The Wickedest Woman in New York
Drawings of Ann Trow Sommers
Lohman, later known
as Madame Restell,
intrigue me. She looks
like an ordinary upper middle-class woman of the late 1880s. It isn’t hard to
imagine why many women, who could not face bearing a child, considered her
their savior. Others termed her the “wickedest
woman in New York” for her long career in providing abortions to those that knocked
on her door.
I will use her professional name, Madame Restell.
Restell was born in Painswick, England
in 1812. The village, which
had been settled
from the Iron Age, had appeared in the Domesday Book and had participated on the side of Parliament in the
Civil War.
Nothing in
her childhood would have predicted her future. Her father was a laborer. She
received little education. Her first job was as a maid for the local butcher.
She married
Henry Sommers, a tailor, in 1828. Their daughter, Caroline,
was born in 1830.
Like many people during that time, they sought increased opportunity in the
United States. In August 1831 they sailed for New York settling on William
Street in Manhattan.
The better life was not to be. Sommers died.
Some sources
say it was a bilious
fever, a general
term to describe
nausea, fever and heavy
diarrhea. Others say it was yellow fever with its similar symptoms
plus headache and a
yellowing of the skin caused by liver and kidney damage. Yellow fever is caused
by the bite of an infected mosquito which is more often found in tropical and
subtropical climates than in places like New York.
The name of the disease that killed him isn’t important. Restell was left with a small child. She wasn’t totally alone:
her brother, Joseph,
had moved to New York and had a job as a salesman
in a pharmacy.
For a time,
she used her sewing skills for piecemeal work. Although not lucrative, it
allowed her to stay home with Caroline.
Charles
Lohman came into her life, although I could not find how they met. Maybe she
wandered into the Chatham Street bookstore, maybe someone introduced them.
He was 27, well-educated and
part of a group that hung around the bookstore where radical thinkers debated
philosophical issues. Different sources describe him as a German immigrant, others as a Russian.
Meeting him changed the course of her life.
The Start of Restell’s Abortion
Service
Whether it was Restell,
brother Joseph or husband Lohman who decided to sell/profit from birth control
issues, is also unknown. They began marketing a product claiming “preventive
powders” and “Female Monthly
Pills” under the brand name Madame Restell.
Ann would use that name for
her abortion work.
The
products were launched 18 March 1839. The truth was stretched until it broke
when the trio claimed
Madame Restell
was the granddaughter of a celebrated midwife and
female doctor.
So successful were they that Restellism became a euphemism for abortion. Just
like the pharmaceutical companies of today, they advertised heavily.
Some papers
such as Polyanthos, a monthly literary
magazine published in Boston, refused their ads, as did the National Police
Gazette, an early men’s lifestyle
magazine with sports articles
and photos of attractive women. Other publications followed suit, but enough periodicals accepted Restell’s advertisements to make the business
lucrative.
If the medicines
were designed to abort fetuses,
sometimes they failed.
Physical abortions produced better results, although these could lead to
massive infections and even death if performed badly.
The most common technique
was a wire shoved up the vagina
to pierce the fetus’s amniotic sac. A miscarriage would follow—but not always. In some cases,
the woman would
have to see a regular doctor
to finish the procedure. Under the best of conditions, the procedure was
painful.
I could
not find what made Restell decide to do physical abortions. When she started,
her business, abortion was not illegal. She quickly built the service into a
successful enterprise. She even franchised her business with six outlets in New
York and other states.
Perhaps some of the growth was because The Sun and Herald accepted her ads. Throughout the years her advertising
budget was substantial.
Because we
are missing any documentation indicating the Lohmans’ intentions, we will never know if this was a profit-driven enterprise or an altruistic desire to help women in trouble or a bit of both. I would like to think a bit of both because she had a sliding price scale depending on the circumstances of the patient:
$20 ($562 in 2018 dollars)
for poor women,
$100 ($2,814 in 2018
dollars) for rich ones.
Madame Restell’s
business frightened people
who saw not just abortion but contraception
as a
danger to the social order. Samuel Jenks Smith, editor
of the New York Sunday Morning
News, wrote on 7 July 1839 that abortion and contraception “strikes
at the root of all social order—is subversive of all family peace and
quiet—will generate jealousies and hate—will demoralize the whole mass of
society and make the institution of marriage a mere farce.”
Legal Challenges
Restell was to face many challenges. Ann Maria Purdy accused Restell
of giving her tuberculosis during an abortion. On her death
bed in March 1841, Purdy
told her husband
that in 1939 Madame Restell had sold her tansy and spirits of turpentine. She didn’t take it and chose a surgical abortion.
