If you haven’t seen the quotes I posted on tumblr, I’ve just finished reading Madame Restell: The Life, Death, and Resurrection of Old New York’s Most Fabulous, Fearless, and Infamous Abortionist by Jennifer Wright.
My overall impression is that the title could have been Madame Restell: Her Life and Times to make it clear that the narrative includes social history that affected Restell’s choices. For example, the woman who would become Madame Restell grew up the early 1800s in England where not only was premarried sex was common, brides were often pregnant at their weddings, and women were expected to like sex … and there was no modern contraceptives or even antibiotics to cope with an infection after childbirth. Working as a maid, she had to deal with employers assuming she would take care of sexual needs for them. Being widowed with a toddler and no family near? Usually you can support yourself by going out to work, but then you’re leaving the baby. It was a problem often solved by dosing the baby with a sleep tonic containing chloroform or heroin (both legal at the time).
There are reasons that Ann Trow, later Ann Lohman, moved into work with a higher profit ratio that being a maid or seamstress. In her case, she learned from a neighbor about making herbal contraceptives, and eventually, pills to cause miscarriage. She learned to surgically induce abortion using whalebone, aka baleen, and became an accomplished midwife, helping with births.
To be clear: The active ingredients of Madame Restell’s powders and potions were NOT what’s in our modern contraceptives or abortion pills! These were herbs that have been used in contraception and abortion since long BCE and do NOT have much distance between the dose needed for effective miscarriage and the dose needed for death. Not to mention that any kind of surgery before anesthesia and antibiotics was a terrible trial and risk.
One of the most notable things about Madame Restell is that her patients didn’t die. She had repeat business from fervent customers. She also pushed the health and wealth benefits to families and society by limiting the number of children in her advertisements. As the country swung – at least outwardly – more conservative after the Civil War, this raised even more ire that previously.
Jennifer Wright tells the story of Madame Restell’s life with verve and humor, in context of what was going on in New York and America at the time. Wright even found some evidence of what happened after Madame Restell’s reported death – if she actually died.
You may enjoy this podcast interview with the author, or just the links to other sources on Madame Restell. Or both.
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