenly,
Speaker 1: you know, trains would could carry periodicals from one place
Speaker 1: to another end so you and carry news. So you
Speaker 1: could you could assemble a periodical and Dayton Ohio that
Speaker 1: would have news from New York City or news from London.
Speaker 1: Or news from Cologne, Germany, and it wouldn't be that old,
Speaker 1: you know, it might be two weeks old. And um,
Speaker 1: people were learning. Their horizons were literally expanding. And every organization,
Speaker 1: every political party, um, every group, the farmers groups, the
Speaker 1: coal group, you know, coal miners, everyone had a periodical
Speaker 1: So it was almost, I guess a little bit. I mean,
Speaker 1: I suppose it's a little bit like our blogosphere now
Speaker 1: that there were new there was this new way of
Speaker 1: communicating through technology and through the printed page that allowed
Speaker 1: people to speak to each other and learn about each
Speaker 1: other and learn about what was happening in the world
Speaker 1: much more quickly, um than they ever had before. And
Speaker 1: it was during the Civil War in fact, in the
Speaker 1: United States, the the newspapers were an absolutely crucial way
Speaker 1: for you know, the country to stay as the country
Speaker 1: was splitting physically, you know, through war. It was actually
Speaker 1: kind of the thread that was keeping it together was
Speaker 1: the exchange of newspapers and that information. And also um
Speaker 1: into the seventies, when when into the seventies, when the
Speaker 1: kind of later industrialization occurred, when there were more serious
Speaker 1: class divisions, and when the labor market and the labor
Speaker 1: union movement was heating up. The role of newspapers and
Speaker 1: those in the radicalization of workers was immense, and um,
Speaker 1: you know, people would joke Europeans would come to the
Speaker 1: United States and joke that if you were a prisoner
Speaker 1: in being held in a jail in New York City,
Speaker 1: you may not have anything. You may not have food,
Speaker 1: you may not have water, you may not have proper clothing,
Speaker 1: but every morning you'll have your newspaper. It was considered
Speaker 1: an absolutely essential tool to being alive in the in
Speaker 1: the nineteenth century, which is, you know, kind of fun
Speaker 1: considering that newspapers in our world are are going the
Speaker 1: way of well the normal telephone, the dial telephone. Right.
Speaker 1: You know, as I've been as I've been spending time
Speaker 1: making this podcast, i haven't been able to avoid making
Speaker 1: these connections between periodicals then kind of podcasts now with
Speaker 1: the way that they're growing in and like you said,
Speaker 1: everyone is starting one, every interest group, every political party
Speaker 1: are yeah. Um, so as you have have researched and written,
Speaker 1: You've worked in journalism for for a long long time,
Speaker 1: you've at times turned two books, and you've written a
Speaker 1: book on Victoria Woodhol which I'm so glad We're gonna
Speaker 1: be talking about today. You've also written books on the
Speaker 1: Cones Sisters, on Karl Marx and his wife Jenny, which
Speaker 1: was a finalist from the Politicer Prize, the National Book Award,
Speaker 1: the National Book a Circle Award. UM, and you recently
Speaker 1: published a book on the Ninth Street Women. Before we
Speaker 1: really dive into Victoria's story, UM, I'd love to hear
Speaker 1: is there a kind of a common thread between the
Speaker 1: kinds of people that you take as the subjects of
Speaker 1: your books. I think what I try to do is, UM,
Speaker 1: I take periods of history UM, that most people would
Speaker 1: say have been written about to death. You know. For example, UM,
Speaker 1: with Karl Marks. You know, I remember when I said
Speaker 1: I wanted to do a book on him. A neighbor
Speaker 1: I was living in Italy at the time, in an old,
Speaker 1: older British woman said to me, you know who on earth?
Speaker 1: You know, why on earth do we need another book
Speaker 1: on Karl Marks. The point is that the parts of
Speaker 1: history that have been told so far, that have been
Speaker 1: told and retold actually are usually only half the story.
Speaker 1: It's sort of the man's point of view, that's the
Speaker 1: it's been the man's story. So what I try to
Speaker 1: do is I go into areas where um and luckily,
Speaker 1: you know, for a writer or researcher today, the numbers
Speaker 1: of neglected women out there in history are vast, and
Speaker 1: so there are many, many stories to be told. And
Speaker 1: so with Victoria, I tried to look at the nineteenth
Speaker 1: century through her perspective. I mean, how many people know
Speaker 1: growing up in the United States, how many people learn
Speaker 1: that a woman actually ran for president in eighteen seventy two.
Speaker 1: You know, she was written out of history. So I
Speaker 1: tried to resurrect her, you know, place her where she belonged.
Speaker 1: With the Cones Sisters. They were among the most important
Speaker 1: modern art collectors in the world at the turn of
Speaker 1: the century, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: at the beginning of the twentieth century. And their story
Speaker 1: was written out of history because of a personal peak
Speaker 1: when Alice Toklas wrote the story of Gertrude Stein. I'm
Speaker 1: sorry when Gergis John wrote the story of L. S. B. Toklis.
Speaker 1: But um, the Cone Sisters were written out of history
Speaker 1: because collecting became something that men did. Women shopped for paintings,
Speaker 1: but men collected them. And so I wanted to show
Speaker 1: what the Cones had done, which was build one of
Speaker 1: the major materi eston h collections in the world, not
Speaker 1: just in the United States. Um. They were these two
Speaker 1: eccentric Victorian sisters. Um. And then with Marx, you know,
Speaker 1: the Marks story has been told primarily as a story
Speaker 1: of a man from his neck up, in other words,
Speaker 1: the brain of Marks. And I wanted to describe the
Speaker 1: man Marks, and to do that, I thought it was
Speaker 1: best to put him in the environment of his family,
Speaker 1: with his wife and children. And so I started by
Speaker 1: thinking I would tell just their story. But you know,
Speaker 1: Marx was the elephant in the room, and I needed
Speaker 1: to tell his story if I could describe their story.
Speaker 1: And so and then with the Ninth Street Women, it's
Speaker 1: the story of five abstract expressionists women painters. And and
Speaker 1: again you know that the biggest revolution in American art
Speaker 1: history occurred in the forties and fifties in New York,
Speaker 1: and that has been the story of a handful of men,
Speaker 1: when in fact it was a teeming group of people,
Speaker 1: and among them were some really important women who with
Speaker 1: out without home, the movement would wouldn't have occurred. So
Speaker 1: what I try to do is go back into history
Speaker 1: and and kind of if if we've seen, you know,
Speaker 1: fill the cup, We've got half the cup so far.
Speaker 1: Let's get the rest of the coup. Let's fill it up.
Speaker 1: And that's usually the story of women. So that's kind
Speaker 1: of the thread that runs through all of these books.
Speaker 1: So let's on that note, let's dive in to Victoria
Speaker 1: Woodhole story and just start with, how would you answer
Speaker 1: the question who was Victoria Woodhall? M Victoria Woodhall was
Speaker 1: really one of the bravest American women to surface UM
Speaker 1: in the nineteenth century, and one of the women who
Speaker 1: we know least about who we've studied the least. She
Speaker 1: was the product of a Ohio family fairly dirt poor.
Speaker 1: Her father was a h petty criminal, her mother was
Speaker 1: probably certifiably insane and had had children every two years
Speaker 1: for a twenty year period. In Victoria was her sixth daughter.
Speaker 1: And the story was one you know, sort of that's
Speaker 1: been It could have been repeated throughout the country, UM
Speaker 1: by hundreds, if not thousands of families, UM struggling to
Speaker 1: make ends meet, UM, no true prospects, no property, they
Speaker 1: didn't own any property, they had no future. And this child, Victoria,
Speaker 1: through a vivid imagination and an incredible drive created one.
Speaker 1: She created her own opportunity, and she carried this family
Speaker 1: with her. And so what she did was um go
Speaker 1: from absolutely zero. And I talked about the where she
Speaker 1: was born, which was a shack on the side of
Speaker 1: a hill and a small town in Ohio. She went
Speaker 1: from there to to a series of first that were
Speaker 1: truly remarkable. She was the first woman to have a
Speaker 1: Wall Street brokerage firm. She was the first woman to
Speaker 1: address a congressional committee in Washington. She was the first
Speaker 1: woman to run for president, and she was completely neglected
Speaker 1: historically because she was literally too hot to handle. She
Speaker 1: was so far advanced of her time. She would still
Speaker 1: be considered radical today. She would have kind of fit
Speaker 1: more comfortably in the nineteen seventies feminist period than she
Speaker 1: did in the nineteenth century. So Victoria Woodhall is quite
Speaker 1: quite simply someone we should all know about because the
Speaker 1: issue she spoke to and about in those days were
Speaker 1: ones we're still dealing with today. M hm. So in
Speaker 1: that early life that you've started to touch on, what
Speaker 1: kind of a religious background or upbringing did she have
Speaker 1: in this struggling family. Yeah, her mother was a religious
Speaker 1: Zealot and um, I would imagine based on where they
Speaker 1: were in Ohio. I could never pin down what exactly
Speaker 1: congregation they were part of, but it would have been
Speaker 1: some sort of um no doubt Protestant, probably loose and tradition,
Speaker 1: and but it was bordered, but it bordered always on
Speaker 1: the always on spiritualism. Not that her mother ever practiced spiritualism,
Speaker 1: where she did later in life, but not when when
Speaker 1: Victoria was growing up. Although the mother always thought she
Speaker 1: could commune with spirits, and so that's where Victoria got
Speaker 1: that idea. Basically, the mother would go out and kind
Speaker 1: of have hallucinations, um and you know, shout to the
Speaker 1: skies her problems about her husband and called her, you know,
Speaker 1: said what she was doing was speaking to to to
Speaker 1: spirits from another world of her dead relatives or her
Speaker 1: dead children. And Victoria absorbed that idea. But uh so
Speaker 1: that so the family was not traditionally religious. It was
Speaker 1: a very eccentric clan as far as that goes. But
Speaker 1: but Victoria absorbed those ideas and and built on them.
Speaker 1: And she had a real flair for drama. So she
Speaker 1: would regale the local children in the town with with
Speaker 1: her ability to speak to spirits and orate on profound matters.
Speaker 1: And then uh, as I described the book, when she
Speaker 1: when her her crowd started getting restless, she would change
Speaker 1: the subject and start talking about cowboys and Indians. But
Speaker 1: in other way she she always knew how to play
Speaker 1: to the crowd. Um. But the family was mainly Buckland.
Speaker 1: Her father was a notorious thief arsonist. Uh He called
Speaker 1: himself a lawyer, but his main his main connection to
Speaker 1: the law was breaking it. And they were always they
Speaker 1: from the time she was a little girl. They would
Speaker 1: have to escape the law for various reasons, and usually
Speaker 1: buck was behind whatever scheme was illegal, and whatever scheme
Speaker 1: Um forced them to leave. So I wouldn't say that
Speaker 1: Victoria was ever a religious person in the traditional sense
Speaker 1: as impious, but she had a great respect for surprisingly.
Speaker 1: Growing up with the father she did and in the
Speaker 1: household she did, she had a very great respect for morality,
Speaker 1: which is also very ironic because later in life what
Speaker 1: did her in was charges of immorality. But she had
Speaker 1: this real um from the time she was a young girl.
Speaker 1: She had a very strong sense of justice, and that's
Speaker 1: what actually was the start of her political life. Some
Speaker 1: of your work has been kind of on transatlantic connections
Speaker 1: between radical groups. And when Victoria's ten, we come to
Speaker 1: the year eight which historians of spiritualism, uh look at
Speaker 1: for what happened in Hydesville, New York with the Fox Sisters,
Speaker 1: but it's a year of ferment across nations, borders, oceans. Um,
Speaker 1: can you talk a little bit about transatlantic context for
Speaker 1: what was going on in Europe in that year? What
Speaker 1: else was going on in the United States? M hmm. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Eighteen forty was one of those years in history where
Speaker 1: it would be difficult to find a place on the planet, Uh,
Speaker 1: that that something major wasn't happening. Europe was on fire.
