The Scandal That Shook Seattle: The Arrest of Victoria Woodhull and Tennessee Claflin

NEW YORK, Nov. 2—Mrs. Woodhull and Claflin were arrested today for sending obscene publications. A great deal of talk is occasioned about town at the arrest. The proceedings against them were first taken by S. J. Challis, a well-known broker, who last night applied for warrants for a gross and scandalous article on him. Warrants were accordingly issued but before they could be executed, some one acting on behalf of Comstock, the famous enemy of obscene literature, had warrants issued against the women by U.S. Commissioner Osborne. The affidavits in the case were made by Albert Anderson, post office clerk. Mr. Wood, of Brooklyn, and F. W. Keyes, Clerk in the Independent office, who were to sending of offensive publications through the mails by the accused. The witnesses in the case are William Moody, a negro, and C. D. Niles, who printed the papers, and had been sent to the house of detention. The pair of women were taken to the Commissioner's office in a carriage and thence to jail until Monday morning, when a hearing of the case comes off. They manifested their usual boldness, and commented on their way to prison on the grounds of arrest and confinement over PUGET SOUND DISPATCH, SEATTLE, WA, THURSDAY, NOV. 7, 1872.

They insisted upon suitable apartments at the Ludlow street jail. The statutory penalty for sending obscenity literature through the mails is imprisonment for one year and a fine of one hundred dollars. The Express says that the arrest of Woodhull and Claflin for circulating obscene literature was to be expected, for nothing more obscene in the way of words and atrocious charges ever obtained currency in any country than the attacks of these women on distinguished and honorable clergymen, and their gross attacks upon Rev. Henry Ward Beecher and Theodore Tilton.