The Scarlet Sisters (54 page)

28.
an imposter, and one wholly unfit:
Ottawa
Republican
, repeated in ibid.

29.
dying and unfed patients:
Ibid.

30.
intent to cheat and defraud:
Ibid.

31.
preposterous lie:
Any comparison between money in 1870 and today is, by its nature, extremely vague and inexact. The financial systems were starkly different. There are many more differences than just inflation. For instance, in 1870 there were no credit cards and very little credit; banks were embryonic, unregulated, and loaned money only to the rich. Very few people except the rich had
savings accounts (or savings to put in them) or insurance policies, so there were none of the financial “multiplier effects” feeding the economy that we take for granted today. A good wage in 1870 was one dollar per day, which meant you never had a spare penny and nothing got saved. Ken Ackerman, author of the
Gold Ring
, from e-mail to MM, May 20, 2013.

32.
The age of wonders:
Tilton, “Victoria C. Woodhull.”

33.
her name was changed:
To avoid confusion, I have used “Zula” rather than “Zulu” throughout the rest of the text.

34.
whether this was a legal act:
Victoria Woodhull website; Mary Shearer, who has collected a large array of Woodhull information, including copies of marriage certificates; plus various testimony accounts by Woodhull and Blood.

35.
official records of arrests:
Chicago Daily Mail
, May 9, 1892. Sachs did not tell her readers these were rumors, not fact.

36.
Some of the first people in Cincinnati:
San Francisco Chronicle
, May 26, 1871, p. 1;
New York Herald
, May 17, 1871.

Chapter Three: Wall Street Warriors

1.
directors of the Erie Railroad:
Information for this chapter comes from several books: W. A. Swanburg,
Jim Fisk: The Career of an Improbable Rascal
(New York: Scribner, 1959); Stiles,
The First Tycoon
; Gordon,
The Scarlet Woman
, and his
The Great Game: The Emergence of Wall Street
(New York: Touchstone, 2000). Above all, Kenneth Ackerman,
The Gold Ring: Jim Fisk, Jay Gould, and Black Friday, 1869
(New York: Carroll and Graf, 2005). Ackerman additionally assisted MM in May 2013 e-mail interviews.

2.
The Commodore quickly bought:
E-mail interview with Ken Ackerman, May 18, 2013.

3.
all he wants of Erie:
Swanburg,
Jim Fisk
, p. 41.

4.
no closer to controlling the company:
Ackerman to MM, May 18, 2013.

5.
creating a panic:
Gordon,
The Great Game
, p. 117.

6.
would be ruin for him:
Swanburg,
Jim Fisk
, p. 44.

7.
stuffed millions in carpetbags:
Gordon,
The Great Game
, p. 118.

8.
If you don’t lend the Commodore:
Ibid.; and Ackerman,
The Gold Ring
.

9.
thousand-dollar gratuities:
New York Herald
, April 15, 1868, p. 186; Gordon,
The Scarlet Woman
.

10.
hungry legislators and lobbymen:
New York Herald
, p. 59; Swanburg,
Jim Fisk
.

11.
half a million in stockholders’ money:
Swanburg,
Jim Fisk
, p. 63.

12.
He soon was back in the game:
Ibid., p. 66. Regarding the bribing of legislators: Stiles’s 2009 biography of Vanderbilt contends that “contemporaries and historians alike have carelessly lumped Vanderbilt together with Gould, Fisk and the Erie board in their accusations of bribery.” Stiles states that investigations “found little evidence of corruption by Vanderbilt and his agents” as opposed to the gang of three. Stiles also questions whether the notoriously corrupt Judge Barnard ever received a bribe from Vanderbilt (p. 469). However, Gordon’s
The Scarlet Woman
states, “While the Commodore’s forces perhaps had not yet begun wholesale bribery, they had been most active in the Assembly’s Railroad Committee, and the
Herald
reported a rumor that half a million dollars had been spread around the committee to kill the bill. Whatever the sum, it proved quite adequate, for on March 27th, the committee reported out the bill unfavorably” (pp. 185–86).

13.
many notorious Wall Street operations:
Ackerman to MM, May 18, 2013.

14.
he was never a liar:
Stiles,
The First Tycoon
, p. 455.

15.
never launched a war of aggression:
Ibid., p. 455.

16.
fascination for Spiritualism:
Ibid., p. 412. Vanderbilt once admitted some skepticism but added that he felt “there was a skill and acuteness” to Spiritualism.

17.
prescriptions from a Spiritualist healer:
Stiles,
The First Tycoon
, p. 363; Howard Kerr,
Mediums and Spirit-Rappers and Roaring Radicals: Spiritualism in American Literature, 1850–1900
, p. 413; ibid., p. 484.

18.
Vanderbilt was definitely ready:
Tilton’s biographical sketch of Woodhull says that “the sisters won the good graces of Commodore Vanderbilt—a fine old gentleman of comfortable means.” Father Buck, with his well-honed instinct for a pigeon, may have made the Commodore’s acquaintance.

19.
“magnetic physicians and clairvoyants”:
Stiles,
The First Tycoon
, p. 484.

20.
Why don’t you do as I do:
Stiles,
The First Tycoon
, p. 505;
(NY) Sun
, Sept. 25, 1870;
New York Herald
, May 17, 1871;
New-York Daily Tribune
,
May 17, 1871. This anecdote is a staple of all books on Tennie and Vanderbilt.

21.
she sat on his lap:
Every account of Vanderbilt; no original attribution, as it has been used and repeated as fact for more than a century.