Speaker 1: It was the only eighteen forty It was a movement
Speaker 1: called Springtime of the People, and the people in Europe
Speaker 1: actually revolted against their kings, their governments, and uh, it
Speaker 1: was the first and only European wide revolt of the
Speaker 1: people against their rulers. And this was the result um
Speaker 1: of again this idea that society was changing fundamentally under
Speaker 1: people's feet, and yet the rulers, the kings, couldn't see that,
Speaker 1: They couldn't or didn't want to see see it, chose
Speaker 1: not to see it. They were happy enough to fill
Speaker 1: their coffers with the proceeds of industrialization, but they didn't
Speaker 1: want to make the social changes that were required. They
Speaker 1: didn't want to allow business people into government, for example,
Speaker 1: in order to legislate UM what the terms industrialists needed
Speaker 1: to to to expand, to do cross border trade UM
Speaker 1: and and in the United States, part of the background
Speaker 1: to this what would become the Civil War UM in
Speaker 1: about twelve years after was was this notion that the
Speaker 1: tensions between the agrarian south and the industrial north, and
Speaker 1: that the the inability to reconcile what was the old
Speaker 1: way of living in a new way of living, you know,
Speaker 1: the obvious path of the future. And so the people
Speaker 1: who were caught in the middle of this UM the
Speaker 1: everyday folks, you know, the the farmers, the small trades people,
Speaker 1: the people who were forced off their lands and moved
Speaker 1: into cities, were being buffeted by forces that were so
Speaker 1: much greater than them. UM. In Europe, they fled to
Speaker 1: the cities and started filling you know, tenements and factories
Speaker 1: with their work. But in the United States, that sort
Speaker 1: of development hadn't really occurred yet, and so UM we
Speaker 1: didn't have that kind of mass movement. But but definitely
Speaker 1: there was an earthquake happening under people's feet, a societal
Speaker 1: change that was was so profound that people sought relief
Speaker 1: and answers and shelter literally in large tense um at
Speaker 1: the front of which was usually a preacher shouting about,
Speaker 1: you know, don't worry about this life. The next one
Speaker 1: is going to be better. And so that was a
Speaker 1: very top down that was a very patriarchal kind of
Speaker 1: response to the changes in society through through more traditional
Speaker 1: religion and through these itinerant preachers. Where the spiritualists came
Speaker 1: in was uh, this sort of one on one, woman
Speaker 1: to woman, much more domestic kind of response to the changes.
Speaker 1: And in a way, I think, you know, there was
Speaker 1: the show, there was the weekly show in the tense
Speaker 1: with the preachers and the songs and the you know,
Speaker 1: uh fall going down and thrashing around, but the the
Speaker 1: actual what spiritualists could offer was it was a much
Speaker 1: deeper and much more immediate sort of help, you know,
Speaker 1: and an actual earthly help, whereas the preachers could promise,
Speaker 1: you know something a high in the sky and the
Speaker 1: Fox Sisters in New York were a phenomenon that um.
Speaker 1: They were part of the Barnum and Bailey tradition, you
Speaker 1: know that I described earlier. Um they were they were
Speaker 1: able to hear a spirit in a house. They lived
Speaker 1: in a house where I think it was a traveling
Speaker 1: salesman had been murdered, and so they could they they
Speaker 1: said that they could hear spirits and that the spirit
Speaker 1: would tap on the table, and this started. They got
Speaker 1: the publicity around them was so widespread that they started
Speaker 1: sort of a phenomenon that appeared in every state in
Speaker 1: the country, was multiple so called fox sisters hearing tappings.
Speaker 1: And it was really just a way for poor families
Speaker 1: to make money. They charged it allar visit, which was
Speaker 1: a huge amount of money in those days, and it
Speaker 1: was also a way to um to eventually um uh.
Speaker 1: It was also a way for this sort of spiritualism
Speaker 1: to develop, this the kind of therapeutic spiritualism. And so
Speaker 1: there was the Barnman Bailey Fox Sisters tapping um, the
Speaker 1: very kind of dramatic um communication with you know, dazzling spirits.
Speaker 1: And then the offshoot of that, the much more practical um,
Speaker 1: the much more practical development that a rose out of
Speaker 1: that was the spiritualism that Victoria would hall practice. Her
Speaker 1: father was thrilled about the when he had learned about
Speaker 1: the Fox Sisters because he had two daughters, Victoria and
Speaker 1: her younger sister Tenny who tennessee who um Buck Clafland decided, great,
Speaker 1: you know they can both commune with spirits. There's no
Speaker 1: problem about that. UM. I can set up up a
Speaker 1: hotel and charge a dollar a dollar a visit and
Speaker 1: they can, you know, make miracles. And his his advice
Speaker 1: to Victoria was be a good listener child, and which
Speaker 1: is what she did. She started when she was I
Speaker 1: think thirteen and UM and started entertaining adults, listening to
Speaker 1: adults problems, and by the time she was fifteen she
Speaker 1: was an expert on what ailed UM mostly women who
Speaker 1: came to hear her and and so so that's really UM.
Speaker 1: There were sort of two levels of UH, two levels
Speaker 1: of religious experience and the revival movement and spiritualism that
Speaker 1: was available and widespread through mostly the middle of the
Speaker 1: United States through the middle of that century. But eight
Speaker 1: UM was really the pivotal year because it was when
Speaker 1: the Fox Sisters emerged. It was also when the women's
Speaker 1: rights movement emerged in Seneca Falls, New York, also Upstate
Speaker 1: New York, and that was where women again started talking
Speaker 1: to each other and deciding that it wasn't just a
Speaker 1: matter of getting the vote, that there needed to be
Speaker 1: a fundamental declaration of rights for women UM drawn up
Speaker 1: and and hopefully decimated, and all hopefully brought to the
Speaker 1: attention of Congress, so that women could once and for
Speaker 1: all have the rights equal to men in this country.
Speaker 1: So it was a year that of profound change and
Speaker 1: um and fascinating and revolutionary. And you can see exactly
Speaker 1: why it happened, because the plates under society were shifting
Speaker 1: and the fallout was going to be enormous, both socially
Speaker 1: and politically, and people had to go somewhere to look
Speaker 1: for answers. And so as they always did, as Carl
Speaker 1: Mark said, religion is the opium of the people, and
Speaker 1: so they sought solace and religion. And as you just said,
Speaker 1: Victoria kind of took part in both aspects of spiritualism.
Speaker 1: There were times when she was working, especially under Buck,
Speaker 1: in the kind of spectacle of spiritualism. UM. But she
Speaker 1: so over the course of her life recorded that she
Speaker 1: heard from the spirits and they guided her, and they
Speaker 1: directed her. Can you talk a little bit about that
Speaker 1: more private side of Victoria's belief in spirit communication? Um,
Speaker 1: was it real? Was it true? Did she really believe
Speaker 1: she was hearing from spirits? And how did that influence
Speaker 1: her decision? Who were they? What did they say to her?
Speaker 1: Those kinds of things. I think she really did believe it,
Speaker 1: you know. I I've thought about that, and she was
Speaker 1: a very smart woman, but she also had I guess
Speaker 1: it was I mean, who knows, maybe she did, you know,
Speaker 1: I I you know, my instinct is that she didn't,
Speaker 1: but she really believed she did. And I think it
Speaker 1: stemmed from, as I said, her mother's, you know, experiences
Speaker 1: with speaking to this spirit world. But also I think
Speaker 1: it was just a way of retreating her home life
Speaker 1: was so utterly dysfunctional. I mean, her father was violent,
Speaker 1: her mother was in saying, you know, there were children
Speaker 1: crawling out of every cupboard. Um, they had no money,
Speaker 1: and I think when she was a young girl, to escape,
Speaker 1: she would sometimes try to have conversations with two of
Speaker 1: her sisters who had died as children. And you can
Speaker 1: see where that would happen. I mean, she had nowhere
Speaker 1: to go and no one to talk to so she
Speaker 1: sawt solace in what she thought was a conversation with
Speaker 1: dead people. Um. And then when she at different times
Speaker 1: of her life, she spoke to different kinds of spirits.
Speaker 1: And one time she was in San Francisco, she eventually
Speaker 1: married a fellow who I'll describe later, but she needed
Speaker 1: to decide whether she should go back to Ohio or
Speaker 1: stay in San Francisco, which was a very difficult place
Speaker 1: to her to live in. Her situation was extremely dangerous
Speaker 1: and trying, and Victoria felt that she heard her sister
Speaker 1: Tenny call her across those miles and speak to her
Speaker 1: in spirit for him and say come home. And so
Speaker 1: she followed that advice. And then the most famous case
Speaker 1: was when Victoria was at her wits end, you know,
Speaker 1: she would she had been traveling around after the Civil
Speaker 1: War through the United States, giving advice, seeing the horrors,
Speaker 1: you know, the absolute devastation of what was left in
Speaker 1: its wake, and she knew she needed to do something
Speaker 1: because by this time she was completely politicized. And she
Speaker 1: thought she heard the spirit of the Greek order DeMatha
Speaker 1: scenes and she said that he spoke to her and
Speaker 1: gave her not just the the idea go to New York,
Speaker 1: but an address where she should go to in New
Speaker 1: York as specific house on Great Jones Street. And so
Speaker 1: Victoria did. And she said when she arrived, you know,
Speaker 1: the house was ready waiting for her. So at various
Speaker 1: points in her life, you know, really crucial points, some
Speaker 1: some might say points of breakdown, she thought she was
Speaker 1: speaking to the spirit world. You know, maybe she thought
Speaker 1: she was. Whatever happened helped her get to the next
Speaker 1: place and helped her survive. And and she never found
Speaker 1: herself despite and you know, a life that was difficult
Speaker 1: in the extreme, that lasted a long time. Um, she
Speaker 1: never got to the point that she gave up, you know,
Speaker 1: she lost her her strength or she gave into some
Speaker 1: kind of collapse. And so it could be that she
Speaker 1: believed that these spirits helped her through. Can I say
Speaker 1: one thing. I want to go back to um. The
Speaker 1: whole idea of the purpose of religion and kind of
Speaker 1: a greater, greater people's lives at the beginning of the
Speaker 1: nineteenth century, okay, Um, the idea that religion was a
Speaker 1: was a safe place for people to have difficult consideration
Speaker 1: or difficult discussions is a really fascinating one. At this
Speaker 1: period at the beginning of the nineteenth century, because it
Speaker 1: wasn't just that it was a place where you could confess,
Speaker 1: you know, confess your sins or confess your troubles. It
Speaker 1: was a place where people like Carl Marx, even you know,
Speaker 1: politicians and great thinkers would would couch their political discussions
Speaker 1: because at this time, the things they were saying, the
Speaker 1: changes they knew that had to occur in societies in
Speaker 1: order to make the step to a fully industrialized or
Speaker 1: a fully capitalist world. Um they couldn't say publicly because
Speaker 1: they would be against the law, you know, they would
Speaker 1: be treason ass um uh to the king, to be
Speaker 1: considered treason as to the king. So Marks, for example,
Speaker 1: had a had a newspaper in Cologne in mid late thirties,
Speaker 1: early forties, eighteen forties that was supposedly ostensibly a discussion
Speaker 1: of theological subjects. But anyone who knew the words that
Speaker 1: he was using, or knew the language, or knew who
Speaker 1: he was, could scratch the surface just a little bit
Speaker 1: and see that what he was talking about was rebel solution,
Speaker 1: political revolution, having nothing to do with religion, in fact,
Speaker 1: quite a contrary. So it's fascinating that people from all
Speaker 1: levels of society used used religion as kind of an
Speaker 1: umbrella to either hide under to seek solace from, or
Speaker 1: to use as a mask to just to um to
Speaker 1: cover what they were actually going after, which was massive
Speaker 1: political change. And the two kinds of modes of spiritualism
Speaker 1: that you talked about almost have that dual nature where
Speaker 1: there are people who are coming to it for the
Speaker 1: private the kind of the solace, and then there are
Speaker 1: those who use it as a vehicle for a show
Speaker 1: to make some cash. Um. That kind of thing too,
Speaker 1: that's really fascinating. Um jumping. Can we jump back into
Speaker 1: this story of Victoria after her years into her teen
Speaker 1: years living under Buck Laughland's thumb making money for the
Speaker 1: family in the way that he demanded. Um, she meets
Speaker 1: Canning wood Hall, right. Can you talk about who he
Speaker 1: was and how they met and what came of it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: By by the time Victoria was fifteen, she had three
Speaker 1: years of education, so she was she was not illiterate,
Speaker 1: which is interesting. I'm not quite sure who taught her
Speaker 1: how to read, but she had had no formal education.
