With March, we now roll Women’s History Month. In the past several weeks, we’ve been hilighting the 1884 Republican Presidential candidate, J.G. Blaine; and also, seen the man regarded as the clown of the 1884 election (depicted above, literally, as a clown), Benjamin Butler.

In the above September 17th, 1884 front cover cartoon — Now Let the Show Go On!, by Frederick Burr Opper, Puck magazine parodied the entry into the race of Belva Ann Lockwood, Presidential nominee (at a time that women were not allowed to vote) of the National Equal Rights Party. By placing Lockwood in the same cartoon with Butler, Puck is signalling that they — like nearly all of the male-only voters of the time — regarded Lockwood’s candidacy as a joke.

Click on the above cartoon to view an enlarged version of it.

Doug Wheeler

ElectionComics NYPuck