Given the state of reproductive rights in this country, it’s not surprising that we have two new books that delve into the history of abortion. “The Trials of Madame Restell,” by Nicholas L. Syrett, comes nine months after Jennifer Wright’s “Madame Restell.” Both focus on a 19th-century Manhattan firebrand who provided abortions in New York for nearly four decades. To some she was a savior; to others she was a “child murderess.”
Madame Restell, whose real name was Ann Trow Summers Lohman, arrived in New York from England in 1831. At the time, medical abortions in the United States were permitted if performed before a pregnant woman felt a “quickening,” or movement in her womb, around 16 to 20 weeks. Women who had access to an understanding and discreet midwife might be able to procure medicine created from herbs and plants that caused contractions and labor.
Restell, who was widowed shortly after coming to America, was sympathetic to mothers and women who didn’t want to become mothers. She wondered why women “have no say over” that choice, Wright reports. She also saw an opportunity, and soon she was producing pills made of turpentine, pennyroyal and tansy seeds, which could induce miscarriage. With her second husband, she set up shop in Manhattan. In one of her first advertisements, she described herself as a “female physician” selling “Female Regulating Pills” to restart the menstrual flow. She also advertised that she could protect married women from an “early and premature grave” brought on by one too many pregnancies. arres, she served as a midwife, offering a lying-in hospital and frequently placing infants in adoptive homes. In short, she was running “an underground birth control empire,” as Wright puts it. It made her one of the wealthiest women in New York.
Restell’s nemeses included newspaper editors like George Washington Dixon, who argued that abortion allowed women to be sexually promiscuous and cheat on their husbands without consequence. The newly formed American Medical Association joined the fight against abortion, promulgating the argument in the late 1850s that life began at conception, not at quickening.
Review: Roe: The History of a National Obsession
Madame Restell, defiant and opportunistic, was unfazed by her opponents. She knew what happened to women trapped in poverty. If she could help them and enrich herself at the same time, all the better. Once when she was brought to trial, members of the American Female Moral Reform Society tried to hand her a religious tract. She told them she had plenty of good reading in her novels. She added, “I fear neither God nor man, nor care for heaven or hell!”
In 1845, New York passed a state law stipulating that providing an abortion during any stage of pregnancy was a misdemeanor; women who had abortions could be imprisoned for as long as a year. Two years later, Madame Restell was arrested and convicted. She spent a year in jail on Blackwell’s Island (today’s Roosevelt Island), an incarceration that became the stuff of legend. She is said to have spent her imprisonment in relative luxury, with her own room, her own food and regular visitors.
After her release, Restell went back to work, though she was understandably more cautious. She was finally brought down in 1878 by her most powerful nemesis: the anti-vice crusader Anthony Comstock, the man behind the Comstock Act of 1873, which criminalized the mailing of so-called obscene materials, birth control and abortifacients — medicine that causes abortion. In 1878, Comstock posed as a customer looking for medicine to help a woman in a “delicate situation.” The next day he returned to arrest Restell. At 66, she faced an almost certain jail sentence. On the morning of her trial, she was found dead in her bathtub, with an ivory-handled carving knife at her side. Some suspected that Restell had faked her death and escaped to France, but the coroner ruled her death a suicide.
More book reviews and recommendations
Both books offer compelling portraits of a woman Wright calls “one of the boldest women in American history.” Syrett’s version is thorough and well-researched. A professor of women, gender and sexuality studies at the University of Kansas, Syrett employs many of the same basic facts as Wright but without the spark. He has far less of the larger historical context, far more of the legal minutiae. Wright’s book dances off the page. The author tells us that “when the Catholic Church spoke out against her,” Restell “outbid the archbishop of New York for the land he wanted to build his house on. There, she built a mansion, and from it she doled out birth control to her many patients. She did not ask for any man’s opinion, for she was not interested in hearing it.”
