April 2, 2025 • 32 mins
A 19th-century abortionist comes up against anti-fun postal worker Anthony Comstock.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
School of Humans. Oh hello, filth heads, I have a
huge announcement, absolutely ginormous, and it's going to really affect
your lives. So strap in for this one. American Filth
is now going to be coming out on Fridays. That's right.
Friday is gonna be your filthy Day, Filthy Friday, Philth Friday,
(00:30):
and I think it's gonna be fun. Friday is a
good time for all the filth. But if you're one
of those people who needed American Film to come out
on Wednesday that was part of your Wednesday process, I
suggest that when the episode comes out, just wait, just
hold off, and you can listen to it on Wednesday. Okay,
So we're gonna have a new episode coming out this Friday.
(00:52):
In the meantime, I'm replaying an episode that was about
Anthony Cumstock, if you guys remember him. He passed a
bill in like eighteen seventy three that was basically like,
you can't send any obscene materials through the mail, which
effectively made a lot of birth control illegal because that's
how people were sending it. Also, you know, if you
(01:13):
just had something gross that you were sending the mail,
you could get arrested for it and anythy comes dock.
A lot of the stuff that he was talking about
in the eighteen seventies and beyond that stuff is still
affecting us today. And this episode is about abortion, which
is always, you know, a relevant topic and American political discourse.
(01:35):
So here's the episode. Hope you guys have a good time,
and we'll have a new episode out on Friday. Thanks
for your patience and understanding. But of course, if you're
really upset about it, please comment about it. Please, you know,
give us a bad review, which, as you guys know,
always helps. So last time on American Filth we talked
(02:00):
about mister Anthony Comestock, Come Come, Come, Come Stock. If
you recall, he was the man behind the Comstock Act
that basically made everything fun illegal because he was like, oh,
all that stuff, it's obscene, we shouldn't be looking at it.
One thing that was greatly affected by the Comstock Act
(02:23):
was the distribution and production of birth control. But one
thing we did leave out of the episode, which was
another thing that mister Anthony Comstock absolutely abhorred, was this
little thing called abortion. Have you heard of it? If
(02:44):
you haven't, i'll just tell you it's one of the
least contentious reproductive topics in the history of time. Nary
a person has ever had an opinion about that. No,
mister Comstock, he hated that. He's like, that's gross, that's obscene,
that's horrific. I want to get rid of it entirely,
(03:05):
you know, which is so unlike today anyway. You might
be surprised to know that in the early part of
the nineteenth century their abortion laws weren't that bad, but
it was throughout the century. It was thanks to people
(03:27):
like Comstock who made abortion access less and less available.
And as there were more laws against it, there were
more and more doctors and not so licensed doctors who
came out of the shadows to offer their services to
anyone who was having a WHOOPSI daisy in their uterus.
(03:50):
And one of those people who was perhaps the most
notorious abortionists in nineteenth century New York City was a
woman who went by the name Madame Restelle. Over the
course of her career, she provided a countless number of
women with birth control and abortions. And if you can imagine,
(04:11):
a lot of people did not like that. And when
obscenity censor and bad boy Comestock came around Madame Rostelle
lost her livelihood and then her life. Ha ha ha.
What a fun subject we're talking about today. Cue the
theme song. This is American filth and I'm Gabby Watts.
(04:37):
Every week I tell you a filthy story from American history.
This week's episode Comestock Part two, Unpregnanted. Something I will
(05:01):
say about this episode is I will be saying the
term abortional lot because there's not really that many good synonyms.
There's terminated the pregnancy, or you could say something more crass,
like unpregnanted. Also, being pregnant is called being knocked up,
so you could say an abortion is being knocked out.
(05:24):
That one's very bad and will get me canceled, don't
tell us and l Also, I think this is about
the third or fourth time I have canceled myself on
my own podcast, so I need somebody else to do it.
Please cancel me this week. But like birth control powders
and tonics and pills, throughout the nineteenth century, there was
(05:45):
also a big rise in the number of abortions being
carried out. It's hard to know concrete numbers because you know,
it wasn't like people were writing down in their diaries,
I have had an abortion. But some reformers from the
time estimated that between eighteen hundred and eighteen thirty, for
every twenty three to thirty births, there is one abortion.
(06:07):
So yeah, one in thirty one and twenty five. And
then you get to the eighteen fifties and you might
have had one abortion for every six birds. And maybe
that number was even higher because there was also a
higher rate of still births at the time. And people
were like, well, maybe that's because they did some abortion stuff.
And sure, maybe these numbers are grim. But here's the thing,
(06:29):
here's a little silver lining is simultaneously as abortion rates
went up, the infanticide rate went down. How delightful. And
then in the eighteen seventies some people were thinking that
one third of all pregnancies ended in termination. The women
seeking these procedures and treatments were not just single ladies.
(06:53):
There's also people who were married who wanted to control
the size of their family. Basically, anyone and everyone was
having an abortion. Like even a Confederate general had his
wife terminate a pregnancy. He's like, the South will rise again,
but that baby won't. I'm sorry, And remember this is
(07:14):
the nineteenth century, so a lot of the procedures for
abortion were quite dangerous and a lot of women actually died.