Speaker 1: She had been living in the household that I've described
Speaker 1: with a father and abusive father and insane mother, and
Speaker 1: she was looking for a way out. Well. Traditionally, in
Speaker 1: many societies to this day, the easiest ticket out of
Speaker 1: a dysfunctional family as marriage, and that's what happened. Keening
Speaker 1: Woodhall was supposedly a medical doctor who rolled into um
Speaker 1: Mount Guillet, Ohio, where Victoria was living with her family,
Speaker 1: and set up a practice. And Victoria was ill and
Speaker 1: went to see him, and um, that's Kenny Woodhole was
Speaker 1: in his early thirties and Victoria was fifteen, and he
Speaker 1: started wooing her and told her that he was related
Speaker 1: to the mayor of New York City and was a
Speaker 1: relative of a judge in New York, and that he
Speaker 1: was a practicing doctor, and in other words, he was
Speaker 1: everything Victoria Woodhall wasn't. In fact, everything Victoria Woodhall had
Speaker 1: dreamed of. He was and he was an escape hatch
Speaker 1: from the life she lived. And so when she was
Speaker 1: fifteen and she was just had just turned fifteen, he
Speaker 1: was and I think he was thirty two at the
Speaker 1: time they married, and Victoria soon discovered that the bill
Speaker 1: of goods he sold her was a web of lies.
Speaker 1: She he was not practicing or in any way qualified doctor.
Speaker 1: He didn't had never met the mayor of New York.
Speaker 1: He wasn't a relative of a judge. What he was
Speaker 1: was a philandering drunk, and she was saddled to him
Speaker 1: because law at the time said that when a woman
Speaker 1: married a man, she became his property. And so Victoria
Speaker 1: had no way out. And so she went from the
Speaker 1: household of buck Claflin, which she had been supporting she
Speaker 1: and Tennie by their spiritualist endeavors, to the household of
Speaker 1: a of a thirty year old drunk who was now
Speaker 1: her husband, who would be her master for life. And
Speaker 1: at the age of fifteen, that must have been quite
Speaker 1: a cruel awakening. It will only got worse because within
Speaker 1: a year she was pregnant and gave birth to a
Speaker 1: son who was mentally retarded. And Victoria that was the moment,
Speaker 1: that was the seed of the Victoria wood Hall who
Speaker 1: ran for president in eighteen seventy two. Um That marriage
Speaker 1: and that birth taught that young girl, that uneducated young girl,
Speaker 1: that there was something drastically wrong with the system that
Speaker 1: would sanction that marriage, and that would not teach her
Speaker 1: what she needed to know about taking care of her
Speaker 1: body and ensuring in order to ensure that the child
Speaker 1: she gave birth to was a healthy one. So Victoria's
Speaker 1: story with Canning sort of went downhill from there, and she,
Speaker 1: as she had with her family, and in fact with
Speaker 1: her family in tol largely the two of them set
Speaker 1: out on the road, um uh, continuing her her spiritualist counseling.
Speaker 1: And you can imagine with that experience how much richer
Speaker 1: the advice she would have given the women she met
Speaker 1: on the road would have been. I mean, Victoria came
Speaker 1: became an expert at many things, and she was tremendous
Speaker 1: at many things. But I think probably if we had
Speaker 1: had a tape of the conversation she had with the
Speaker 1: clients she who were consulted her as a spiritualist, it
Speaker 1: would have been fascinating. You know. She would have been, um,
Speaker 1: you know, a therapist of you know, of the highest caliber.
Speaker 1: She She was empathetic in the extreme, she was loving,
Speaker 1: she was warm, she was exceedingly intelligent, and and I
Speaker 1: think it would have been I wish I had always
Speaker 1: hoped that there would have been at least one transcript
Speaker 1: somewhere that existed of a conversation between Victoria Woodhall and
Speaker 1: one of the people she who consulted her m hmm.
Speaker 1: Now after she marries Kenny, uh, they she's separated from
Speaker 1: her family. Two that she they moved to Chicago, she
Speaker 1: and Kenning and that's where she has Byron, that that child,
Speaker 1: that first child, and then from Chicago to go to
Speaker 1: San Francisco. And you describe that so evocatively in your book.
Speaker 1: Can you talk about and you mentioned this earlier, why
Speaker 1: San Francisco was such a dangerous place for someone like
Speaker 1: Victoria at the time. What was going on in that
Speaker 1: city which wasn't even the quite a city yet um
Speaker 1: that made it a place first the Victoria would go,
Speaker 1: and then that the place that she would leave. You know,
Speaker 1: it's amazing. San Francisco was another eight Um moment. Gold
Speaker 1: was discovered in San Francisco in California, and people flocked
Speaker 1: from all over the world. They rushed to California to
Speaker 1: get in on it. And the first wave of people
Speaker 1: who went, because it was such an unknown were men,
Speaker 1: largely men um. But Victoria soon joined them and her
Speaker 1: decision was based simply it was very pragmatic. She couldn't
Speaker 1: continue as a ritualists and make the kind of money
Speaker 1: she needed to support Caning Byron and her entire family,
Speaker 1: and in fact, by this point she wanted to get
Speaker 1: rid of her family because Buck had had some more
Speaker 1: run ins with the law, and Victoria was old enough
Speaker 1: now to realize that he was a scoundrel and always
Speaker 1: would be. So she broke away and went to the
Speaker 1: one place that promised possibly the hope that Caning could
Speaker 1: in fact resurrect some kind of medical career in a
Speaker 1: in a town like San Francisco, which was barely discernible
Speaker 1: as a town. I mean it was it was just
Speaker 1: beginning to have um cobblestone streets. It was a place where, um,
Speaker 1: I think that the ratio of men was ten to one,
Speaker 1: ten men to one woman. It was lawless. It was
Speaker 1: the main motivation for people there was in a self enrichment.
Speaker 1: That was the only thing that drove them. That and pleasure,
Speaker 1: and so into this was into this came six senior
Speaker 1: old Victoria Woodhall, her child, her one year old child,
Speaker 1: and this drunken loud she carried around with her called
Speaker 1: a husband. And she once again, you know, she did
Speaker 1: the best she could. She went door to door trying
Speaker 1: to find employment because Caning, with so many bars in town,
Speaker 1: there was one area called the Barbary Coast, which is
Speaker 1: where uh It's most notorious, early early claim to fame
Speaker 1: was where the topless waitress was born. So caning, you know,
Speaker 1: this was irresistible to him. He had bars and he
Speaker 1: had women, and so he was a happy man. Victoria
Speaker 1: got to work in order to support them, and so
Speaker 1: she went door to door. Um. First, she worked as
Speaker 1: a cigar girl for a little while, and the story
Speaker 1: is that the proprietor told her she was too fine
Speaker 1: to do that kind of work, which is essentially, no doubt,
Speaker 1: probably some kind of form of prostitution and so um.
Speaker 1: Victoria then found a job sewing for an actress, and
Speaker 1: the actress said, you know, why don't you go on
Speaker 1: the stage, which is what what Victoria did. Now, she
Speaker 1: was a dramatist, but I don't know if she would
Speaker 1: have been a very good actress because I don't think
Speaker 1: she could have memorized other people's lines. I think she
Speaker 1: was too much of her own personality, and so at
Speaker 1: a certain point, though she was in several productions and
Speaker 1: said she made money, that was when she heard the
Speaker 1: call from Tenny to come back home. And it could
Speaker 1: have just been that San Francisco in the life there
Speaker 1: was overwhelming, you know it was. She was a small
Speaker 1: town girl from Ohio, and though she had lived in Chicago,
Speaker 1: which was one of the major cities in the United States. Um,
Speaker 1: she still was I don't think prepared at that age.
Speaker 1: I mean what sixteen year old could have been for
Speaker 1: what she encountered there, given the responsibility she had for
Speaker 1: her for her husband and child. And so she heard
Speaker 1: Tenny speaking to her, and in Victoria's telling, she dropped
Speaker 1: everything on the stage, left in her costume, grabbed canningwood
Speaker 1: Hall and Byron, and took off back to Ohio to
Speaker 1: be with her family and resume her career as a spiritualist.
Speaker 1: And during the Civil War years, uh so this is
Speaker 1: late eighteen if he's in then during the Civil War years,
Speaker 1: she and Tenny are are doing this work as they
Speaker 1: travel around the border States and the Midwest. So, after
Speaker 1: a few years of traveling with the family and sometimes
Speaker 1: stepping away from them, when she says that Tenny's um
Speaker 1: talents are being prostituted, and you know, she's still committing
Speaker 1: crimes for buck Um. There's a point where Victoria ends
Speaker 1: up in St. Louis and she meets James Harvey Blood.
Speaker 1: Can you describe who James Harvey Blood was and how
Speaker 1: his relationship with Victoria became so important for both of them.
Speaker 1: So in the years after the Civil Or, Victoria was
Speaker 1: found herself in in St. Louis at one period, which
Speaker 1: was a really interesting place for her to be because
Speaker 1: it was kind of a hub of um. It was
Speaker 1: a hub of spiritualism, but it was also a hub
Speaker 1: of radicalism. There were a lot of German immigrants, and
Speaker 1: one of the things that happened after that a lot
Speaker 1: of the people who fled the conflicts in Europe landed
Speaker 1: in the United States, and a lot of the German
Speaker 1: article surprisingly went to St. Louis. So Victoria found herself
Speaker 1: in this kind of stew of of people who were
Speaker 1: engaged in spiritualism but also political reform, and she got
Speaker 1: her first kind of introduction to revolutionary politics there. But
Speaker 1: one one afternoon she was yet in a hotel um
Speaker 1: in a room where she rented to work as a spiritualist,
Speaker 1: and a Civil War veteran named James Harvey Blood walked
Speaker 1: in and he had had some He was a decorated soldier.
Speaker 1: He was a important spiritualist in St. Louis. He was
Speaker 1: also a very radical reformer, though he was part of
Speaker 1: city government. He was elected city auditor of St. Louis,
Speaker 1: and he sat down because he was having personal problems
Speaker 1: with his wife, no doubt, and started confiding in Victoria.
