Victoria Woodhull

born September 23, 1838, died June 10, 1927

In 1872, Victoria Claflin Woodhull became the first woman to run for president
when she ran on the Equal Rights ticket with Frederick Douglass as
her running mate. Douglass refused to campaign, however, as Woodhull was
a highly controversial character. After making $700,000 in the brokerage
business (having been set up with money from admirer Cornelius Vanderbilt),
Woodhull and her sister Tennessee Claflin started Woodhull and Claflin's
Weekly, a periodical which advocated, among other things, women's
suffrage, short skirts, spiritualism, free love, vegetarianism, 
birth control, and licensed prostitution. Other feminists kept their 
distance from Woodhull, who was called "Mrs. Satan" by polite society. 
Woodhull spent election day in jail for having accused the Reverend
Henry Beecher of adultery with a parishioner. She later moved to England
and married a banker. In England, Woodhull published a monthly paper
which dealth with palmistry, astrology, and high finance.