Unlike today where everything is grand. Maybe if I say
it in a French accent, it will sound like I'm
saying it less. So how did people feel about a
bassillon in the nineteenth century? That actually makes it sound
(07:36):
even worse. Well, at the beginning of it, a lot
of people subscribe to this idea called quickening, which was
the idea that life did not begin until a woman
felt the fetus move inside of her, which would be
about three to four months into pregnancy. So it's kind
of like, ah, if you do something three months before,
(07:57):
we don't care. But once you feel it, eh, we
got an issue with it. There were specific laws passed
about a bassillon. In New York State, for example, in
eighteen twenty seven, there was a law that said providing
or getting an abortion was a crime and you could
be punished with a year in jail and a one
hundred dollars fine. But laws like this, most of them
(08:20):
were passed not to criminalize abortion, but to protect women
from being pressured into getting one, and so in general,
no one was really getting arrested because of this law,
and then when people did get arrested, they often weren't
prosecuted for it. But then in the mid century that
started to change. There were more anti abortion laws which
(08:43):
were like quickening, We reject that life starts at conception,
so if you have an abortion or provide one, we
will actually now arrest you and send you to prison. Also,
you can't advertise these services in the newspapers. Gross. I
don't know what accent that was. It came from a
(09:03):
very dark place inside of me. And if you all
can believe it. As abortion access became less and less,
the whole process became more and more dangerous because women
were going to quack medical practitioners who provided these services
illegally and I imagine in deep dark basements where it
(09:26):
was gross and not hygienic. At the same time, however,
some of these so called quacks were actually pretty good
at what they did, and one such example was Madame Rastelle. Yeah,
we're finally getting to the topic of the episode. Some
(09:47):
things people called her throughout her career were female abortionist,
a professor of infanticide, a child murderous, and this longer quote,
the wretched creature who builds her fortune upon the misfortunes
of her sex, caring no more for their suffering of
mind or body. Then does the butcher for the lives
(10:07):
of the animals, which it is his business to take
A little bit dramatic, methinks, Madame Michelle was a pseudonym.
Her real name was Anne Troe Lohman, and she was
the planned parenthood of mid nineteenth century New York City.
She was born Anne Troe in a small town in
(10:28):
England in eighteen eleven or eighteen twelve. She was one
of eleven children, though it's likely many of them did
not survive into adulthood, and she grew up quite poor
where she was born in Painswick, England. It was a
textile town, so likely her parents worked at a mill
or were in agriculture, and her parents they were likely illiterate,
(10:51):
and because of that it's very likely that Anne didn't
have any formal education. The next thing we know about
her for sure was that in eighteen twenty nine she
married a tailor named Henry Summers. She was seventeen, he
was twenty six. A little yucky, but not illegal. Actually,
it was quite typical of the time. Drake would thrive
during this time. Anyway, they had a daughter in eighteen
(11:15):
thirty named Caroline, and at that point they're like, damn,
we really got to get our shit together because we
don't have any opportunities here. So in eighteen thirty one
they hopped on a boat to New York City. They
moved to a neighborhood in Lower Manhattan, and it's likely
that Henry got a job as a tailor and Anne
(11:36):
got a job as a seamstress. A friend of hers
said later that she was working making pentaloons. But unfortunately
for Anne and Caroline, just a few months after they arrived,
Henry caught a fever and died. Damn, thought Anne, I'm
(11:56):
in a tight spot. You know. She had her job
as a seamstress of pantaloons, but the problem with that
work was that it was difficult, the hours were long,
and the pay was low, so it really wasn't cutting
it or sewing it. But then Anne met another man
who had a similar fervor to her to better himself.
(12:17):
His name was Charles Lowman. He was also an immigrant,
but from Russia, and he worked as a printer for
a newspaper. He was also in some radical groups that
liked to think and write about such things as birth
control and reproductive health, those crazy guys. So Charles and
Ann got married and they moved into a new apartment,
and they just happened to live next to this guy
(12:38):
named William Evans. His name is really not important at all,
but the thing about him that is important is that
he was a doctor, but not just any doctor. He
was a quack aka, he had no formal medicinal training.
But what he would do is he would make tonics
and tinctures and potions and all sorts of stuff and
(12:58):
sell it to people, being like, yeah, this this thing
that I made up in my kitchen, it's going to
cure you. I mean, most likely it won't do anything
at all, but sometimes it's just nice to know you're
trying out something a little placebo effect. But this William Evans,
well he was making money, making bank doing this, I
(13:21):
mean not bank, but like he was making enough. And Anne,
with perhaps some encouragement from her husband, was like, maybe
I should try making some medicinal potions, powders and pills
and sell those. She knew she'd make more money doing
that than being a seamstress. Yes, and learned something very
(13:41):
important about America. Then lying is much more profitable than
honest labor. At first, she tried the usual stuff, you know,
making elixirs and other medicines that could cure a whole
variety of ailments and illnesses. But then her business took
a turn when one woman who bought some of her
(14:03):
medicines was like, Hey, I have a little bit of
a whoopsidaisy in my womb. Do you have anything that
could fix that? Aka, I need to have one aborcheon now.
In the late eighteen thirties, when Antroloman got this request
from her patient, birth control and abortion related merchandise wasn't
(14:27):
a new thing. As I said in the last episode,
people with uteruses have been trying not to have babies
the whole time we've been around, And most of the
solutions to getting rid of a little whoopsidaisy baby involved
drinking or eating a gross combination of ingredients. Like indigenous women,
(14:47):
they would try to induce a miscarriage using various roots
and herbs. In Texas, there's a case of a black
woman who drink a combination of calamel and turpentine yummy.
And then there are some white ladies in the Midwest,
and what they did is they rubbed gunpowder on their
titties and tea made of rusty nail water. I bet
(15:09):
it had a sharp taste. But besides ingesting gross stuff,
some other things that birth control manuals suggested for inducing
miscarriages was you know, jumping up and down a classic,
exercising too vigorously, and douching. And as I said, you know,
some doctors and quack doctors alike did do surgical abortions.
(15:34):
They're just very dangerous, sometimes fatal, and even worse than that,
they were all so expensive. Some doctors charged about one
hundred dollars for a surgical abortion, which was a hefty sum.