Speaker 1: And I think Victoria saw in this man who physically
Speaker 1: and intellectually was so superior to any of the men
Speaker 1: who were involved in her life as as either her
Speaker 1: in her husband, or her family or her brothers in law,
Speaker 1: who are all just absolute cads um. She saw in
Speaker 1: Colonel Harvey Blood, someone who was a wounded veteran who
Speaker 1: had suffered through that war, who had come out of
Speaker 1: it and continued to make something of himself, and also
Speaker 1: was questioning, questioning in the way she did the basis
Speaker 1: of society and the fairness of society, and the fairness
Speaker 1: of marital relations, and the fairness of of the class
Speaker 1: system in the United States, which you know, really is
Speaker 1: something that Americans always deny, but was part of the
Speaker 1: actual problems that were arising in the mid eighteenth century
Speaker 1: and really came to to the forefront in the late
Speaker 1: nineteenth century. And James Harvey Blood, in his discussion with Victoria,
Speaker 1: must have absolutely won her over with whatever he said,
Speaker 1: because by the end of the session she heard from
Speaker 1: one of her spirit friends, and this time the spirit
Speaker 1: told her to tell James Harvey Blood that she saw
Speaker 1: that the two of them, that their future was connected,
Speaker 1: and that they would that they would marry. Now, this
Speaker 1: was quite an interesting thing to say, because he was
Speaker 1: married and had a child, and she was married and
Speaker 1: had a child, and in mid century America, saying that
Speaker 1: kind of thing to a strange man in a darkened
Speaker 1: room would only lead to one conclusion, which would be
Speaker 1: that you were some kind of prostitute. But in fact,
Speaker 1: Victoria was sincere. She saw that she could actually do
Speaker 1: with this man something she wanted to do, which at
Speaker 1: this point was actually starting to kind of a colonel
Speaker 1: was forming in her mind that she wanted to be
Speaker 1: somehow involved in a social movement that that tried to
Speaker 1: reform the marital relations, which she thought was the actual
Speaker 1: fundamental problem in society. She thought that all of all
Speaker 1: social problems were rooted in bad marriages, and so Blood,
Speaker 1: Luckily for Victoria, who probably Blood was probably as a
Speaker 1: kind of swept away by her as she was by him,
Speaker 1: left the room and agreed and was in a very
Speaker 1: short time. They had each left their their respective spouses
Speaker 1: um and went traveling together in a caravan, which was
Speaker 1: basically kind of a getting to know each other trip um.
Speaker 1: She worked as a spiritualist, but it was it was
Speaker 1: a completely different environment from anything she had experienced before.
Speaker 1: There was a freedom to their relationship and an intellectual
Speaker 1: exchange that she had never had with anyone. And I
Speaker 1: think that this was the moment when Victoria Woodhall as
Speaker 1: we came to know her, as as the world came
Speaker 1: to know her, was born. And actually Blood was her
Speaker 1: first teacher. She had several teachers through her her through
Speaker 1: her life, but he was probably the most important because
Speaker 1: he gave her the history, the historical knowledge, and the
Speaker 1: the political sort of lessons, the political science lessons she
Speaker 1: needed to give words to the sorts of things that
Speaker 1: she was feeling, the inkling she had. She knew something
Speaker 1: was wrong, but Victoria didn't have a means of expressing it,
Speaker 1: and Blood gave her a way of doing them. And
Speaker 1: it's that Victoria wood Halt now in conversation with James
Speaker 1: blood Um taking a you know, building up a critical
Speaker 1: vocabulary for the world around her, who ends up going
Speaker 1: to New York. As you mentioned earlier, Demosthenes speaks to her,
Speaker 1: gives her an address, and she and Tenny and then
Speaker 1: the Clafland clan following along arrive in New York. And
Speaker 1: it's not very long before they meet Cornelius Vanderbilt, which
Speaker 1: is a wild turn of events for them. Can you
Speaker 1: talk about, uh, their life in New York and how
Speaker 1: they ended up getting in with Vanderbilt When they arrived
Speaker 1: in New York, you know, they had no connections there
Speaker 1: and so and it was, as you say, the entire
Speaker 1: Clafland clan followed, um and uh So Victoria and Tenny
Speaker 1: got to work doing what they did best. They're they're
Speaker 1: only sure way of making money, which was working as spiritualists,
Speaker 1: and Tenny was an expert of laying out of hands,
Speaker 1: and Victoria was the spiritualist advisor. And h. Buck Claflin
Speaker 1: did what he did, which would go out and try
Speaker 1: to recruit clients. Now, it's it's difficult to imagine someone
Speaker 1: like Cornelia's Vanderbilt actually being accessible to someone like buck Claflin.
Speaker 1: But in those days, Um, the world was so much smaller.
Speaker 1: New York was so small and and and actually a
Speaker 1: guy like Vanderbilt. Though he was financially, you know, fabulously wealthy, socially,
Speaker 1: he wasn't that much farther up the social scale than
Speaker 1: than the Claflands. You know. Kind of the robber barons
Speaker 1: of the of the late nineteenth century in America, we're
Speaker 1: pretty much, um, how can I say this politely? They
Speaker 1: were pretty much con men and and and really they weren't.
Speaker 1: They weren't the kind of um uh, they didn't have
Speaker 1: a sort of noble they were. They weren't. They weren't
Speaker 1: an aristocracy. Let me say that the the the the
Speaker 1: robber barons of America were the product of Jacksonian America.
Speaker 1: Actually they were. They were men all men who literally
Speaker 1: picked themselves us, whether bootstrapped, found a way to make
Speaker 1: some money, and by hook or crook, legal or illegal,
Speaker 1: um a master of fortune. And so Buck found Cornelius
Speaker 1: Vanderbilt knew somehow, through whatever spiritual is grapevine, that he
Speaker 1: believed in spirits, and he went to see them because
Speaker 1: he also knew that Vanderbilt had just lost his wife,
Speaker 1: and so he was he was chagrined and lonely, and
Speaker 1: he was in his seventies. And Buck could offer him
Speaker 1: the services of his daughters, Victoria to soothe his mind,
Speaker 1: to calm his mind, and talk to his dead wife,
Speaker 1: who could then communicate with Vanderbilt and Tenny to take
Speaker 1: care of the old man's physical loneliness, which is what
Speaker 1: she did. And it's it's absolutely um hilarious when you
Speaker 1: think about. You know, Vanderbilt would have been in his
Speaker 1: in his seventies, Tenny was in her early twenties, and
Speaker 1: she was this rambunctious, you know, vivacious, wonderful creature, completely mad,
Speaker 1: full of life, up for any adventure, and she revived
Speaker 1: his spirits. Probably just by laying eyes on her was
Speaker 1: enough for him. And and Victoria then spoke to her
Speaker 1: from this vast experience she had, and what she shared
Speaker 1: with him was not only a belief in spiritualism, but
Speaker 1: he too had a son who he believed was um
Speaker 1: not well as a result of of the fact that
Speaker 1: he married his first cousin. And so Vanderbilt had always
Speaker 1: blamed himself for his son, his son's uh problems, and
Speaker 1: and so Victoria could counsel him from the position of
Speaker 1: her own experience with that in that regard, and so
Speaker 1: they became confidence of Cornelius Vanderbilt one of the most
Speaker 1: important and wealthiest man in America, And you know, it's
Speaker 1: one of these incredible American stories that you know, they
Speaker 1: went literally overnight from being no One in New York
Speaker 1: to being within the circle where all of the powerful
Speaker 1: decisions are made. And Vanderbilt began to give them financial advice,
Speaker 1: which led to one of Victoria's first first you know
Speaker 1: that this Wall Strip brokerage from that she Antennie opened. Yeah,
Speaker 1: can you describe what the steps were for them getting
Speaker 1: to that point and and maybe how the Gold Ring
Speaker 1: and Black Friday of eighteen sixty nine played a role
Speaker 1: in them becoming successful. Stock broke the the whole cowboy
Speaker 1: atmosphere of Wall Street. It was an entirely male universe.
Speaker 1: The idea of a woman being a Wall Street trainer
Speaker 1: was unthinkable, and I think sometimes I in researching this
Speaker 1: and in writing about it and reading, you know, going
Speaker 1: back and reading this book again, I think for Vanderbilt
Speaker 1: may have been just having a good laugh, you know,
Speaker 1: sending the likes of Tenny and Victoria Uh into that atmosphere,
Speaker 1: you know, to Delmonico's, which was the restaurant where they
Speaker 1: all the traders eight and where there was a stock ticker,
Speaker 1: you know, going at all at all hours, and and
Speaker 1: to have them sitting in a carriage outside the stock exchange,
Speaker 1: you know, exchanging tips with the brokers. It was all
Speaker 1: great theater. But Victoria took it very seriously because she
Speaker 1: knew this was a way, I mean, this was a
Speaker 1: paradise for her, because this was a way she could
Speaker 1: make a lot of money in a very short time.
Speaker 1: And so Vanderbilt Um started giving them tips which they
Speaker 1: couldn't go into the stock exchange to actually make the transactions.
Speaker 1: They would have to have a man go in and
Speaker 1: make it for them. Um. In one particular Friday, which
Speaker 1: was uh in eight sixty nine, there was a scheme
Speaker 1: cot Ulyssius S. Grant was the President of the United
Speaker 1: States at the time, and he was his administration was
Speaker 1: exceedingly corrupt, and two of the traders, two of the
Speaker 1: big traders on Wall Street, Gym Fiskin and Jay Gould
Speaker 1: had Um knew that every week Grant sold a lot
Speaker 1: of gold on the market to try to keep kind
Speaker 1: of keep the coffers, the Unit States coffers, government coffers full,
Speaker 1: and it was a weekly sort of release of precious
Speaker 1: metals to enrich the government. Through a an acquaintance, they
Speaker 1: decided to try to convince Grant not to sell, and
Speaker 1: so that would drive up the price of gold and
Speaker 1: it would become even more precious than it normally was.
Speaker 1: And so Jay Gold and gem Fisk, knowing that this
Speaker 1: was going to happen, could buy up a lot of
Speaker 1: the gold and have it at a lower price. When
Speaker 1: this picket was turned off, when when Grant would stop selling,
Speaker 1: well that happened. But then Grant learned of the scheme,
Speaker 1: and so in a counter move, he opened the flood
Speaker 1: again and the gold started pouring out onto the market.
Speaker 1: Branderbilt had been privy to all of this, and so
Speaker 1: he told Kent Tenny and in Victoria that this was
Speaker 1: going to happen. And so on the day this Black
Speaker 1: Friday in eighteen sixty nine occurred, Victoria was there buying
Speaker 1: up gold. It was dropping in price, dropping like a stone.
Speaker 1: And in that day she amassed a sizeable fortune, in fact,
Speaker 1: such a fortune that she could use it to finance
Speaker 1: not only her crazy family and her life in New York,
Speaker 1: but she could start a newspaper, she could start a brokerage,
Speaker 1: firm she could. She basically set herself up for for
Speaker 1: what would become a political career two years later, three
Speaker 1: years later. And there's also I didn't put this in
Speaker 1: my questions to you, but I realized after I'd send
Speaker 1: them to you that we should talk about this UM
Speaker 1: eight sixty nine. There's also the Women's Rights Convention in Washington,
Speaker 1: d C. And Victoria goes, can you describe that a
Speaker 1: little bit? Victoria was basically a communicator, and she she
Speaker 1: knew the message that the most important message that she
Speaker 1: had learned through her own experiences in life, through her
Speaker 1: relationship with Blood, through all of the women and men
Speaker 1: that she met as a spiritualist, through the many years
Speaker 1: she traveled throughout the United States, was the need for
Speaker 1: fundamental social reform, personal personal reform at a personal level
Speaker 1: between a husband and a wife that could only occur
Speaker 1: through legislation if women had equal rights. And so Victoria
Speaker 1: was scheming with Blood. They needed to have some kind
Speaker 1: of political platform. They needed to have possibly a newspaper,
Speaker 1: you know, to disseminate this information. They needed to be
Speaker 1: aligned with the political party. But none of the parties
Speaker 1: that were available at that time or had any power
Speaker 1: at that time would have been radical enough for them.
Speaker 1: And so Victoria knew of the women's rights movement, but
Speaker 1: she had had actually no exchange with them at that point.
