I saw the Today in History Column had a mention of a Belva Lockwood Burlesque, and thought that other readers would be interested in knowing that Belva was a famous advocate of women’s rights in her day, and that men in numerous towns created Belva Lockwood burlesques, where they would mock her, apparently by dressing up in drag, and mocking her, as near as I can make of it from reading old books that have been digitized.
Here is the wikipedia biography.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belva_Ann_Lockwood
Rolf
Thanks!
Here’s the mention from yesterday in case anyone missed it:
“Brattleboro, 1888: A burlesque Belva Lockwood procession escorted by the drum corps paraded the streets Friday evening.”
Glad you did some research on this… it is a very strange sentence.
Mocking women’s rights… right here in town. Ahh, 1888.
One degree of seperation from Brattleboro: Victoria Woodhull
In her amazing book, Other Powers, the wonderful writer Barbara Goldsmith documented the life and times of Victoria Woodhull. Woodhull was a feminist activist, our first female presidential candidate, and at times, a gifted grifter. She set up the first psychic investment firm, which benefited more from insider information she obtained from robber baron Jim Fisk and the Vanderbilt family (probably more so than any from spirits she claimed to be in touch with.) Fisk was a son of Jim Fisk sr, who ran a temperance hotel in downtown Brattleboro. Jim Fisk Jr is buried in the Prospect Hill Cemetery, with naked women carved out of limestone,(one of whom holds a bag of railroad stocks that are weathering away into non-legibility) sitting atop him for eternity.
Belva Burlesque only known about due to digitizing of old news
So much can be learned from reading old newspapers.
I started digitizing the Vermont Farmer and Record, which was the other big paper in Brattleboro in the mid to late 1800s. There are micro-films in the library, and a machine that can produce JPEGs and PDFs.
It’s slow work, but I have found many gems while working on a book that I am not going to be able to finish. The V F and R is not slated to be digitized by the Vermont newspaper digitizing project, but I had a special interest in it.
The scanned images should be made available, and should be on-line.
Lockwood '84
The wikipedia link points out that she was the first (or 2nd) woman to run for president:
“Belva Lockwood was the first woman (or second, depending on one’s opinion, after Victoria Woodhull) to run for President of the United States. Lockwood ran as the candidate of the National Equal Rights Party. She ran in the presidential elections of 1884 and 1888. “
Treated like an afterthought
As the lone protest voice of spiritualism, religiosity and the belief-dependents on this site, it’s important to add that the notion of equal rights for women, whether in social acceptance or by law, in this country has not passed the muster to this very day. In this overly Jukrislim country women never had a chance.
The mythology of the creation of man simply left out women and was only created when “Adam” protested his loneliness. From then and until now women are treated like an afterthought, secondary to the original intent.
I’m sorry to say, women are simply not equal to men, not today and not in the future, as long as women continue their glorification of patriarchal man-worship.
Chapter one of "Other Powers" by Barbara Goldsmith
It really is an amazing read.
https://www.nytimes.com/books/first/g/goldsmith-powers.html
Here is the first paragraph.
May 5, 1892: As the delegates to the National American Woman Suffrage Association convention filed into the Auditorium Theatre in Chicago, they found on the seats a leather-bound pamphlet titled “A Page of History.” On the first page was an announcement that Victoria Woodhull would run for president of the United States against Grover Cleveland and Benjamin Harrison. The rest was a compendium of extravagant praise from such leaders of the woman’s rights movement as Susan B. Anthony, who called Victoria a “bright, glorious, young and strong spirit”; Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who predicted, “In the annals of emancipation the name [Victoria Woodhull] will have its own high place as a deliverer”; and Paulina Wright Davis, who said, “I believe you were raised up of God to do wonderful work and I believe you will unmask the hypocrisy of a class that none others dare touch.” Isabella Beecher Hooker lent the religiosity for which her family was famous by stating that Victoria was “Heaven sent for the rescue of woman from the pit of subjection.” What the pamphlet did not say was that this praise had been written a quarter of a century earlier.