Or doctors would sell you a device that you could
use at home. One doctor sold this eight dollars silver
(15:55):
probe that you would just stick into your uterus and
shake it around until something happened. And there was plenty
of demand for these products. One lady used that silver
probe me one times and apparently she died on the
last one. Anyway, back to Anne, and you know, she
had this patient who was like, help, I need to
(16:16):
get rid of this thing inside of me. And Anne
was like, hmm, I think I smell a business idea
coming along. So she indeed made some medicine for this
lady to take home to remove the whoops of daisy.
And that started Anne down her trajectory that would make
her one of the most hated yet beloved women at
the time in New York City. Notorious, infamous, We'll be back.
(16:40):
After these soothing advertisements, Anne quickly made a crap ton
of money after she saw that first patient. She had
more and more women come to see her for her medicines.
With that cash, she took her daughter back to England
for a time to hang out with her family. But
(17:01):
then when they returned to New York City, Anne and
her husband started ramping up their business. They got a
fancy office and Ann started going by Madame Restelle, saying
that she named herself after a French doctor who taught
her all the secrets to preventing and terminating pregnancies. She
was like, oh, yeah, when I was back at home
visiting my family, actually I was touring around Europe learning
(17:23):
all these treatments, because back then, if anything was advertised
as French or Parisian, it was often a euphemism for
birth control. Why I don't know, maybe it's because an
IUD looks like the Eiffel Tower. The Eiffel Tower didn't
even exist then, ugh, And so Madame Restelle started advertising
(17:46):
her services in the newspaper. Her first advertisement appeared in
the New York Sun in March of eighteen thirty nine.
Under some very coded euphemisms, the ad said, is it
not but too well known that the families of the
married often increased beyond the happiness of those who give birth?
(18:07):
Would dictate, is it desirable? Is it moral for parents
to increase their families, regardless of the consequences to themselves
or the well being of their offspring when a simple, easy, healthy,
and certain remedy is within our control. She was then like,
come visit me at my office, where married females can
(18:28):
obtain the desired information. And let's just say a lot
of women wanted to obtain that desired information, married, unmarried,
every sort of Lady. Madame Rostelle's office in New York
(18:48):
was open from nine am to ten pm every day,
and often there is a horde of women in the
waiting room, a line running out the door and around
the block. At first, she was offering abortion pills and
potions she didn't call them potions. I'm just calling them
back because it's fine. And she would send this stuff
out in the mail. But then she diversified her business
(19:10):
to include all sorts of services. You know how a
lot of people think of Planned Parenthood today as like
an abortion factory, but it actually provides a lot of
other services. That's how people start thinking about Madame Rostelle.
They're like, she's the lady who gives abortions. Yucky, we
don't like her. But she was also giving all types
of health care to women. She was like, yeah, I'm
(19:32):
just a physician, a female physician for females. Her various
services include a contraception and then some herbal remedies that
would help restore instruation. And another service she provided was
that she had a boarding house where pregnant women could
go and deliver their babies anonymously, and then she would
(19:53):
coordinate adoptions. And then she also had her surgical abortions.
But she had a sliding scale. Remember she had grown
up poor, so she was like, hey, if you're a
poor person, you only have to pay twenty. Any rich ladies, though,
you guys got to pay one hundred. Sorry, not sorry,
And of course, Madame Pistelle, she had haters the whole time.
(20:15):
Can you believe it, someone who provides abortion has haters?
You know. At the beginning of her business, people were
still kind of like, hey, you can't prosecute someone until
after three four months of them being pregnant, until that
quickening stuff is happening. But as attitudes started changing, more
and more people when a doctor's like and to rot
(20:36):
in prison, they were like, ugh, if women have access
to birth control, if women can have abortions, they're going
to be more sexually active. That's disgusting. We're gonna have
all these single ladies committing all this sin. And then
a lot of feminists actually hated birth control because they
were like, ough, this just encourages men to have more
(20:57):
sexual liaisons, and as you guys all know, sexuality is
bad for society. Her enemies were like, Madam Ristelle is
making everyone im moral. Also, she's only aborting the babies
of rich people, which means that she's aborting white babies,
and soon we're just gonna have all these other babies
and not enough white ones. Another thing that people hated
(21:22):
about Madame Rousselle was that she was this thing called
a successful woman. Have you heard of this? Like she
was making a lot of money, she was operating her
own business. People hated that. They hated her wealth, which
she flaunted in her fancy carriages and fancy clothes, and
they're all like, oh, she's not even a real MD.
(21:44):
She shouldn't be doing this medical stuff. The only people
who should be doing medicine are men, because men get licensed.
Men are smart men, men men. Despite her successes, though,
Madame Mirseelle could not avoid the law. The first time
(22:08):
she was arrested was less than a year after she
opened her business in eighteen thirty nine, and at that
point she was accused of performing an abortion on a
woman who later died. The woman was named Maria Purdy,
and she had visited Madame Rostelle looking for a tonic
to unpregnant herself. Madame Marselle obliged, but then Maria stopped
(22:30):
taking it because she was afraid she might get poisoned.
