Item #54417 TILTON, THEODORE vs. HENRY WARD BEECHER; action for Crim. Con. tried in the city court of Brooklyn, Chief Justice Joseph Neilson, presiding. Verbatim report by the official stenographer. With 18 portraits: of Chief Justice Joseph Neilson, ... Mrs. Elizabeth Tilton, Theodore Tilton, Henry Ward Beecher. etc. in three volumes. TILTON/BEECHER.

TILTON, THEODORE vs. HENRY WARD BEECHER; action for Crim. Con. tried in the city court of Brooklyn, Chief Justice Joseph Neilson, presiding. Verbatim report by the official stenographer. With 18 portraits: of Chief Justice Joseph Neilson, ... Mrs. Elizabeth Tilton, Theodore Tilton, Henry Ward Beecher. etc. in three volumes.

NY: McDivitt et. al. 1875. First Edition. small 4to,pp. 758, 902, 1042. Bound in publisher's cloth, with library stamps on the end paper, title page, bookplate, accession sticker on spine, hinge repaired, generally a good set. This is the transcript of the full trial. Scarce. Item #54417

One of the great scandals of the time, the Beecher/Tilton trial must been seen in the light of the free love advocacy of Victoria Woodhull. Living with Dr. Woodhull and her husband Capt. Blood and the target of intense political gossip, Woodhull attacked Henry Ward Beecher, demanding that he own up to his relationship with Elizabeth Tilton. When Beecher maintained a silence, Woodhull spilled the story in a speech in Boston and printed the charges in her Woodhull and Claflin's Weekly. Within hours, she and her sister were jailed for passing obscenity through the mails. Theodore Tilton, novelist and former Beecher associate, later his successor, in the editorship of the Independent, charged Beecher with criminality in relation to his wife Elizabeth Tilton and instituted a civil suit laying his damages at $100,000. The trial, which lasted 6 months, resulted in a hung jury. Woodhull testified at the trial and, it is said, developed relationships with both Tilton and Beecher, continuing to advocate free love. In that Woodhull was involved in the woman suffrage movement, running for President in 1872 at the head of the "Equal Rights Party" the case takes on a larger significance, offering a fascinating side bar to the 19th century Woman Suffrage Movement.

Price: $950.00 save 20% $760.00

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