Speaker 1: In the eighteen sixty nine, and so there was a
Speaker 1: convention of women in Washington, d C. An annual convention,
Speaker 1: and she went there just to get a lay of
Speaker 1: the land, just to see what was happening. Um. She
Speaker 1: went purely as a spectator, and what she saw was
Speaker 1: a lot of earnest women aking to each other about
Speaker 1: each other, but having absolutely no impact on Capitol Hill,
Speaker 1: you know, on the US Congress, which was just a
Speaker 1: few blocks away from where they were meeting. And so
Speaker 1: Victoria left that left that um that session, realizing that
Speaker 1: these women could talk to each other, you know until
Speaker 1: the until these women could continue talking to each other,
Speaker 1: but would never have any impact because no one was
Speaker 1: paying attention. And Victoria knew she was a great propagandist,
Speaker 1: and she knew that in order to get the attention
Speaker 1: of Congress, she would need to make a huge splash.
Speaker 1: And so she left that meeting not having actually made
Speaker 1: any connections with the Women's The Women's movement leaders back
Speaker 1: to New York with blood and they decided to um
Speaker 1: to create a newspaper would hold on Clafland's weekly, because
Speaker 1: that would be her voice, and in in doing so,
Speaker 1: Victoria announced what could only be reckless, if not crazy,
Speaker 1: that she was going to run for president. A woman
Speaker 1: was going to run for president, the woman who had
Speaker 1: been the first who by this point was the first
Speaker 1: broker on Wall Street, a woman who had the backing
Speaker 1: of Cornelius Vanderbilt, who had her own newspaper in New York. Uh,
Speaker 1: this caught the attention, This was irresistible to the New
Speaker 1: York press, and the stories were carried all the way
Speaker 1: to Washington. At this point, nobody really paid attention to her,
Speaker 1: but she was deadly earnest. And you know, whether she
Speaker 1: thought she was actually going to be president as another question.
Speaker 1: I don't think she ever really assumed that that would happen.
Speaker 1: But she just needed to make a statement that was
Speaker 1: bold enough and broad enough and loud enough that she
Speaker 1: could get the attention not only of people in New York,
Speaker 1: but the women's movement and hopefully members of Congress. Can
Speaker 1: you say a little more about Now we're into the seventies,
Speaker 1: can you say a little more about the breath of
Speaker 1: the women's movement and its work kind of what was
Speaker 1: going on there and put it maybe in conversation with
Speaker 1: you mentioned at the beginning of our conversation growing labor
Speaker 1: radicalism and and how these forces were impacting and shaping
Speaker 1: each other, and what Victoria saw in the political landscape
Speaker 1: when she looked at at what was going on in
Speaker 1: American life. Yeah. One of the interesting things that happened,
Speaker 1: you know, the evolution Victoria's own personal evolution from a
Speaker 1: spiritual is talking one on one two people um to
Speaker 1: a woman who's out on a platform declaring herself president
Speaker 1: candidate for president, actually mirrored what was happening more broadly socially.
Speaker 1: And it's really fascinating because the kind of conversations that
Speaker 1: were murmured, you know, before the Civil War, um in
Speaker 1: the in the in the in the eighteen forties, and
Speaker 1: the kind of revolutions that occurred in eighty eight, and
Speaker 1: the discussions and the political arguments that began to heat
Speaker 1: up erupted of course in the Civil War in the
Speaker 1: United States, but afterwards they didn't die down, and in fact,
Speaker 1: groups coalesced and one of the most powerful groups, two
Speaker 1: of the most powerful groups to coal US. We were
Speaker 1: labor unions, and this was something that was happening in Europe.
Speaker 1: And in fact, once again we can talk about Carl
Speaker 1: Marx because he had formed in eighteen sixty four something
Speaker 1: called the International working Men's Association, and the goal was
Speaker 1: trade had become cross border, and corporations and industrialists were
Speaker 1: working as kind of a party or almost a union
Speaker 1: among themselves to keep money and power consolidated across borders.
Speaker 1: But at the level of industrialists and unions started forming.
Speaker 1: Marks was among the most vocal and prominent supporters of
Speaker 1: labor unions and that idea, their idea and his idea
Speaker 1: was if industrialists are going to form associations to protect
Speaker 1: one another across borders and across industry, then workers had
Speaker 1: to do the same. And so uh he started this
Speaker 1: International working Man's Association, which had UH sections throughout Europe
Speaker 1: and the United States, and Victoria became part of that.
Speaker 1: And which is such a wonderful idea that the idea
Speaker 1: that Victoria Woodhall is teaming up with Carl Marx. Karl
Speaker 1: Marx knew nothing of Victoria woodhallum she was she was
Speaker 1: part of the New York section and in fact She was,
Speaker 1: of course head of the New York Sections Section twelve.
Speaker 1: But this was all unbeknownst to Mars. Marx had his own,
Speaker 1: you know, he had troubles of his own without dealing
Speaker 1: with that Victoria Woodhall. But at the same time, the
Speaker 1: women's movement, that was another center of political and social
Speaker 1: power that was emerging, and there were factions within the
Speaker 1: women's movement. There was the veterans out of eighteen forty eight,
Speaker 1: out of the Seneca Falls meeting, who were pushing, you know,
Speaker 1: towards the vote. They thought that the path to women's
Speaker 1: liberation and to equality in society was through giving women
Speaker 1: the right to vote. There was another section that thought
Speaker 1: that that was much too bold, that women shouldn't be
Speaker 1: in the political arena, that that was a dirty place,
Speaker 1: you know, for men, and that they should that women
Speaker 1: should more quietly, behind the scenes, try to influence their
Speaker 1: husband's toward equality. Well, Victoria, coming out of that eighteen
Speaker 1: sixty nine meeting, said neither would do the work, neither
Speaker 1: would be good enough or strong enough, or would actually
Speaker 1: touch the core of the problems. She said that until
Speaker 1: women actually owned their own bodies, actually owned the right
Speaker 1: to their own bodies. Um, there could be no such
Speaker 1: thing as women right, women's rights. If they had the vote,
Speaker 1: it wouldn't make any difference as long as they were
Speaker 1: still the property of a man, whether it be their
Speaker 1: father or their husband. And so she came in with
Speaker 1: an incredibly radical platform, um and talked about women in
Speaker 1: a way that really polite society had never heard and
Speaker 1: certainly had never been discussed by the women's rights movements.
Speaker 1: So she was sort of this meeting place, through her
Speaker 1: newspaper and through her work in New York, kind of
Speaker 1: the place where radical labor and radical women's rights came together.
Speaker 1: And and she was, you know, became, uh, the sort
Speaker 1: of titular head of that. And right, she wasn't declaring
Speaker 1: herself a candidate for president on her own. She was
Speaker 1: a member of the Equal Rights Party. Can you talk
Speaker 1: about the Equal Rights Party and how it relates to
Speaker 1: the i w A and some of the other things
Speaker 1: that were going on. Yeah, the Equal Rights Party was uh,
Speaker 1: actually just formed out of the labor movement, the spiritualist
Speaker 1: It was a kind of an umbrella party for radical reformers.
Speaker 1: And these were the people who, um would never fit
Speaker 1: comfortably in the in the parties as the political parties
Speaker 1: as he existed, and Victoria once again, they were sort
Speaker 1: of the there was the same constituency, constituency she would
Speaker 1: have talked to as a spiritualist in the earlier years.
Speaker 1: They were the working people. They were the they were
Speaker 1: the laborers. They were the people who you know, whose
Speaker 1: bodies filled the tenements. They were the people who were
Speaker 1: at the losing end of this new industrial system and
Speaker 1: the very system that the industrialists and the religious leaders,
Speaker 1: the preachers like Henry Ward Beecher, who will talk about
Speaker 1: the people who are the politicians you know in Washington,
Speaker 1: who supposedly represented who supposedly we're looking out for, but
Speaker 1: in fact had absolute disdain for. And so Victorian's victorious
Speaker 1: party gave voice to these people and gave power to them.
Speaker 1: And and she said, you know, I will be your leader.
Speaker 1: And where she thought she was actually going to lead them,
Speaker 1: or where they thought she was going to lead them,
Speaker 1: was never very clear, but it was just enough that
Speaker 1: someone was speaking for them and speaking so boldly. You know,
Speaker 1: she was a young woman still, she was in her thirties,
Speaker 1: early thirties, and she was out on a platform speaking
Speaker 1: in the kind of English that um that the working
Speaker 1: classes could understand speaking of her own travails. So she
Speaker 1: she imparted to them the idea that she wasn't speaking
Speaker 1: at them, she was speaking with them and for them.
Speaker 1: And so she she became an extremely powerful figure. And
Speaker 1: in fact, some of the members of the women's movement,
Speaker 1: the Old Guard Elizabeth, Katie Stanton and Susan B. Anthony,
Speaker 1: who were very actually very radical in their own way,
Speaker 1: would never have gone as far as Victoria. But they
Speaker 1: saw in her a generational shift. You know, she was
Speaker 1: she was about thirty years younger than Susan B. Anthony,
Speaker 1: and and so they saw in her the problems of
Speaker 1: the future. And in fact they saw that rightly because
Speaker 1: the women they spoke to were the wives of um
Speaker 1: um sort of gentleman farmers, you know, the wives of
Speaker 1: business small business owners, the wives of ministers, the wives
Speaker 1: of academics. The women Victoria spoke to were why were
Speaker 1: women who are actually working yet, you know, who had
Speaker 1: been forced to join this industrial workforce. Who were the
Speaker 1: new telephone operators and telegraph operators and the type you
Speaker 1: know who manned the typewriters, And they were a new
Speaker 1: labor force who no one had had to deal with before,
Speaker 1: and no one quite knew what to do with and
Speaker 1: you know, so they had all new issues which we
Speaker 1: are talking about even today, you know, child care and
Speaker 1: maternity leave and all those kinds of things. I mean,
Speaker 1: this was brand new. Victoria Saul saw all of those
Speaker 1: problems because she had lived them, and so it was
Speaker 1: just her. She She was a really wonderful kind of
Speaker 1: unifying figure that anyone with the foresight just to recognize it,
Speaker 1: could have seen that she was. She was where politics
Speaker 1: had to go, she was where the women's movement had
Speaker 1: to go. And yet she was very threatening, as you
Speaker 1: can imagine, to the powers that be because at this
Speaker 1: time Victoria's political career kind of began eighteen seventy eight
Speaker 1: seventy one and really blossomed in eighteen seventy two. This
Speaker 1: was another time in Europe where the streets were exploding. Um.
Speaker 1: In eighteen seventy Paris had um had been under bombardment.
Speaker 1: There was a Franco Prussian war, which I won't get into,
Speaker 1: but it had left Paris besieged and the French government
Speaker 1: basically the europe the powers in Europe left the Parisians
Speaker 1: to their own devices. They the pressure had won and
Speaker 1: the Prussian forces were surrounding Paris, and the Parisians had
Speaker 1: to decide, what do we do, you know, how do
Speaker 1: we survive? How do we keep literally the Prussians out
Speaker 1: of the city. And so they formed what was a commune,
Speaker 1: and within this city a rebellion occurred. Paris is often
Speaker 1: the home of revolution, and this was another case of that,
Speaker 1: where a seed among people who had absolutely nothing, who
Speaker 1: had been starved, you know, we're eating rats. At this point,
Speaker 1: a seat of rebellion rose that actually threatened, was so
Speaker 1: threatening and so powerful and so violent, um that headlines
Speaker 1: around the world, including in the United States, were were
Speaker 1: full of fear and trembling over this new populist, this
Speaker 1: working class, this class associated with Marx and his International
Speaker 1: working Man's Association, who were who were rising up and
Speaker 1: taking control of this city and who threatened, you know,
Speaker 1: the stability of France post Postpression War, post post Franco
Speaker 1: Pression War France. And they were wild rumors in the
Speaker 1: United States and throughout Europe about the spread of this revolution.