So what she did instead is she went back to
Madame Morstelle and was like, Hey, can I actually have
a surgical abortion? I don't want to take this weird juice,
And she was given the surgical abortion and then she
got sick and she was convinced it was from the procedure,
but after Mademoiselle was arrested, her charges were eventually dropped
(22:52):
because there simply wasn't enough evidence. But then a few
years later, in eighteen forty five, abortion laws changed again
in the stay of New York. It became extra legal
for anyone to get or perform a bleyortion, and two
years later madem Mirstelle was arrested again. There's this woman
(23:12):
named Maria Beaudine who had gone to see Madame Mirstelle
and asked for an abortion, but she was already too
far along. Mademoiselle was like, yeah, you're definitely more than
three or four months pregnant, so I'm not going to
do it because I don't want to get arrested. But
then Maria's lover was like, hey, I demand that you
give her an abortion, so Mademoiselle was like, okay, fine,
(23:37):
But then after the procedure, Maria got sick and went
to a doctor who was like, hmm, I can tell
that you got an abortion, and that doctor reported her
and Madame Ristelle, so she had to spend a year
in prison and pay a hefty fine. When she got
(23:57):
out of prison, and Tree Lowman decided to make a change,
at least on the surface. She was like, I'm not
going to do surgicals anymore, but I am going to
resume my business and just sell these concoctions that I
make and not do the surgical ones. Wink wink, m
(24:19):
because even though she limited her business, she just kept
getting richer and richer. By that point, she and her
family had moved into a ginormous mansion on Fifth Avenue,
and that's where she moved her offices as well. And
for even more people to take her seriously, she applied
for citizenship, which was granted in eighteen fifty four. And
(24:40):
the thing is, other women also provided this type of
medical services, but she was just so well known in
making such a huge impact on the city that the
mayor himself officiated Madame Morselle's daughter's wedding. But Madeame Morselle
wasn't going to stay on top for much longer, because,
as we all know, a woman with power pooh sheh,
(25:04):
that's not going to last. People hate when women are powerful,
and she especially wasn't gonna last. If anti abortion, anti
birth control, anti fun crusader Anthony Comstock had anything to
say about it, We'll be back after these soothing advertisements.
(25:29):
After the Comstock Act was passed in eighteen seventy three,
mister Anthony Comstock was on a rampage. And the great
thing about him is not only did he want to
destroy all obscene material, but he also just seemed to
really hate women in general. What a guy. So obviously,
(25:51):
women were usually the ones buying birth control and seeking abortions,
so he doubly hated them because they were doing that,
but then also because again, yuck, they're women. He especially
hated a woman who was independent. He disliked women who
who had jobs, who had thought, and he even hated
when women put too much effort into their appearance because
(26:11):
he thought that was immodest. He said that when a
woman was too done up, that it made her seem
too independent and didn't belong to any man. That's right, ladies,
that's what a little lip can do for you. So
Madame Rastelle, she was the perfect target, and he wanted
to pull her down off her high horse on Fifth Avenue,
(26:37):
even though I guess she's more of like a British,
So pull it down from a high horse on Fifth Avenue.
So here's what he did. In eighteen seventy eight. He
was like, I'm gonna go undercover. Mister Anthony Comstock costumed
himself as a man who was seeking an abortion for
his imaginary wife. He knocked on the door of her
(27:01):
office winning and was like, oh help, I need some
up abortion stuff and she was like, okay, chill, yeah,
I can give you some stuff. And while he was there,
he looked around at all the abortion birth control materials
and was like, I'm gonna get this bitch. So after
(27:22):
Madame Rostelle gave him what he asked for in his
little dress up costume, Comestock scurried home like the little
rat he is, and the next day he came back
with some of his vice squad and arrested her. At
this point, bail's fines for people who gave or had
(27:45):
an abortion were really high, and allegedly Madame Rostelle was like, Hey,
I got thousands of dollars with me on hand. I
can just give that to you right now, get me
out of jail. But then they wouldn't let her out
until she had two men come and bail her out.
They're like, we won't accept this woman's money. We need
man money. After the arrest, Madame Morstelle was pissed. She
(28:08):
wrote into a newspaper and said, Comstock is in this
nasty detective business, and there are a number of little
doctors who are in the same business behind him. They
think if they can get me in trouble and out
of the way, they can make a fortune. If the
public are determined to push this matter, they will have
a good laugh when they learn the nature of the
terrible items of the preventative prescriptions. Of course, if there's
(28:32):
a trial, it will all come out. And Madame Mostelle
was totally right, because at this point, male doctors were
trying to take over the jobs that women like Madame
Rostelle and then also midwives usually did with their female patients.
These male doctors were like, actually, we've decided we want
(28:54):
to control all healthcare, so these little women, we need
to get them out of the way. And sure, let's
leak up with Comstock and we can be like boo
boo boo abortion. We hate that, because that will help
us round up all the women who provide these services,
and then we can just take their jobs, take their industry,
take their money, take their clientele, and we get to
(29:15):
be the winners and the arbiter of all things healthcare. Like,
can you imagine how frustrating that was, because not only
is Madame Roustelle being arrested, her whole career is being
usurped by a bunch of little angry dudes. She's like,
all I've been doing my whole life is helping women,
(29:37):
providing healthcare, and now you're trying to make me out
to be some sort of villain. Fuck all the way off.
And the thing is also at this point, this came
just a few months after her husband had died. So
when Madame Russelle got out of that jail cell, she
did not feel good, and the end of the story
(29:57):
takes a really dramatic turn. There ended up being no
trial because in the days before Madam Mirselle's maid found
her dead in her bathtub. Her neck had been sliced
with a knife from one side to the other, and
she had bled out in the water. Most people at
(30:20):
the time and also historians, agreed that this was a suicide.
Other people say it might have been a murder, but
there's very little evidence to support that. Guys, I know,
this is really sad. At the end and I promise
next week, well not next week because we're gonna do
another sad one, but the week after that, we're gonna
do something really stupid. Okay, I promise. After Madam Marstelle
(30:44):
was found dead, there's a huge response to it in
the newspapers. Most people at the time were saying they
didn't like the fact that she did abortions, but another
newspaper called out Comstock, being like, why the hell are
you dressing up and tricking people into selling you stuff
that incriminates them. That's fucked up. This one newspaper wrote,
(31:07):
no matter what the wretched woman was who took her
own life with her own hand yesterday, her death has
not freed the world from the last of detestable characters.
Whatever she was, she had her rights. As always, we
learn a lesson on American filth, and I think the
lesson we learned today is that it has always been
(31:29):
great to be a woman in America. Cue the credits.
American Field is a production of School of Humans and
iHeart Podcast. This episode was written, hosted, sound designed, etc.
