Victoria Woodhull

As Mrs Clinton emerges as the candidate of the Democrats in the US for the forthcoming Presidential Election it is worth noting that she will not be the first woman to run for that office. That distinction belongs to Victoria Woodhull Martin (1838 -1927) who stood as a candidate in the elections of  1872 - when women did not have the vote, and when she was technically inelligible by reason of her age. There is an online life of her at Victoria Woodhull.

There are other pieces about her at The Strange Tale of the First Woman to Run for President
and at  Notorious Victoria: the first woman to run for president


Victoria Woodhull's life is, as readers will discover upon looking at the biographies, one that does make it look as if Hillary Clinton herself had stayed home and baked cookies.

Victoria Woodhull Martin is not, however, buried in the USA but died in England. Her ashes were scattered in the English Channel after her death at Bredon's Norton in Worcestershire. Nearby in Tewkesbury Abbey there is a wall plaque to her memory which records her work promoting the  "great cause " of Anglo-American friendship under the representation of the crossed flags of the two countries, but does not record her claim to fame as the first female US Presidential candidate.