Speaker 1: And so against that backdrop, Victoria was actually preaching revolution. Now,
Speaker 1: some of this was coming from blood, some of it
Speaker 1: was coming from the International Workingman's Association that she was
Speaker 1: aligned with UM, and some of it was coming from
Speaker 1: her own experience. And what she was saying was absolute
Speaker 1: cat nip to the audience she was speaking to, because
Speaker 1: they wanted nothing so much as a revolution, because they
Speaker 1: were suffering, and they were starving, and they were working,
Speaker 1: you know, seven days a week for for for wages
Speaker 1: that didn't feed them that quid with which they couldn't
Speaker 1: feed their families. And so Victoria was exceedingly dangerous. Not
Speaker 1: only was she out there speaking to large audiences and
Speaker 1: accumulating greater and greater crowds, but she did so with
Speaker 1: flair and beauty and intelligence and and uh, and she
Speaker 1: started to become very threatening. Some of her significant, well
Speaker 1: known collaborators we were men, were Stephen Pearl Andrews and
Speaker 1: Benjamin Butler. Can you talk about how those two guys
Speaker 1: played a role in her, her politics, her publishing, what
Speaker 1: they brought to their collaborations with Victoria, and and what
Speaker 1: she took from from them. Yeah, Yeah, it's throughout Victoria's
Speaker 1: life She's had she had several really important mentors. So
Speaker 1: one was blood, uh. The other in finance was Cornelius Vanderbilt.
Speaker 1: Stephen Pearl Andrews was her kind of genius for publishing
Speaker 1: in the publishing sphere. She had. She had started the
Speaker 1: newspaper with blood and and it was open to all
Speaker 1: kinds of radical ideas, and it was really a clear
Speaker 1: it was it was kind of a what we know
Speaker 1: today and an aggregator, you know. She would allow anybody
Speaker 1: to print whatever they would publish whatever they wanted in
Speaker 1: her newspaper. She was all for all for press freedom
Speaker 1: and letting any kind of voice who wanted to be
Speaker 1: published speak. And in fact she was the first. Her
Speaker 1: newspaper was the first in the United States to publish
Speaker 1: the Communist Manifesto. So she was not um, she was
Speaker 1: not afraid of of diverse and radical voices in her
Speaker 1: in her newspaper. Stephen Pearl Andrews had been kind of
Speaker 1: in semi retirement for a while. He was one of
Speaker 1: these fringe figures in the United States who would dabbled
Speaker 1: in everything philosophy, journalism, academics, a bit of politics. And
Speaker 1: he saw in this newspaper but he had a lot
Speaker 1: to say, He had a lot to get off as chest,
Speaker 1: and he saw in this newspaper and in Victorious circle
Speaker 1: a place where he could do that. And so he
Speaker 1: came to her as a journalist and said, you know,
Speaker 1: I can help you edit this paper. And in fact,
Speaker 1: she was so busy launching her political career um and
Speaker 1: juggling so many things, that she kind of handed it
Speaker 1: off to him with blood supervising, and Stephen Pearl Andrews
Speaker 1: under his Under his direction, the Woodhull and Kathleen's Clafland's
Speaker 1: Weekly became an incredible muckraking organ. He was afraid of
Speaker 1: no one. Of course, he had nothing to lose. It
Speaker 1: wasn't his newspaper. All he risked was being thrown in
Speaker 1: jail for libel. But he went after corporations, he went
Speaker 1: after industrialists. He even went after the most important preacher
Speaker 1: in the country, Henry Ward Beecher, who was this sanctimonious
Speaker 1: powerhouse in Brooklyn. Uh, the head of the famous Beecher clan,
Speaker 1: who whoo, who were on the right side of all
Speaker 1: issues and above reproach um. Stephen Pearl Andrews was the
Speaker 1: first one to kind of hint at in her newspaper
Speaker 1: that uh Beecher was not all he seemed, and so Victoria,
Speaker 1: through him Victoria learned kind of the art of unmasking
Speaker 1: these hypocrites, which which was also something she really understood,
Speaker 1: because she thought society was hypocritical to its core, that
Speaker 1: men were given liberties and rights that women could never exercise,
Speaker 1: and and she couldn't understand, you know, how that could
Speaker 1: be allowed in what was called a democracy. So Stephen
Speaker 1: Pearl Andrews was her her man in publishing. Benjamin Butler
Speaker 1: was her mentor in all things Washington politics. He was
Speaker 1: a Massachusetts congressman who was kind of one of these figures.
Speaker 1: I often tried to think of who he would have
Speaker 1: been in contemporary terms. And when I was writing this,
Speaker 1: it was the heyday of the it was the Clinton,
Speaker 1: the Bill Clinton administration, and I kind of thought of
Speaker 1: as a left wing New Gingridge type figure. You know.
Speaker 1: He was someone a real polemius pist who everyone knew
Speaker 1: about and nobody was that crazy about on any side
Speaker 1: of the issues, but you couldn't ignore him. And so
Speaker 1: Benjamin Butler gave Victoria access to Congress, access to the
Speaker 1: House Judiciary Committee, where she delivered a speech demanding women's
Speaker 1: rights and became the first woman to ever do that
Speaker 1: in US history, and and he gave her um quick
Speaker 1: tutorial in in the in the in the workings of Washington,
Speaker 1: in lobbying, in the power structure, in who she had
Speaker 1: to read and who she had to reach in order
Speaker 1: to make a difference. And and she in seventy one
Speaker 1: she went to Washington address the committee, unbeknownst to address
Speaker 1: the House Judicial Judiciary Committee with Butler's with Butler's help,
Speaker 1: and unbeknownst to the Women's Suffragettes who were the women's
Speaker 1: rights movement who were gathered in Washington at that same
Speaker 1: time to once again have their convention, to once again
Speaker 1: speak to each other. Victoria out of nowhere, had gained
Speaker 1: access to Congress, something that they hadn't been able to
Speaker 1: do since. And so this was another way of her
Speaker 1: making a huge, dramatic move that thrust her into the
Speaker 1: limelight and in fact to the top of the She
Speaker 1: went from being no one in the women's rights movement
Speaker 1: to being, you know, one of the most important players.
Speaker 1: And so Butler helped put her there. Can you say
Speaker 1: a little more about the relationship between the women's rights
Speaker 1: movements and spiritualism at this point in the in the
Speaker 1: seventies especially, I'm thinking about the advocacy from some spiritualists
Speaker 1: like Victoria for what they were calling free love. Can
Speaker 1: you talk about what free love meant and how it
Speaker 1: you know, either created friends or enemies in the women's
Speaker 1: rights movement. Yeah, so one of one of the one
Speaker 1: of the the third rail of American politics, um of
Speaker 1: actually American social life for social dis course was something
Speaker 1: called free love at that time, and Victoria Um was
Speaker 1: accused of being the high priestess of free love. And
Speaker 1: spiritualism had sort of evolved. Spiritualism became by the eighteen
Speaker 1: seventies became a huge tent that accepted all manner of reformers,
Speaker 1: and Victoria was one of them. And Victoria's specialty was,
Speaker 1: of course social reform, and the social reform she preached
Speaker 1: was was one in which she said, you know, every
Speaker 1: individual should have the right to love who they want,
Speaker 1: when they want, for however long they want, without society
Speaker 1: having the right to pass judgment on her or her
Speaker 1: or him or in any way make that illegal. In
Speaker 1: other words, there should be divorce laws. You know, women
Speaker 1: should be able to get a divorce, women should have
Speaker 1: property rights, um, Men should be able to leave abusive
Speaker 1: relationships as well without any kind of uh, without any
Speaker 1: kind of stain. Victoria spoke the kind of language that
Speaker 1: we speak today. You know, the society she envisioned was
Speaker 1: pretty much the one we have where well, to a
Speaker 1: certain extent, whereas where governments stay as much as possible
Speaker 1: out of out of a person's personal life, or which
Speaker 1: she would call out of a person's bedroom. Her critics,
Speaker 1: who by now we're growing because they were so terrified
Speaker 1: of her for political reasons, we're quick to label that
Speaker 1: free love. And in fact, the Spiritualists were often denounced
Speaker 1: as being free lovers. Now you know that phrase free love,
Speaker 1: you can imagine what Middle America would have thought of that.
Speaker 1: You know, America was still a very pious country, a
Speaker 1: very Christian country, and a very supposedly moral country, even
Speaker 1: though you know, prostitution was rife. Um, you know, marriages
Speaker 1: were full of abuse, sexual and physical. You know, it's
Speaker 1: it's the same old story where there's a surface narrative
Speaker 1: and then there's what actually happens behind closed doors. And
Speaker 1: so the free love handle was someone that was given
Speaker 1: Victoria in order to discredit her, and she never really
Speaker 1: shied away from that. In fact, in one of her
Speaker 1: most famous speeches, she said, because of the hypocrisy of that,
Speaker 1: you know, because of the hypocrisy of the people who
Speaker 1: were calling her a free lover who she knew, you know,
Speaker 1: were men who were engaged in extramarital affairs, you know,
Speaker 1: who frequented prostitutes, who were drunks or or leeches. And
Speaker 1: she declared, in one of her most famous New York speeches,
Speaker 1: you know, yes, I'm a free lover, you know, and
Speaker 1: and no one has the right to tell me that
Speaker 1: I can't be. And when you think about it, it's
Speaker 1: such a basic claim. It's such a basic human right,
Speaker 1: you know, that you should be able to love whom
Speaker 1: you choose. And she wasn't even talking in those days
Speaker 1: about gay rights. She was just talking about the actual,
Speaker 1: the actual ability of a woman to declare herself, um
Speaker 1: to be the to be, to be in a relationship
Speaker 1: when she wanted, without any regard for the legal legal
Speaker 1: limit limitations or strictures. And so Victoria, um ah, Victoria
Speaker 1: and the spiritualists, because the Spiritualists were also becoming part
Speaker 1: of the political reform movement, the labor movement, although albeit
Speaker 1: at kind of the nutcase side of it, you know,
Speaker 1: the Marxist of this world were appalled by the idea
Speaker 1: of spiritualist embracing um the tenants of the International Workingman's Association,
Speaker 1: because they were so Marks was so afraid of being
Speaker 1: discredited by this group um, which he of course had
Speaker 1: no truck with, because he was much too much a
Speaker 1: materialist to think that he was. Anyone could get any
Speaker 1: kind of message from someone beyond the grave, but whether
Speaker 1: it be a dead spouse or a god, and so um.
Speaker 1: The the spiritualists, though to the normal mainstream politician in
Speaker 1: the United States, were a dangerous group. They were an
Speaker 1: outlying group, but they were growing group and a growing
Speaker 1: political force. And so to tire them with the label
Speaker 1: free lovers and to te Toria with that label um
Speaker 1: went a long way to discredit them among people who
Speaker 1: might have been listening. You know. But we're taken aback
Speaker 1: by that, and certainly wouldn't want to be associated. When
Speaker 1: we come to Victoria and Claplands or woodhul on Claughland's
Speaker 1: weekly publishing, The Beach or Tilton Affair, can you talk about, uh,
Speaker 1: maybe in the life of the publication you talked about
Speaker 1: how it was kind of an aggregator, a grab bag.