By Me Gabby Watts. Our senior producer is Amelia Brock,
and our executive producers are Elsie Crowley, Virginia Prescott, and
Brandon Barr. You can follow along with the pod at
(31:51):
American filth Pod on Instagram and please leave a review,
leave some stars, leave some comments. Get that algorithm going.
Tell your friends about the show, Tell your enemies about
the show, Tell your doctor, tell your guy no about
the freakin show. Okay, School of Humans,
School of Humans. Oh hello, filth heads, I have a
huge announcement, absolutely ginormous, and it's going to really affect
your lives. So strap in for this one. American Filth
is now going to be coming out on Fridays. That's right.
Friday is gonna be your filthy Day, Filthy Friday, Philth Friday,
(00:30):
and I think it's gonna be fun. Friday is a
good time for all the filth. But if you're one
of those people who needed American Film to come out
on Wednesday that was part of your Wednesday process, I
suggest that when the episode comes out, just wait, just
hold off, and you can listen to it on Wednesday. Okay,
So we're gonna have a new episode coming out this Friday.
(00:52):
In the meantime, I'm replaying an episode that was about
Anthony Cumstock, if you guys remember him. He passed a
bill in like eighteen seventy three that was basically like,
you can't send any obscene materials through the mail, which
effectively made a lot of birth control illegal because that's
how people were sending it. Also, you know, if you
(01:13):
just had something gross that you were sending the mail,
you could get arrested for it and anythy comes dock.
A lot of the stuff that he was talking about
in the eighteen seventies and beyond that stuff is still
affecting us today. And this episode is about abortion, which
is always, you know, a relevant topic and American political discourse.
(01:35):
So here's the episode. Hope you guys have a good time,
and we'll have a new episode out on Friday. Thanks
for your patience and understanding. But of course, if you're
really upset about it, please comment about it. Please, you know,
give us a bad review, which, as you guys know,
always helps. So last time on American Filth we talked
(02:00):
about mister Anthony Comestock, Come Come, Come, Come Stock. If
you recall, he was the man behind the Comstock Act
that basically made everything fun illegal because he was like, oh,
all that stuff, it's obscene, we shouldn't be looking at it.
One thing that was greatly affected by the Comstock Act
(02:23):
was the distribution and production of birth control. But one
thing we did leave out of the episode, which was
another thing that mister Anthony Comstock absolutely abhorred, was this
little thing called abortion. Have you heard of it? If
(02:44):
you haven't, i'll just tell you it's one of the
least contentious reproductive topics in the history of time. Nary
a person has ever had an opinion about that. No,
mister Comstock, he hated that. He's like, that's gross, that's obscene,
that's horrific. I want to get rid of it entirely,
(03:05):
you know, which is so unlike today anyway. You might
be surprised to know that in the early part of
the nineteenth century their abortion laws weren't that bad, but
it was throughout the century. It was thanks to people
(03:27):
like Comstock who made abortion access less and less available.
And as there were more laws against it, there were
more and more doctors and not so licensed doctors who
came out of the shadows to offer their services to
anyone who was having a WHOOPSI daisy in their uterus.
(03:50):
And one of those people who was perhaps the most
notorious abortionists in nineteenth century New York City was a
woman who went by the name Madame Restelle. Over the
course of her career, she provided a countless number of
women with birth control and abortions. And if you can imagine,
(04:11):
a lot of people did not like that. And when
obscenity censor and bad boy Comestock came around Madame Rostelle
lost her livelihood and then her life. Ha ha ha.
What a fun subject we're talking about today. Cue the
theme song. This is American filth and I'm Gabby Watts.
(04:37):
Every week I tell you a filthy story from American history.
This week's episode Comestock Part two, Unpregnanted. Something I will
(05:01):
say about this episode is I will be saying the
term abortional lot because there's not really that many good synonyms.
There's terminated the pregnancy, or you could say something more crass,
like unpregnanted. Also, being pregnant is called being knocked up,
so you could say an abortion is being knocked out.
(05:24):
That one's very bad and will get me canceled, don't
tell us and l Also, I think this is about
the third or fourth time I have canceled myself on
my own podcast, so I need somebody else to do it.
Please cancel me this week. But like birth control powders
and tonics and pills, throughout the nineteenth century, there was
(05:45):
also a big rise in the number of abortions being
carried out. It's hard to know concrete numbers because you know,
it wasn't like people were writing down in their diaries,
I have had an abortion. But some reformers from the
time estimated that between eighteen hundred and eighteen thirty, for
every twenty three to thirty births, there is one abortion.
(06:07):
So yeah, one in thirty one and twenty five. And
then you get to the eighteen fifties and you might
have had one abortion for every six birds. And maybe
that number was even higher because there was also a
higher rate of still births at the time. And people
were like, well, maybe that's because they did some abortion stuff.
And sure, maybe these numbers are grim. But here's the thing,
(06:29):
here's a little silver lining is simultaneously as abortion rates
went up, the infanticide rate went down. How delightful. And
then in the eighteen seventies some people were thinking that
one third of all pregnancies ended in termination. The women
seeking these procedures and treatments were not just single ladies.
(06:53):
There's also people who were married who wanted to control
the size of their family. Basically, anyone and everyone was
having an abortion. Like even a Confederate general had his
wife terminate a pregnancy. He's like, the South will rise again,
but that baby won't. I'm sorry, And remember this is
(07:14):
the nineteenth century, so a lot of the procedures for
abortion were quite dangerous and a lot of women actually died.
