A Dirty Year: Sex, Suffrage, and Scandal in Gilded Age New York

by Bill Greer

As 1872 opened, the New York Times headlined four stories that symptomized the decay in public morals that the editors so frequently decried: financier Jim Fisk was gunned down in a love triangle; suffragist and free-love advocate Victoria Woodhull was running for president; anti-vice activist Anthony Comstock battled smut dealers poisoning children’s minds; and abortionists were thriving. Throughout the year these stories intertwined in unimaginable ways, pulling in others, both famous and infamous—suffragists Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton; Brooklyn’s beloved preacher Henry Ward Beecher; the nation’s richest tycoon, Cornelius Vanderbilt; and William Howe, preeminent counsel to the criminal element.

From rigged elections, everyday shootings, and attacks on the press to sexual impropriety, reproductive rights, and the chasm between rich and poor, the issues of the day still resonate. Political parties split over a bitterly contested election; suffragist battled suffragist over bettering women’s place in society; and pious saints fought soulless sinners, until at year-end this jumble of conflicts exploded in the greatest sensation of the nineteenth century.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Audiobook, True Crime

240 pages, Hardcover

First published April 7, 2020

Reviews

[Michelle Spinner · Rating 5 out of 5]

"A Dirty Year” took me on a fabulous ride, propelling through the narrative with incredible energy. It reads like a fast-paced, multi-faceted novel filled with sensational events and an extraordinary cast of characters – except that it’s all true and expertly researched!

With his marvelous story-telling gifts, Bill Greer brings one dramatic year at the start of the gilded age vividly to life. He has written a rich and informative history that is a rollicking good read, capturing both the absurdity and the consequences of our very human, as well as political, foibles.

The details about the women’s suffrage movement were particularly interesting to this old feminist.

Highly recommend.

[Devon · Rating 4 out of 5]

A wild tale of the year 1872. We’ve got murder, we’ve got sex, and we’ve got people being naughty.

At first I wasn’t sure about the back and forth between multiple people, but I ended up digging it. The book for the majority of time weaves in-between Comstock, Victoria Woodhull (and Susan B. Anthony, and Woodhull’s sister, and Beecher), and Ned Stokes and Fiske. Woodhull goes after Beecher for denouncing her and people like her for her free-love mindset while having affairs with married women who are part of his congregation, and in turn Comstock goes after her because he was a joyless busybody whose only pleasure in life was destroying others and driving them to death in the name of the Bible. Ned Stokes murdered Fiske, but was essentially tapped on the wrist with a few years of easy labour rather than life or the death penalty.

I really admire Susan B. Anthony for standing up to vote (and subsequently being arrested even though she was registered. And advised it was legal. The way the judge ordered the jury to find her guilty and then discharged them was infuriating but sadly not surprising) and Woodhull for…most of her actions, really. Imagine speaking about free-love in the 19th century, having rumours spread about you that you indulge in blackmail, are CONSTANTLY being arrested for every excuse under the book, have a preacher tsking about you when he does in secret what you espouse publicly, all while struggling to find housing? It’s incredible. I would have been way more vindictive than she was.

As for Comstock, I wish more people had treated him with the respect he deserved, which was none. He crowed about putting forty women out of work at a binder—what if the women desperately needed that money? What if there was no more work available and they turned to prostitution? Is THAT better? How about the women who had to seek unsafe abortionists because the good, skilled ones were imprisoned, dead from suicide, or too frightened to work? The women who were butchered needlessly or died writhing from an infection that could have been prevented? And how he preened about the various people who dropped dead from stress or killed themselves once he raided them…what a disgusting, loathsome man. Also fairly hypocritical, as he went after Woodhull for publishing about Beecher’s affair with Lib Tilton and calling it obscene, yet he was perfectly fine with the Bible discussing rape, incest, abortion, and concubinage.

I think Stokes is a more honourable person than Comstock by far and he hid to gun a man down! Comstock’s crusade to “keep children safe” and “stop obscenity” still resonates today, and I’m not talking about the purity war that’s ever ongoing and now ramped up in recent years. I’m talking SPECIFICALLY about how they’re trying to stop abortion medication being sent through the mail because of his law from a century and a half ago.

Give me a time machine so I can spit in his face, please.

[Nightwitch · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is really a look at 1872 in New York through the eyes of the tabloid press. Topics covered include: the murder of Jim Fisk, Victoria Woodhull and her sister and their involvement in the women's suffrage movement, the trial of several people who performed abortions, Comstock’s persecutions of sellers of “pornographic material.” The author tends to take a superficial view throughout - a true crime perspective rather than a history perspective. Was Victoria Woodhull having a real impact on the women’s suffrage movement or did the newspapers just like playing up her involvement since she was sexy and scandalous? I don’t know the answer, and I don’t think the author does either.

I tend to prefer detailed, in-depth history to breathless true crime narratives which rely on contemporary journalism (often of dubious veracity), so this didn't work for me. I started skimming and then gave up entirely. It didn't help that the Libby/Overdrive file doesn't allow text size adjustment, meaning I was squinting at my screen when I tried to read it.

[Judy · Rating 5 out of 5]

1872 was a year of "sex, suffrage and scandal" as described in this book focusing on New York City. A couple of years earlier Victoria Woodhall arrived in New York City setting up a successful stock brokerage with her sister, and promoting quality of the sexes and votes for women. She ran for president in the 1872 election. Wealthy Jim Fisk was murdered in a love triangle. Anthony Comstock, found his calling as a anti-vice activist, raiding stores and opposing obscene literature, abortion, contraception, masturbation, gambling, prostitution, and patent medicine. They were both involved in the Beecher Tilton scandal. These and more were drawn into the conflicts of that time that still have reprocussions today.

[Daniel Farabaugh · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was uneven and did not tie the parts together into a coherent whole. It had some very interesting parts and most of the individual arcs are good. It does a good job of illustrating the hypocritical moralizing of many of those who self appoint themselves as judges of vice.