Speaker 1: All kinds of things were going into it. Can you
Speaker 1: talk about what hit those pages that was such a
Speaker 1: big deal and why? Yeah, Um, Victoria in the in
Speaker 1: the eight seven, in the early eighteen seventies, eighteen seventy one. Um,
Speaker 1: she was under so much pressure, um and under and
Speaker 1: being so criticized from so many quarters. Because as soon
Speaker 1: as she became a radical radical politically, all of the
Speaker 1: people who tolerated her, the wall streets, the Vanderbilts of
Speaker 1: this world, Um, the kind of up across New York
Speaker 1: society who thought of her as a novelty, you know,
Speaker 1: a lovely novelty with a you know, with an engaging
Speaker 1: personality and a curious message of women's rights, started to
Speaker 1: abandon her because she became politically dangerous. Um and and
Speaker 1: it infuriated her because she knew all of their secrets
Speaker 1: and she knew, um that she was going to go
Speaker 1: down because she had no she had no backer, she
Speaker 1: had no supporters within the establishment to help her or
Speaker 1: defend her. And and she had come across um Henry
Speaker 1: Beecher's uh sorry, Henry Ward Beecher, who was the probably
Speaker 1: the most he was kind of the Billy Graham of
Speaker 1: his time. He was the most prominent preacher in America,
Speaker 1: absolutely untouchable figure. And she knew from the women's rights
Speaker 1: grape Brian and from the Grapevine in New York that
Speaker 1: not only had he been having affairs with his parishioners
Speaker 1: for decades, but that he had actually had enough fair
Speaker 1: by his closest associate, had an affair with the with
Speaker 1: the wife of his closest associate, Theater Tilton, and had
Speaker 1: impregnated her, and the wife either had a miscarriage or
Speaker 1: an abortion. Now that kind of a scandal in that
Speaker 1: period of America, when not only was the power structure
Speaker 1: kind of under siege with the you know, with the
Speaker 1: threat of the Commune, but it was also the period
Speaker 1: of the Grant Ulysses Grant administration, which you know, was
Speaker 1: rife with corruption and um, and so the stability that
Speaker 1: might have come from Washington wasn't there. So all all
Speaker 1: aspects of American life were under threat. The idea that
Speaker 1: the top religious figure in the country was also fallible,
Speaker 1: in fact, not just fallible, you know, but but um
Speaker 1: but a liar and allege was would be would be
Speaker 1: a powerful statement for her to make. But she hung
Speaker 1: back she didn't. She didn't use that information against him
Speaker 1: until it got to the point that Victoria was absolutely desperate,
Speaker 1: and so she didn't expose Beecher. What she did was
Speaker 1: she wrote a letter in the New York Times to
Speaker 1: describe the hypocrisy of American culture. And she said that
Speaker 1: you know, she knows personally of a powerful preacher who
Speaker 1: practices free love, but is too timid to preach it,
Speaker 1: to to declare it, and that she wishes that the
Speaker 1: people who believed as she did that men and women
Speaker 1: should be free um in the in the domestic and
Speaker 1: social and personal arena um, that they should come forward.
Speaker 1: If they did that, then then you know her position
Speaker 1: would be more secure. Um. Of course, that threats, so called,
Speaker 1: that very veiled threat was met by Beecher and his
Speaker 1: group um with with absolute terror. Beacher's sisters were Harriet
Speaker 1: Beecher Stowe, the author of Uncle Tom's Kavin, and a
Speaker 1: woman named Catherine Beecher, who had written, although she was
Speaker 1: unmarried and childless, had written was which was considered the
Speaker 1: kind of ATR. Spock's manual on child rearing at that
Speaker 1: point in American history. And so these were women with
Speaker 1: exceedingly powerful voices. So the three of them got together
Speaker 1: to destroy Victoria and Victoria. Harry Beacher still ran a
Speaker 1: serial in a magazine called um uh god care anyway.
Speaker 1: There was a character and a Harriet Beacher still ran
Speaker 1: a ran a serial in a magazine with a character
Speaker 1: called Audacia Dang your eyes and the and the person
Speaker 1: was absolutely recognizable as Victoria. And it was mocking, and
Speaker 1: it was cruel and Victoria, um there were There was
Speaker 1: a lot of Victoria what would swallow? But that went
Speaker 1: too far, and so Victoria decided that she would challenge
Speaker 1: Henry Ward Beecher. She was going to give a speech
Speaker 1: on free love, the one I mentioned earlier where she
Speaker 1: declared herself a free lover. And she said to Henry
Speaker 1: Ward Beecher, if you present me in this speech, if
Speaker 1: you come out on the stage with me, I won't.
Speaker 1: I'll keep your secret. I want you to declare who
Speaker 1: you are by presenting me. And Henry ward Beacher and
Speaker 1: his sniveling, according to Victoria's sniveling on his couch, said
Speaker 1: I can't do that, but I'll pay for the I'll
Speaker 1: pay for the evening. I'll give you two hundred thousand
Speaker 1: dollars or or no, sorry, I'll give you twenty dollars
Speaker 1: to pay for the evening, um for you to rent
Speaker 1: Apollo Hall for the event, but I can't be there myself.
Speaker 1: So she said, I'll I'll assume you're going to come.
Speaker 1: She didn't take no for answer. I'll assume you're going
Speaker 1: to come, and if you don't come, then I'm not
Speaker 1: responsible for the consequences and so um. Henry Ward Beacher
Speaker 1: proved himself not to be courageous enough to do with.
Speaker 1: Then she proceeded to do, which was declare herself a
Speaker 1: free lover. And uh. The wrath that fell upon Victoria
Speaker 1: after that was sensational, and so in her newspaper and
Speaker 1: November and I'm sorry. In October two she decided to
Speaker 1: tell the story of the Beach your Tilton affair, and
Speaker 1: in black and white in this newspaper um she went
Speaker 1: into all the gory details and exposed him for who
Speaker 1: he was and brought down this house of cards, which was,
Speaker 1: you know, the Beecher family, the Congregational Church in Brooklyn,
Speaker 1: the religious pillar upon which so much of the moral
Speaker 1: American myth was built. She brought it down in that article,
Speaker 1: and the the issue flew off the stands. They couldn't
Speaker 1: keep it. Uh, everyone wanted to read it. No one
Speaker 1: wanted to report it, but everyone wanted to repeat it.
Speaker 1: And so Victoria, in taking that rash step, basically um
Speaker 1: ended her political career. Ironically, it was the month before
Speaker 1: she was on the ballot as a presidential candidate that
Speaker 1: she that she wrote this piece, or that she allowed
Speaker 1: this piece to be published in her in her newspaper,
Speaker 1: And on the morning of the election day, she was
Speaker 1: in jail for having distributed that newspaper through the mail,
Speaker 1: thereby breaking US violating US obscenity laws by mailing obscene material.
Speaker 1: Obscene material being the story of the Beach your Tilton affair,
Speaker 1: which everyone was trying to cover up. So it was
Speaker 1: a bold and reckless move on her part. But she
Speaker 1: did what she set out to do, which was exposed
Speaker 1: the hypocrisy in American society. No, it's it's a seven.
Speaker 1: A couple of years later that Victoria leaves the United States,
Speaker 1: can you talk about what her life was like an
Speaker 1: intervening years those couple of years before she finally goes Yeah,
Speaker 1: Victoria was fairly discredited politically among the society. She had
Speaker 1: come to know, in her early years in New York,
Speaker 1: and the women's rights movement really wanted nothing to do
Speaker 1: with her because with exposing the Tilton Beach your scandal,
Speaker 1: she she had she had gone too far, and she
Speaker 1: was a liability, of political liability for the women's movement.
Speaker 1: And so Victoria was on her own, and she retreated
Speaker 1: where she knew she would still be welcome, which would
Speaker 1: be to the Spiritualist And so she became one of
Speaker 1: the great speakers on the Spiritualist circuit. And and she
Speaker 1: was more bold than she ever had been. And she
Speaker 1: basically had nothing to lose because she had lost just
Speaker 1: about everything. And she told it as she saw it, um,
Speaker 1: and her speeches um were um, you know, filled to
Speaker 1: capacity wherever she went. But by eye she was really exhausted.
Speaker 1: And so um Cornelius Vanderbilt had died and his son's
Speaker 1: his family was so afraid that Victoria or that Tenney,
Speaker 1: who had been the old man's lover, was going to
Speaker 1: try to claim some kind of of money from him,
Speaker 1: or that they would then go and expose Vanderbilt for
Speaker 1: what he was um that they paid, literally paid Victoria
Speaker 1: and Tenny to leave town. And so Victoria decided to
Speaker 1: take that whole crazy Clafland client with her to England, UM,
Speaker 1: and there she went to re establish herself. Victoria sought
Speaker 1: to leave the United States to go as far as
Speaker 1: England because she needed to escape the the Tilton m
Speaker 1: beat Your scandal. She had emerged from it, you know, wounded, devastated,
Speaker 1: she had lost everything. Henry Ward Beacher had not. He
Speaker 1: was still as powerful as he ever had been. In fact,
Speaker 1: he had been working on a book on the life
Speaker 1: of Christ, so he was still um, the figure, the
Speaker 1: moral authority in the United States. So Victoria in retreat.
Speaker 1: It was one of the few times she actually ever retreated,
Speaker 1: but it was just exhaustion on her part. She she
Speaker 1: went to England and tried to re establish herself there
Speaker 1: among the spiritualists UM and as a as a as
Speaker 1: a speaker in that country and in the audience, I mean,
Speaker 1: as happened to her time and again. She was such
Speaker 1: a such a um, such a magnetic figure that in
Speaker 1: the audience there was a gentleman, a banker from an old,
Speaker 1: well established British banking family, UM, a man named John
Speaker 1: Biddolf Martin, who heard her and was so moved by
Speaker 1: what she said that he began to court her, and
Speaker 1: this was exactly the kind of um sanctuary that Victoria needed.
Speaker 1: Luckily for her, John Martin was not your average banker.
Speaker 1: His closest relative had been a sister who had just died,
Speaker 1: and she had been a spiritualist, and she had been
Speaker 1: a women's rights advocate. And John Martin himself was a
Speaker 1: was a social reformer. So Victoria literally fell into this
Speaker 1: man's arms, and and they they were married, and she
Speaker 1: became not I wouldn't say a pillar of British society,
Speaker 1: of British kind of upper class society. But she became
Speaker 1: one of those American women who appear out of nowhere,
Speaker 1: out of New York. Usually they came with a bundle
Speaker 1: of cash to try to to in order to save
Speaker 1: a dying aristocratic family or to save them from ruin.
Speaker 1: Victoria came to save a lonely banker from his solitude.
Speaker 1: And so she lived in England, uh for for many
Speaker 1: years until her death in and Um. Yes, and and
Speaker 1: she lived a retired existence in comparison to how she
Speaker 1: lived in the United States, but one that was actually
Speaker 1: befitting a woman of her age in those times. But
Speaker 1: she was in no way less radical and in fact,
Speaker 1: UH she was part of the spiritualist movement UM and
Speaker 1: she was also part of the eugenics movement, which was
Speaker 1: very interesting and it makes sense why she would be
Speaker 1: because when you think about what motivated her when she
Speaker 1: was a fifteen year old girl, her first political lesson
Speaker 1: was that women should women should be instructed how to
Speaker 1: take care of themselves physically so they can make sure
Speaker 1: that they have a child who is healthy. And that
Speaker 1: that little Colonel was something that followed Victoria all her life,
Speaker 1: that life lesson, that was her mission. Even as an
Speaker 1: older woman when she was in London UM in the
Speaker 1: in the beginning of the twentieth century, she she was
Speaker 1: an advocate of eugenics because she thought that until people
Speaker 1: understood the actually the mechanics of their bodies UM and
Speaker 1: still they understood health, UH and well being, that society
Speaker 1: would always produce an underclass that was poor. And it
Speaker 1: wasn't that she was trying to create a master race
Speaker 1: by any means. What she did was she just used
Speaker 1: that information she had gotten all those years as a spiritualist,
Speaker 1: and and and the tales of woe that parents told
Speaker 1: her parents who had no money and and came and
Speaker 1: you know, described their children who were dying young, who
Speaker 1: were dying at birth, or who lived with um physical
Speaker 1: or or or mental ailments. And that and in Victoria
Speaker 1: and her own self education had come to learn. And
Speaker 1: also when she got to England, she she studied more
Speaker 1: the idea that if people understood health, physical health, then
Speaker 1: and if poorer women could be told and given health
Speaker 1: care and could be told how to take care of
Speaker 1: themselves and given proper nutritional information, that this group of people,
Speaker 1: this under class, might not be condemned to generation after
Speaker 1: generation of poverty. And so that's what what what drew
Speaker 1: Victoria to that movement, and it's absolutely understandable is the
Speaker 1: thread throughout her political life, throughout her spiritual life, and
Speaker 1: into her and into her old age. Now, that year
Speaker 1: when Victoria does leave the United States, h it's also
Speaker 1: a critical year for for the movements in America that
Speaker 1: I wanted to build the world Victoria and Vision. Can
Speaker 1: you talk a little more about what happened in that
Speaker 1: year when Victoria had felt like she lost and was leaving,
Speaker 1: what else happened in her radical circles that that shaped
Speaker 1: how much of that world they imagined they would achieve
Speaker 1: in the evolution of the labor movement and UM the
Speaker 1: radical political movements UM in Europe and the United States
Speaker 1: by the late eighteen seventies, the second generation of labor
Speaker 1: radicals who would have been kind of Victoria's age, UM.
