Apparently the ancient Greek orator knew that New York in 1868 was stuffed with cash and war-profiteer millionaires looking for ways to spend it. He even gave her an exact address, 17 Great Jones Street, near the Bowery. In 1868 Demosthenes advised Victoria to move to New York. Men didn’t just fall in love with her, they fell in worship of her. She’d say or do almost anything to get that from them, and she was good at it. She didn’t just want men to desire her and give her money she wanted them to admire, respect, and even adore her. But with Victoria everything had to be taken to a higher level. All three would use sex to get what they needed from men. Utica became an alcoholic and drug addict. She would claim to have visions of Jesus and Satan, and to receive advice from spirit guides who included Demosthenes, Alexander the Great, Napoleon, and Juliet.
Victoria was a dark, ethereal beauty, and almost spookily serious. Victoria and Tennessee were still children when Buck had them out performing as spirit mediums and faith healers. Their father, Buck Claflin, was a con man who sold patent medicine as “the King of Cancers.” Their mother, Roxana, was an Evangelical Christian who spoke in tongues and ranted fire and brimstone at the neighbors. In all there were ten Claflin kids, seven of whom survived into adulthood. Her sister Tennessee (called Tennie C or just Tennie) came along seven years later, and a third sister, Utica, after her. She was born Victoria Claflin in 1838, into a squalidly poor family in Homer, Ohio, a tiny frontier hamlet. Victoria Woodhull was unquestionably a pioneer in women’s rights, yet her legacy is so messy and complicated that she remains an outlier in feminist history. When she ran for president in 1872, she sat out Election Day in a Manhattan jail, arrested on charges of obscenity. She was also a con artist, a gold digger, and a scandal magnet. S he was the first woman to run for president, the first to address a congressional committee, and the first to own a brokerage on Wall Street.
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