According
to Purdy, Restell argued about the price and then let a male physician perform
the abortion after Purdy gave her every
cent she had. She was not even allowed to keep money for
the cab fare home, her story went.
A Doctor
Marvin claimed the abortion that Purdy received 15 months before caused her
health to fail, leading to her to develop tuberculosis. Purdy died 18 April
1841.
Restell
was arrested and awaited trial in jail in the Halls of Justice, also known as
The Tombs. The State Supreme Court overturned her conviction on a technicality because she had not
been allowed to cross-examine her accuser. Although a retrial was ordered,
because the witness was dead, the case was dropped.
Mary
Rogers, a “noted beauty,” was found dead in the Hudson River in July 1841. In
November 1842, Frederica Loss, who allegedly worked for Restell, swore Rogers’
death was caused by an abortion. Although
police refused to believe Loss,
newspapers linked her to Madame Restell, who was sometimes called “the monster
in human shape”
or the “wickedest woman alive” because of her abortion work. The
murder was never solved.
In 1843
Dr. Gunning S. Bedford claimed that a patient of his needed surgery because her
vaginal opening had scar tissue because of an abortion allegedly done by
Restell. He termed it a “vaginal hysterectomy.” These charges were false. It
was later revealed that the scars had been caused by the woman herself as she
tried to induce her own abortion with a piece of whalebone.
The Business Grows
and More Problems
Always a good business woman,
Restell claimed she would compensate anyone who proved her methods were
dangerous, not quite a Good Housekeeping magazine
guarantee. The Lohmans claimed that Madame Restell studied midwifery in Europe,
which was never verifiable. Chances are beyond remote that she did.
Office
hours were from nine in the morning to 10 at night. Madame Restell was happy to mail remedies under her brand name. If
the pills and powders failed, she would abort the woman in her office, if the
woman would come to the office.
She opened
a boarding house for women who didn’t want abortions, but wanted to give birth
in secret. As for the babies, she would arrange adoptions for an additional
fee.
On her
deathbed from an abortion, Eliza Munson implicated Madame Restell in 1844. Upon
further examination, however, it had been determined that Munson’s death had
been the result of an abortion by Restell’s rival, Margaret Dawson (alias Mrs. Bird). Dawson
was sentenced to six months
and fined $250 ($7,893 in 2018 dollars).
November
1845 was a bad month for Restell. The
National Police Gazette published a story about Mary Rogers’ death three
years before. That Rogers was an exceptionally beautiful girl probably created
more national attention.
The New York City police force at
the time was made up of:
- A night watchman
-
21 city marshals
-
21 constables
-
51 police officers
Certainty it was not enough
to police a city of 320,000 people.
Nevertheless, police staked out Madame Restell’s premises and
questioned every woman who entered.
After Abortion Became Illegal
New York had made abortion
illegal in 1845. Because it was considered an obscene subject, newspaper
coverage dwindled to nothing.
Restell
continue her work as if the law did not apply to her. Her business was
prospered. Her regular clientele included repeat customers, including those from the most prominent families in New York.
To balance
the negatives in her life, Restell was happy to become an American citizen in
April 1845.
The year
1846 wasn’t much better overall for Madame Restell. A stockbroker, Augusta
Edwards, was paying the board of Mary Applegate, whom he had impregnated. She allegedly gave birth at Madame Restell’s. The rumors
said that Madame Restell grabbed the baby with the intention of destroying it.
Another rumor said that Madame Restell put the baby up for adoption at the
request of Applegate’s father. Neither was proven.
If rumors
were not enough, Frederica Medinger, a German immigrant, claimed to be abducted
by the couple in August 1846, as part of a bribery attempt which failed.
George
Washington Dixon of Polyanthos stirred
up a crowd of 200-plus people who gathered at the corner of Greenwich and
Liberty where Restell worked. They demanded to see how many babies were buried
inside. Some 40-plus policemen kept the crowd somewhat under control. This was
not the first time Dixon had attacked Restell. In a 16 February 1841 piece in Polyanthos he warned seaman that their
wives could be unfaithful and abort the results. His concern seemed more
directed at virtue than the life of the baby or mother.
At the same time, Dixon was anti-birth control
because it would
allow for sexual activity.
Prison Did Not Stop Restell
Restell spent time in prison at Blackwell’s
Island in 1847.