If Restell “were alive today,” Wright observes, “she would be fighting with people on Twitter constantly, likely in front of a massive following.” Indeed, if we could hear from Restell now, she’d probably be surprised to see that abortion is illegal in so many states and that women are still being told that their futures are not up to them.
Madame Restell, whose real name was Ann Trow Summers Lohman, arrived in New York from England in 1831. At the time, medical abortions in the United States were permitted if performed before a pregnant woman felt a “quickening,” or movement in her womb, around 16 to 20 weeks. Women who had access to an understanding and discreet midwife might be able to procure medicine created from herbs and plants that caused contractions and labor.
Restell, who was widowed shortly after coming to America, was sympathetic to mothers and women who didn’t want to become mothers. She wondered why women “have no say over” that choice, Wright reports. She also saw an opportunity, and soon she was producing pills made of turpentine, pennyroyal and tansy seeds, which could induce miscarriage. With her second husband, she set up shop in Manhattan. In one of her first advertisements, she described herself as a “female physician” selling “Female Regulating Pills” to restart the menstrual flow. She also advertised that she could protect married women from an “early and premature grave” brought on by one too many pregnancies. arres, she served as a midwife, offering a lying-in hospital and frequently placing infants in adoptive homes. In short, she was running “an underground birth control empire,” as Wright puts it. It made her one of the wealthiest women in New York.
Restell’s nemeses included newspaper editors like George Washington Dixon, who argued that abortion allowed women to be sexually promiscuous and cheat on their husbands without consequence. The newly formed American Medical Association joined the fight against abortion, promulgating the argument in the late 1850s that life began at conception, not at quickening.
Review: Roe: The History of a National Obsession
Madame Restell, defiant and opportunistic, was unfazed by her opponents. She knew what happened to women trapped in poverty. If she could help them and enrich herself at the same time, all the better. Once when she was brought to trial, members of the American Female Moral Reform Society tried to hand her a religious tract. She told them she had plenty of good reading in her novels. She added, “I fear neither God nor man, nor care for heaven or hell!”
In 1845, New York passed a state law stipulating that providing an abortion during any stage of pregnancy was a misdemeanor; women who had abortions could be imprisoned for as long as a year. Two years later, Madame Restell was arrested and convicted. She spent a year in jail on Blackwell’s Island (today’s Roosevelt Island), an incarceration that became the stuff of legend. She is said to have spent her imprisonment in relative luxury, with her own room, her own food and regular visitors.
After her release, Restell went back to work, though she was understandably more cautious. She was finally brought down in 1878 by her most powerful nemesis: the anti-vice crusader Anthony Comstock, the man behind the Comstock Act of 1873, which criminalized the mailing of so-called obscene materials, birth control and abortifacients — medicine that causes abortion. In 1878, Comstock posed as a customer looking for medicine to help a woman in a “delicate situation.” The next day he returned to arrest Restell. At 66, she faced an almost certain jail sentence. On the morning of her trial, she was found dead in her bathtub, with an ivory-handled carving knife at her side. Some suspected that Restell had faked her death and escaped to France, but the coroner ruled her death a suicide.
More book reviews and recommendations
Both books offer compelling portraits of a woman Wright calls “one of the boldest women in American history.” Syrett’s version is thorough and well-researched. A professor of women, gender and sexuality studies at the University of Kansas, Syrett employs many of the same basic facts as Wright but without the spark. He has far less of the larger historical context, far more of the legal minutiae. Wright’s book dances off the page. The author tells us that “when the Catholic Church spoke out against her,” Restell “outbid the archbishop of New York for the land he wanted to build his house on. There, she built a mansion, and from it she doled out birth control to her many patients. She did not ask for any man’s opinion, for she was not interested in hearing it.”
If Restell “were alive today,” Wright observes, “she would be fighting with people on Twitter constantly, likely in front of a massive following.” Indeed, if we could hear from Restell now, she’d probably be surprised to see that abortion is illegal in so many states and that women are still being told that their futures are not up to them.