Unlike today where everything is grand. Maybe if I say
it in a French accent, it will sound like I'm
saying it less. So how did people feel about a
bassillon in the nineteenth century? That actually makes it sound
(07:36):
even worse. Well, at the beginning of it, a lot
of people subscribe to this idea called quickening, which was
the idea that life did not begin until a woman
felt the fetus move inside of her, which would be
about three to four months into pregnancy. So it's kind
of like, ah, if you do something three months before,
(07:57):
we don't care. But once you feel it, eh, we
got an issue with it. There were specific laws passed
about a bassillon. In New York State, for example, in
eighteen twenty seven, there was a law that said providing
or getting an abortion was a crime and you could
be punished with a year in jail and a one
hundred dollars fine. But laws like this, most of them
(08:20):
were passed not to criminalize abortion, but to protect women
from being pressured into getting one, and so in general,
no one was really getting arrested because of this law,
and then when people did get arrested, they often weren't
prosecuted for it. But then in the mid century that
started to change. There were more anti abortion laws which
(08:43):
were like quickening, We reject that life starts at conception,
so if you have an abortion or provide one, we
will actually now arrest you and send you to prison. Also,
you can't advertise these services in the newspapers. Gross. I
don't know what accent that was. It came from a
(09:03):
very dark place inside of me. And if you all
can believe it. As abortion access became less and less,
the whole process became more and more dangerous because women
were going to quack medical practitioners who provided these services
illegally and I imagine in deep dark basements where it
(09:26):
was gross and not hygienic. At the same time, however,
some of these so called quacks were actually pretty good
at what they did, and one such example was Madame Rastelle. Yeah,
we're finally getting to the topic of the episode. Some
(09:47):
things people called her throughout her career were female abortionist,
a professor of infanticide, a child murderous, and this longer quote,
the wretched creature who builds her fortune upon the misfortunes
of her sex, caring no more for their suffering of
mind or body. Then does the butcher for the lives
(10:07):
of the animals, which it is his business to take
A little bit dramatic, methinks, Madame Michelle was a pseudonym.
Her real name was Anne Troe Lohman, and she was
the planned parenthood of mid nineteenth century New York City.
She was born Anne Troe in a small town in
(10:28):
England in eighteen eleven or eighteen twelve. She was one
of eleven children, though it's likely many of them did
not survive into adulthood, and she grew up quite poor
where she was born in Painswick, England. It was a
textile town, so likely her parents worked at a mill
or were in agriculture, and her parents they were likely illiterate,
(10:51):
and because of that it's very likely that Anne didn't
have any formal education. The next thing we know about
her for sure was that in eighteen twenty nine she
married a tailor named Henry Summers. She was seventeen, he
was twenty six. A little yucky, but not illegal. Actually,
it was quite typical of the time. Drake would thrive
during this time. Anyway, they had a daughter in eighteen
(11:15):
thirty named Caroline, and at that point they're like, damn,
we really got to get our shit together because we
don't have any opportunities here. So in eighteen thirty one
they hopped on a boat to New York City. They
moved to a neighborhood in Lower Manhattan, and it's likely
that Henry got a job as a tailor and Anne
(11:36):
got a job as a seamstress. A friend of hers
said later that she was working making pentaloons. But unfortunately
for Anne and Caroline, just a few months after they arrived,
Henry caught a fever and died. Damn, thought Anne, I'm
(11:56):
in a tight spot. You know. She had her job
as a seamstress of pantaloons, but the problem with that
work was that it was difficult, the hours were long,
and the pay was low, so it really wasn't cutting
it or sewing it. But then Anne met another man
who had a similar fervor to her to better himself.
(12:17):
His name was Charles Lowman. He was also an immigrant,
but from Russia, and he worked as a printer for
a newspaper. He was also in some radical groups that
liked to think and write about such things as birth
control and reproductive health, those crazy guys. So Charles and
Ann got married and they moved into a new apartment,
and they just happened to live next to this guy
(12:38):
named William Evans. His name is really not important at all,
but the thing about him that is important is that
he was a doctor, but not just any doctor. He
was a quack aka, he had no formal medicinal training.
But what he would do is he would make tonics
and tinctures and potions and all sorts of stuff and
(12:58):
sell it to people, being like, yeah, this this thing
that I made up in my kitchen, it's going to
cure you. I mean, most likely it won't do anything
at all, but sometimes it's just nice to know you're
trying out something a little placebo effect. But this William Evans,
well he was making money, making bank doing this, I
(13:21):
mean not bank, but like he was making enough. And Anne,
with perhaps some encouragement from her husband, was like, maybe
I should try making some medicinal potions, powders and pills
and sell those. She knew she'd make more money doing
that than being a seamstress. Yes, and learned something very
(13:41):
important about America. Then lying is much more profitable than
honest labor. At first, she tried the usual stuff, you know,
making elixirs and other medicines that could cure a whole
variety of ailments and illnesses. But then her business took
a turn when one woman who bought some of her
(14:03):
medicines was like, Hey, I have a little bit of
a whoopsidaisy in my womb. Do you have anything that
could fix that? Aka, I need to have one aborcheon now.
In the late eighteen thirties, when Antroloman got this request
from her patient, birth control and abortion related merchandise wasn't
(14:27):
a new thing. As I said in the last episode,
people with uteruses have been trying not to have babies
the whole time we've been around, And most of the
solutions to getting rid of a little whoopsidaisy baby involved
drinking or eating a gross combination of ingredients. Like indigenous women,
(14:47):
they would try to induce a miscarriage using various roots
and herbs. In Texas, there's a case of a black
woman who drink a combination of calamel and turpentine yummy.
And then there are some white ladies in the Midwest,
and what they did is they rubbed gunpowder on their
titties and tea made of rusty nail water. I bet
(15:09):
it had a sharp taste. But besides ingesting gross stuff,
some other things that birth control manuals suggested for inducing
miscarriages was you know, jumping up and down a classic,
exercising too vigorously, and douching. And as I said, you know,
some doctors and quack doctors alike did do surgical abortions.
(15:34):
They're just very dangerous, sometimes fatal, and even worse than that,
they were all so expensive. Some doctors charged about one
hundred dollars for a surgical abortion, which was a hefty sum.