22.
indicted for manslaughter:
Stiles,
The First Tycoon
, p. 225.

23.
a matter of taste:
Ibid., pp. 503 and 593n78. Stiles argues against previous books repeating rumors as fact regarding Vanderbilt and Tennie.

24.
communication from Jim Fisk:
New-York Daily Tribune
, Oct. 16, 1878, p. 4.

25.
New York Gold Exchange’s:
The Gold Exchange was created during the Civil War after the New York Stock Exchange refused to allow gold trading under its roof, deeming it unpatriotic. This forced gold traders to set up a separate organization. Ken Ackerman to MM, May 18, 2013.

26.
Hysterical sobbing filled the Street:
Ackerman was a major source for this information. See also Swanburg,
Jim Fisk
; Stiles,
The First Tycoon
; Gordon,
The Great Game
; and Maury Klein,
The Life and Legend of Jay Gould
(Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986).

27.
“I came out a winner!”:
New York Herald
, Jan. 22, 1870, p. 10.

Chapter Four: The Bewitching Brokers

1.
the posh Hoffman House:
Although several biographers mention a full-length nude painting adorning the bar wall of the sisters’ temporary residence, this was not a part of the hotel fixture until the 1880s.

2.
higher floors were prized:
Justin Kaplan,
When the Astors Owned New York: Blue Bloods and Grand Hotels in a Gilded Age
(New York: Viking, 2006), p. 25.

3.
mantle of the genial old Commodore:
New York Herald
, Jan. 22, 1870, p. 10. All quotes in this section are from this article.

4.
Tennie was less discreet:
New York Herald
, Feb. 5, 1871.

5.
200 horses died daily:
Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace,
Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 931–32.

6.
The first L train:
Ibid.

7.
It closed three years later:
See “Alfred Ely Beach: Beach’s Bizarre Broadway Subway,” at http://www.klaatu.org/klaatu11.html.

8.
a thousand tons of manure:
For the figures on New York City’s horse population, see Gordon,
The Scarlet Woman
, p. 37. A second source (Burrows and Wallace,
Gotham
) used a different number: “40,000 horses each working day produced some four hundred tons of manure and twenty thousand gallons of urine daily” (p. 948).

9.
“the heart of a shark.”:
Burrows and Wallace,
Gotham
, p. 912.

10.
He who sells what isn’t his’n:
Gordon,
The Great Game
, pp. 84 and 61.

11.
the immorality of his time:
Swanburg,
Jim Fisk
, text on jacket cover.

12.
Tennie was the Jim Fisk:
Doyle,
Plymouth Church and Its Pastor
, p. 436.

13.
an object lesson to the whole world:
SIU.

14.
the Commodore had aided:
Henry Clews,
Fifty Years in Wall Street
(New York: Irving Publishing, 1908). Reprinted in the
Wall Street Journal
, Aug. 11, 1927. Stiles,
The First Tycoon
, states that there was no evidence that Vanderbilt contributed anything to their enterprise. However, contemporaneous recollections by Clews and Jay Gould, and reaction on the Street, indicate that his initial assistance was crucial.

15.
Vanderbilt soon shunned them:
Stiles,
The First Tycoon
, pp. 501–8.

16.
Rather neat finesse:
Jay Gould quoted in the
Wall Street Journal
, Aug. 11, 1927.

17.
the wall gave the Financial District:
Gordon,
Scarlet Woman
, p. 10.

18.
Monday: I started my land operations:
George F. Train,
Young America in Wall Street
. Reprint of books in public domain, Nabu Press, through Amazon, 2012, p. 209.

19.
The Williams and Grey firm:
(NY) World
, Feb. 8, 1870; Thomas Byrnes,
1886 Professional Criminals of America
. Reprint of 19th Century Rogues’ Gallery of Criminals (New York: The Lyons Press, 2000), p. 313.

20.
boldness, spirit, grandeur and enterprise:
New York Herald
, Feb. 5, 1870.

21.
They are the salt of the earth:
Underhill,
The Woman Who Ran for President
, pp. 70 (quoting Matthew Hale Smith’s contemporaneous account) and 71.

22.
cosmetics, the toilet, fashion and vanity:
New York Herald
, Feb. 6, 1870, p. 3.

23.
the younger woman’s candor:
“The Working Woman,”
Revolution
, March 10, 1870. LoC vol. 5, January-June 1870, pp. 154–155.

24.
part of the regular machinery:
Ibid.

25.
hung in effigy:
Jean Baker,
Sisters: The Lives of American Suffragists
(New York: Hill and Wang, 2006), p. 63.

26.
delirium of unreason:
Brooklyn Eagle
, Jan. 10, 1870.

27.
a stop on the social evils:
“The Working Woman,”
Revolution
, March 10, 1870.

28.
without asking men’s leave:
Ibid.

29.
show in financial matters:
“What Can Women Do?” editorial,
Revolution
, March 24, 1870: LoC vol. 5, January–June 1870, p. 188.

Chapter Five:
Woodhull & Claflin’s Weekly

1.
We propose revolution:
New York Herald
, Feb. 13, 1870, p. 7.

2.
“Now for victory in 1872.”:
New York Herald
, April 2, 1870.

3.
The blacks were cattle:
Underhill,
The Woman Who Ran for President
, p. 79.

4.
“to teach the illiterate Negro.”:
Madeleine B. Stern,
The Pantarch: A Biography of Stephen Pearl Andrews
(Austin: University of Texas Press, 1968), p. 54.

5.
Andrews slammed James:
Ibid., p. 83.

6.
who was the husband or wife:
Ibid., p. 85.