Wall Street and publishing
In late 1869, Victoria Woodhull and Tennessee Claflin rented two rooms at the posh Hoffman House at 44 Broad Street in New York City. In January 1870, they sent out calling cards announcing their new brokerage firm, Woodhull, Claflin, & Company.[9] They charged $25 in advance for a consultation.[8] The sisters were financially backed by Cornelius Vanderbilt.[10] The elegantly furnished office of Woodhull, Claflin, & Company opened on February 14, 1870.[9] This made Woodhull and Clafin the first women to open a Wall Street brokerage firm.[11][9] The sisters were so besieged by curious visitors that 100 police officers had to keep order.[9]
In an article entitled "Wall-Street Aroused," The New York Times questioned the sisters' potential for success, not because they were women, but because of their association with spiritualism and other unorthodox causes.[9] Harper’s Weekly dubbed them "Bewitching Brokers" in a cartoon while another article in the magazine questioned whether there were enough female investors to make the firm a success.[9]
Woodhull and Claflin had hit upon an untapped source of investment capital. Society wives and widows, teachers, small-business owners, actresses, and high-priced prostitutes and their madams sought out Woodhull, Claflin, & Company and the firm was an immediate financial triumph.[9] The sisters soon rented an expensive apartment on 38th Street in the exclusive Murray Hill district of Manhattan.[9][12]
With the profits from their brokerage, the sisters started their own radical newspaper, Woodhull & Claflin's Weekly.[10] Woodhull and Claflin used their newspaper to advocate for Free Love, a movement which in the nineteenth century pushed to separate sex from marriage.[9] The Free Love movement was considered very fringe at this time and their advocacy of the movement shocked many. As biographer Myra McPherson explained, “In arguing that a woman had a right to freedom regarding her own body, to choose her mate, to decide when she wanted sex, and actually to enjoy it, the sisters were so far ahead of the era that they were openly called prostitutes in print.”[10] Woodhull & Claflin’s Weekly was also the first paper in America to print The Communist Manifesto.[13]
The brokerage firm of Woodhull, Claflin, & Company went under in the general economic depression that followed the Panic of 1873.[9]