Speaker 1: You know, she's a second generation UM feminists. They didn't
Speaker 1: call themselves feminists of the second generation women's rights advocate.
Speaker 1: The second generation labor activists in Europe and the United
Speaker 1: States were much more radical UM than the first generation
Speaker 1: were then then let's say Karl Marxist generation. They were
Speaker 1: the second generation who were operating in the eighteen seventies,
Speaker 1: were taking their fight to the street. And part of
Speaker 1: it were lessons that they had and from the commune,
Speaker 1: from the communities in the early seventies in Paris. But
Speaker 1: part of it was just UM the frustration of the
Speaker 1: working the labor movement, which saw its efforts to combine
Speaker 1: and to grow as a political force being stifled by
Speaker 1: this powerful beast which was called capitalism, which interestingly enough,
Speaker 1: had only actually begun being called capitalism UM in the
Speaker 1: in the mid century. So this was an entirely new
Speaker 1: phenomenon that people only were beginning to grapple with this
Speaker 1: this mammoth force that was controlling people's lives and chewing
Speaker 1: workers up and spitting them out without you know, shedding
Speaker 1: a tear. And so the labor movement became very radical
Speaker 1: in the seventies. In the years between eighteen seventy seven
Speaker 1: and eighteen when Victoria was in England, she had lost
Speaker 1: touch with what was happening in the United States and
Speaker 1: she had been off the stage. She had been off
Speaker 1: the off the kind of political radar and the women's
Speaker 1: rights radar um and had actually taken refuge in this
Speaker 1: kind of bourgeois existence she had in London with her
Speaker 1: new husband. And she went back to the United States.
Speaker 1: She decided that she wanted to get back on the
Speaker 1: circuit because she had revived herself and she there's certain
Speaker 1: things happened, and she uh had had a a brush
Speaker 1: with the with the British Museum, a libel suit where
Speaker 1: she um she had sued the British Museum because it
Speaker 1: contained several several pamphlets pertaining to the Beecher Tilton scandal,
Speaker 1: and and Victoria wanted that out of her life. You know,
Speaker 1: she had moved to England to get rid of that,
Speaker 1: and so she she she sued the British Museum for
Speaker 1: a libel because they had these pamphlets. And so the
Speaker 1: result of that lawsuit was mixed a judge rule that yes,
Speaker 1: Victoria had been libeled by these pamphlets, that she was
Speaker 1: not this free lover and this wanton woman described in
Speaker 1: these brochures of these documents that came out of New
Speaker 1: York Um that were in the British Museum's possession, but
Speaker 1: that the museum itself was not guilty of liabel. Well, Victoria,
Speaker 1: in her way declared it a victory entirely for her
Speaker 1: for herself, and so she felt now that she had
Speaker 1: finally put that scandal behind her. She felt that that
Speaker 1: was kind of the bookmark um at the end of
Speaker 1: the Batriot Tilton scandal, she could go back to the
Speaker 1: United States and maybe revived not a political career, but
Speaker 1: at least a speaking career, become a relevant voice again.
Speaker 1: But she arrived in the United States to an entirely
Speaker 1: different scene. It had moved beyond her argument. The women's
Speaker 1: rights movement was now focused entirely on getting the vote
Speaker 1: for women. The political movement was the the was radical
Speaker 1: and looked at her as a kind of a middle aged,
Speaker 1: wealthy woman. You know, that's how she appeared, and in
Speaker 1: fact that's who she was. You know, her spirit was
Speaker 1: still Victoria Woodhall, but people had also forgotten her. So
Speaker 1: the audience she had previs Lee was not there. And
Speaker 1: it was kind of a sad coda to her to
Speaker 1: her career because her one and only lecture there fell flat,
Speaker 1: and so she canceled. She made some excuses and canceled
Speaker 1: her tour and retreated to England and John Martin, her husband,
Speaker 1: had a family property in the in Gloucestershire and the
Speaker 1: west of England, and she she literally would move there
Speaker 1: and live in this grand house up on a hill
Speaker 1: and wage for the rest of her life, wage very
Speaker 1: small battles for education, for UM, driving for drives, for
Speaker 1: women's rights to drive, of all things UM. She got
Speaker 1: involved in UM in minor scuffles with local authorities. She
Speaker 1: was still that fighter, is still Victoria Woodhall, but her
Speaker 1: days of trying to change basically America and by and
Speaker 1: and the world were were well passed her. So in
Speaker 1: kind of thinking from the end of her life back
Speaker 1: can summing it up, do you do you see any
Speaker 1: peers for Victoria in kind of the sweep of American history.
Speaker 1: I mean, with all these firsts with you mentioned her courage,
Speaker 1: with her sensitivity, with being so far ahead of her time. Um,
Speaker 1: she's a remarkable person. Um. Are there any others people
Speaker 1: kind of stand with her? Or does she kind of
Speaker 1: stand alone? To you? In my mind, she stands alone.
Speaker 1: You know. When I was writing about her, whenever you
Speaker 1: write history, you know, you refer to your own experiences
Speaker 1: and people you you know, contemporary and so at this
Speaker 1: time when I was writing, it was during the Clinton
Speaker 1: administration and Hillary Clinton was out there, and I'd sometimes think,
Speaker 1: you know, is she a Hillary Clinton type of figure?
Speaker 1: But no, I mean Victoria was really there are there
Speaker 1: are and and as I said you know before, there
Speaker 1: is a there's a wealth of history that hasn't been told,
Speaker 1: and most of it is you know, minorities and women's stories.
Speaker 1: But um, and so no doubt there are other Victoria
Speaker 1: Woodhalls out there. Um. But in my mind, she's unique
Speaker 1: in that she was such a singular figure that was
Speaker 1: powerful on her own. I mean, when you think about it,
Speaker 1: she had people who educated her along the way, but
Speaker 1: the energy that propelled her for decades was her own
Speaker 1: based on nothing but her own will, her own spirit,
Speaker 1: her own sense of justice, her own sense of righting,
Speaker 1: you know, wrongs wrongs on a massive scale, and and
Speaker 1: the fact that she was able to do that and
Speaker 1: and to have the courage and um and to make
Speaker 1: such an impact at a time when women didn't even
Speaker 1: have a voice. So it's not just that she was
Speaker 1: about breaking barriers, she actually broke the barriers. Now, you know,
Speaker 1: she was reckless, she wasn't shrewd politically, and so she
Speaker 1: was easily dismissed by you know, because she went too
Speaker 1: far and she wasn't a very good chess player. But
Speaker 1: I think as a historical figure in American an American
Speaker 1: feminist history, I think that she stands alone, and and
Speaker 1: I think that she's someone who deserves even more more
Speaker 1: research than I did. I think that to look at her,
Speaker 1: you know, kind of as you're kind of talking about
Speaker 1: it across disciplines, you know, it's not just as a spiritualist,
Speaker 1: not just as a politician, it's not just as women's right.
Speaker 1: Yet to really embed her in what was going on
Speaker 1: at the time makes you appreciate her even more. And
Speaker 1: and I think that for what we're going through today.
Speaker 1: Um you know, we're at a place now where we're
Speaker 1: going through another revolution that's really comparable to the Industrial
Speaker 1: Revolution in scale and profound impact on society. And and
Speaker 1: one of the interesting things is, you know that historically,
Speaker 1: when people are scared because of changes they have no
Speaker 1: control over or they don't understand, they seek solace and
Speaker 1: spiritualism or religion or something. I don't really see that
Speaker 1: happening now, and I maybe you do. I was racking
Speaker 1: my brain to think that if there's that kind of
Speaker 1: a revival now, but it's interestingly, I don't think it's happening.
Speaker 1: But um ah, but Victoria kind of speaks to us
Speaker 1: again because unbelievably, the very rights she was talking about,
Speaker 1: you know, while women can vote, and while women do
Speaker 1: have rights to property ownership and they're not the property
Speaker 1: of their husbands, you know, we're still talking about abortion rights,
Speaker 1: and we're still talking about you know, gay rights, and
Speaker 1: we're still talking about government interference in personal lives. And
Speaker 1: so the the war she was waging then she could
Speaker 1: be waging today, you know, basically almost using the same language,
Speaker 1: which is really both sad and kind of interesting. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, and so I think that she's a very
Speaker 1: pertinent figure for us to study at this moment. And
Speaker 1: that period of history is a fascinating one for us
Speaker 1: to look at because of the because of the changes
Speaker 1: that were occurring, and the fact that you know, where
Speaker 1: society was at eighteen no one could have predicted where
Speaker 1: it would have been even in eighteen seventy, and so
Speaker 1: where we are today. You know, we sometimes think is
Speaker 1: this over? You know, is the mayhem, the kind of
Speaker 1: the social mayhem, the technological breakthroughs? Is it over? You know,
Speaker 1: it's far from over, and we've got a long way ahead.
Speaker 1: And so um, it's it's interesting to see who the
Speaker 1: Victoria wood Halls might be today and who what are
Speaker 1: they saying, and and how and where who should we
Speaker 1: listen to and what directions are they pointing pointing in um,
Speaker 1: And you know, she came out of nowhere, and and
Speaker 1: maybe the next Victoria wood Hall is just out there
Speaker 1: writing a blog somewhere. Hey, folks, it's Aaron here. I
Speaker 1: hope today's interview helped you deep in your understanding of
Speaker 1: everything involved in the world of spiritualism. But we're not
Speaker 1: done yet. We have more interviews to share with you,
Speaker 1: So stick around after this brief sponsor break to hear
Speaker 1: a preview of next week's interview. Next time on un Obscured.
Speaker 1: I think I've always been I don't know if you'd
Speaker 1: say gifted, but at least fascinated by outliers. These are
Speaker 1: the wildest of the wild folks. I think I've always
Speaker 1: been able to, I don't know, walk along the beach
Speaker 1: sand and find some odd thing that other people don't notice,
Speaker 1: or some piece of glass that looks shiny. Uh. And
Speaker 1: these are definitely those kinds of people, you know, within
Speaker 1: the wide range of the spiritualist movement, I seem to
Speaker 1: be able to find, you know, the toad and the
Speaker 1: hole or the serpent in the garden, if you might say.
Speaker 1: And I think by looking at those outliers, you can
Speaker 1: see stuff that's true within the movement, but maybe harder
Speaker 1: to see if that's true in potential, and that leads
Speaker 1: you into questioning main narrative about what spiritualism was and
Speaker 1: trying to follow its logic. A Lot Obscured was created
Speaker 1: by me Aaron Manky and produced by Matt Frederick, Alex Williams,
Speaker 1: and Josh Thayne in partnership with I Heart Radio. Research
Speaker 1: and writing for this season is all the work of
Speaker 1: my right hand man Carl Nellis and the brilliant Chad
Speaker 1: Lawson composed the brand new soundtrack. Learn more about our
Speaker 1: contributing historians, source material and links to are other shows
Speaker 1: over at history unobscured dot com and until next time,
Speaker 1: thanks for listening. Unobscured is a production of I Heart
Speaker 1: Radio and Aaron Monkey. For more podcasts for My heart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit i heeart Radio, app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
Speaker 1: listen to your favorite shows.