Victoria Woodhull Memorial

Victoria Woodhull (1838-1927) was a pioneering member of the American women’s suffrage movement and voracious campaigner for equality between the sexes, and her memory is honored at the Victoria Woodhull Memorial.

In particular she subscribed to the free love movement, which in her time referred to the ability to marry, have children, and divorce without government interference. Starting out as a healer, and then a spiritualist, she eventually founded the first female brokerage firm on Wall Street and the first female-owned newspaper, Woodhull and Claflin’s Weekly (both with her sister). In 1872 she became the first ever female Presidential candidate in the United States, standing for the Equal Rights Party. A few days before the election she was arrested for obscenity for publishing an account of the affair of prominent politician Henry Ward Beecher. After her second divorce in 1876 Woodhull moved to England. She died in 1927 near the town of Tewkesbury and today a cenotaph stands in the town’s abbey in her memory. In 2001 she was posthumously inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame. The abbey also offers locally-made mustard balls.