Or doctors would sell you a device that you could
use at home. One doctor sold this eight dollars silver
(15:55):
probe that you would just stick into your uterus and
shake it around until something happened. And there was plenty
of demand for these products. One lady used that silver
probe me one times and apparently she died on the
last one. Anyway, back to Anne, and you know, she
had this patient who was like, help, I need to
(16:16):
get rid of this thing inside of me. And Anne
was like, hmm, I think I smell a business idea
coming along. So she indeed made some medicine for this
lady to take home to remove the whoops of daisy.
And that started Anne down her trajectory that would make
her one of the most hated yet beloved women at
the time in New York City. Notorious, infamous, We'll be back.
(16:40):
After these soothing advertisements, Anne quickly made a crap ton
of money after she saw that first patient. She had
more and more women come to see her for her medicines.
With that cash, she took her daughter back to England
for a time to hang out with her family. But
(17:01):
then when they returned to New York City, Anne and
her husband started ramping up their business. They got a
fancy office and Ann started going by Madame Restelle, saying
that she named herself after a French doctor who taught
her all the secrets to preventing and terminating pregnancies. She
was like, oh, yeah, when I was back at home
visiting my family, actually I was touring around Europe learning
(17:23):
all these treatments, because back then, if anything was advertised
as French or Parisian, it was often a euphemism for
birth control. Why I don't know, maybe it's because an
IUD looks like the Eiffel Tower. The Eiffel Tower didn't
even exist then, ugh, And so Madame Restelle started advertising
(17:46):
her services in the newspaper. Her first advertisement appeared in
the New York Sun in March of eighteen thirty nine.
Under some very coded euphemisms, the ad said, is it
not but too well known that the families of the
married often increased beyond the happiness of those who give birth?
(18:07):
Would dictate, is it desirable? Is it moral for parents
to increase their families, regardless of the consequences to themselves
or the well being of their offspring when a simple, easy, healthy,
and certain remedy is within our control. She was then like,
come visit me at my office, where married females can
(18:28):
obtain the desired information. And let's just say a lot
of women wanted to obtain that desired information, married, unmarried,
every sort of Lady. Madame Rostelle's office in New York
(18:48):
was open from nine am to ten pm every day,
and often there is a horde of women in the
waiting room, a line running out the door and around
the block. At first, she was offering abortion pills and
potions she didn't call them potions. I'm just calling them
back because it's fine. And she would send this stuff
out in the mail. But then she diversified her business
(19:10):
to include all sorts of services. You know how a
lot of people think of Planned Parenthood today as like
an abortion factory, but it actually provides a lot of
other services. That's how people start thinking about Madame Rostelle.
They're like, she's the lady who gives abortions. Yucky, we
don't like her. But she was also giving all types
of health care to women. She was like, yeah, I'm
(19:32):
just a physician, a female physician for females. Her various
services include a contraception and then some herbal remedies that
would help restore instruation. And another service she provided was
that she had a boarding house where pregnant women could
go and deliver their babies anonymously, and then she would
(19:53):
coordinate adoptions. And then she also had her surgical abortions.
But she had a sliding scale. Remember she had grown
up poor, so she was like, hey, if you're a
poor person, you only have to pay twenty. Any rich ladies, though,
you guys got to pay one hundred. Sorry, not sorry,
And of course, Madame Pistelle, she had haters the whole time.
(20:15):
Can you believe it, someone who provides abortion has haters?
You know. At the beginning of her business, people were
still kind of like, hey, you can't prosecute someone until
after three four months of them being pregnant, until that
quickening stuff is happening. But as attitudes started changing, more
and more people when a doctor's like and to rot
(20:36):
in prison, they were like, ugh, if women have access
to birth control, if women can have abortions, they're going
to be more sexually active. That's disgusting. We're gonna have
all these single ladies committing all this sin. And then
a lot of feminists actually hated birth control because they
were like, ough, this just encourages men to have more
(20:57):
sexual liaisons, and as you guys all know, sexuality is
bad for society. Her enemies were like, Madam Ristelle is
making everyone im moral. Also, she's only aborting the babies
of rich people, which means that she's aborting white babies,
and soon we're just gonna have all these other babies
and not enough white ones. Another thing that people hated
(21:22):
about Madame Rousselle was that she was this thing called
a successful woman. Have you heard of this? Like she
was making a lot of money, she was operating her
own business. People hated that. They hated her wealth, which
she flaunted in her fancy carriages and fancy clothes, and
they're all like, oh, she's not even a real MD.
(21:44):
She shouldn't be doing this medical stuff. The only people
who should be doing medicine are men, because men get licensed.
Men are smart men, men men. Despite her successes, though,
Madame Mirseelle could not avoid the law. The first time
(22:08):
she was arrested was less than a year after she
opened her business in eighteen thirty nine, and at that
point she was accused of performing an abortion on a
woman who later died. The woman was named Maria Purdy,
and she had visited Madame Rostelle looking for a tonic
to unpregnant herself. Madame Marselle obliged, but then Maria stopped
(22:30):
taking it because she was afraid she might get poisoned.
