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

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...