Those that
wanted her to suffer were disappointed. She had a feather bed and was fed on
linen-covered trays from the prison-keeper’s table. To keep boredom away, she
ran the women’s prison hospital. In total she only spent five months at
Blackwell, having been credited with the seven months she’d spent at Eldridge
Street Jail while awaiting trial. Even if the time was short, and the
conditions better than most prisons, she vowed never to go back to Blackwell.
Immediately upon release she went
back to work at a new address on Chambers Street. Restell’s husband,
Charles Lohman, using the name Dr. A. M. Mauriceau, published The
Married Woman’s Private Medical Companion, much of it pushing his
own medicine. Husband and wife were arrested in September 1847. Lohman faced an
obscenity charge, because in his writing birth control was mentioned (https://iiif.lib.harvard.edu/manifests/view/drs:3810612$1i).
If the law
was anti-abortion, Restell’s clients were not. She claimed to have letters from
thousands of grateful women, although none are extent today. Some of the women
whom she helped had kind words that made their way into the public discourse.
Maria Bodine
had been impregnated by Joseph Cook, a farmer.
When Cook refused
to pay, Madame Restell offered
her board and even slept with her when she was in pain. Bodine was six months
pregnant. Bodine was even given travel money by Restell when she was ready to
leave.
Things improved for Restell in the 1850s. The wedding of her daughter
Caroline to Isaac
L.
Purdy was performed at her home by New York Mayor Jacob A. Westervelt. Other
prominent people frequented her home during the decade when corruption in New York was at a high
point.
Moving into the 1860s,
she must have felt secure
against the backdrop
of major corruption in the city. She built a huge
Fifth Avenue mansion on the corner of 52nd Street. An impressive
carriage pulled by four horses transported her around the city. Later, Anthony
Comstock, cheerleader of the Comstock Laws, would call her house a “gilded
palace of death.”
The
mansion’s site had been destined for the Catholic Church. Archbishop John
Hughes must have been unhappy to discover the loss of the property to the
Lohmans.
Such a
prestigious address only boosted her reputation. Restell, herself, was said to
have claimed that if she gave out the names of her clients she would be immune
from prosecution.
Her
fortune turned to misfortune in the 1870’s, partially because public opinion
was horrified by reports of backroom abortions. Jacob Rosenzweig, known as the
“Fiend of Second Avenue,” had been accused of stuffing his dead patients
into a trunk and leaving
them at a railroad
depot. It did not matter that Madame Restell’s work was relatively safe.
The Evil of the Age, an exposé of
abortion, was published in the Times in
1871. It was fodder for those wanting to eradicate all abortions.
Once the state legislature made performing an abortion subject
to imprisonment of 20 years in April 1872, the work became
riskier. Also, the manufacture, sale and use of abortion drugs carried a
sentence of up to two years at hard labor.
In January
of 1877, Charles Lohman, who had been Madame Restell’s partner in life and
business since 1836, died of natural causes.
The same
year, Anthony Comstock, self-righteous as always, burst into Restell’s home
with reporters and deputies. When her house was searched, they found evidence
of abortion and birth control devices and medications.
She did not spend a long time in jail. Later it was written in the press that Restell
had bribed officials for her
release.
At 67, she
was tired as she read about herself in the papers. Terms like vile, wicked,
nefarious were bandied about.
In 1878, Restell was once again arrested after Comstock pretended
to buy birth control pills from her. (The Comstock Laws were
passed 3 March 1873, also called Suppression
of Trade in, and Circulation of, Obscene Literature and Articles of Immoral
Use.) Birth control was also considered immoral, not only in making,
selling and using it, but even talking about it.
Madame Restell had had enough. On 1 April 1878,
she slit her throat while in
her bathtub.
According to various
reports, she was the 15th abortionist that Comstock had driven to suicide.
There is no record
of the number of abortions Restell performed, but she claimed
no woman ever died. Most
back-room abortionists cannot claim such a record. She may just have been one
of the best obstetricians of her time and place.
If people
were furious about abortions happening to poor women, nothing was done to
alleviate the poverty. As for wealthier women, they could afford the better
abortionists. Even if there were ways to prevent pregnancies, that too was
outlawed. Women did what they needed to do to rid themselves of unwanted
pregnancies.
Note: This is a chapter from Coat Hangars and Knitting Needles, a story of abortion in the US before Roe v. Wade. I've mailed a copy to every pro-life judge and leader I could find hopefully showing them that abortion will never be stopped, it can only make it safer for women.
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