So what she did instead is she went back to
Madame Morstelle and was like, Hey, can I actually have
a surgical abortion? I don't want to take this weird juice,
And she was given the surgical abortion and then she
got sick and she was convinced it was from the procedure,
but after Mademoiselle was arrested, her charges were eventually dropped
(22:52):
because there simply wasn't enough evidence. But then a few
years later, in eighteen forty five, abortion laws changed again
in the stay of New York. It became extra legal
for anyone to get or perform a bleyortion, and two
years later madem Mirstelle was arrested again. There's this woman
(23:12):
named Maria Beaudine who had gone to see Madame Mirstelle
and asked for an abortion, but she was already too
far along. Mademoiselle was like, yeah, you're definitely more than
three or four months pregnant, so I'm not going to
do it because I don't want to get arrested. But
then Maria's lover was like, hey, I demand that you
give her an abortion, so Mademoiselle was like, okay, fine,
(23:37):
But then after the procedure, Maria got sick and went
to a doctor who was like, hmm, I can tell
that you got an abortion, and that doctor reported her
and Madame Ristelle, so she had to spend a year
in prison and pay a hefty fine. When she got
(23:57):
out of prison, and Tree Lowman decided to make a change,
at least on the surface. She was like, I'm not
going to do surgicals anymore, but I am going to
resume my business and just sell these concoctions that I
make and not do the surgical ones. Wink wink, m
(24:19):
because even though she limited her business, she just kept
getting richer and richer. By that point, she and her
family had moved into a ginormous mansion on Fifth Avenue,
and that's where she moved her offices as well. And
for even more people to take her seriously, she applied
for citizenship, which was granted in eighteen fifty four. And
(24:40):
the thing is, other women also provided this type of
medical services, but she was just so well known in
making such a huge impact on the city that the
mayor himself officiated Madame Morselle's daughter's wedding. But Madeame Morselle
wasn't going to stay on top for much longer, because,
as we all know, a woman with power pooh sheh,
(25:04):
that's not going to last. People hate when women are powerful,
and she especially wasn't gonna last. If anti abortion, anti
birth control, anti fun crusader Anthony Comstock had anything to
say about it, We'll be back after these soothing advertisements.
(25:29):
After the Comstock Act was passed in eighteen seventy three,
mister Anthony Comstock was on a rampage. And the great
thing about him is not only did he want to
destroy all obscene material, but he also just seemed to
really hate women in general. What a guy. So obviously,
(25:51):
women were usually the ones buying birth control and seeking abortions,
so he doubly hated them because they were doing that,
but then also because again, yuck, they're women. He especially
hated a woman who was independent. He disliked women who
who had jobs, who had thought, and he even hated
when women put too much effort into their appearance because
(26:11):
he thought that was immodest. He said that when a
woman was too done up, that it made her seem
too independent and didn't belong to any man. That's right, ladies,
that's what a little lip can do for you. So
Madame Rastelle, she was the perfect target, and he wanted
to pull her down off her high horse on Fifth Avenue,
(26:37):
even though I guess she's more of like a British,
So pull it down from a high horse on Fifth Avenue.
So here's what he did. In eighteen seventy eight. He
was like, I'm gonna go undercover. Mister Anthony Comstock costumed
himself as a man who was seeking an abortion for
his imaginary wife. He knocked on the door of her
(27:01):
office winning and was like, oh help, I need some
up abortion stuff and she was like, okay, chill, yeah,
I can give you some stuff. And while he was there,
he looked around at all the abortion birth control materials
and was like, I'm gonna get this bitch. So after
(27:22):
Madame Rostelle gave him what he asked for in his
little dress up costume, Comestock scurried home like the little
rat he is, and the next day he came back
with some of his vice squad and arrested her. At
this point, bail's fines for people who gave or had
(27:45):
an abortion were really high, and allegedly Madame Rostelle was like, Hey,
I got thousands of dollars with me on hand. I
can just give that to you right now, get me
out of jail. But then they wouldn't let her out
until she had two men come and bail her out.
They're like, we won't accept this woman's money. We need
man money. After the arrest, Madame Morstelle was pissed. She
(28:08):
wrote into a newspaper and said, Comstock is in this
nasty detective business, and there are a number of little
doctors who are in the same business behind him. They
think if they can get me in trouble and out
of the way, they can make a fortune. If the
public are determined to push this matter, they will have
a good laugh when they learn the nature of the
terrible items of the preventative prescriptions. Of course, if there's
(28:32):
a trial, it will all come out. And Madame Mostelle
was totally right, because at this point, male doctors were
trying to take over the jobs that women like Madame
Rostelle and then also midwives usually did with their female patients.
These male doctors were like, actually, we've decided we want
(28:54):
to control all healthcare, so these little women, we need
to get them out of the way. And sure, let's
leak up with Comstock and we can be like boo
boo boo abortion. We hate that, because that will help
us round up all the women who provide these services,
and then we can just take their jobs, take their industry,
take their money, take their clientele, and we get to
(29:15):
be the winners and the arbiter of all things healthcare. Like,
can you imagine how frustrating that was, because not only
is Madame Roustelle being arrested, her whole career is being
usurped by a bunch of little angry dudes. She's like,
all I've been doing my whole life is helping women,
(29:37):
providing healthcare, and now you're trying to make me out
to be some sort of villain. Fuck all the way off.
And the thing is also at this point, this came
just a few months after her husband had died. So
when Madame Russelle got out of that jail cell, she
did not feel good, and the end of the story
(29:57):
takes a really dramatic turn. There ended up being no
trial because in the days before Madam Mirselle's maid found
her dead in her bathtub. Her neck had been sliced
with a knife from one side to the other, and
she had bled out in the water. Most people at
(30:20):
the time and also historians, agreed that this was a suicide.
Other people say it might have been a murder, but
there's very little evidence to support that. Guys, I know,
this is really sad. At the end and I promise
next week, well not next week because we're gonna do
another sad one, but the week after that, we're gonna
do something really stupid. Okay, I promise. After Madam Marstelle
(30:44):
was found dead, there's a huge response to it in
the newspapers. Most people at the time were saying they
didn't like the fact that she did abortions, but another
newspaper called out Comstock, being like, why the hell are
you dressing up and tricking people into selling you stuff
that incriminates them. That's fucked up. This one newspaper wrote,
(31:07):
no matter what the wretched woman was who took her
own life with her own hand yesterday, her death has
not freed the world from the last of detestable characters.
Whatever she was, she had her rights. As always, we
learn a lesson on American filth, and I think the
lesson we learned today is that it has always been
(31:29):
great to be a woman in America. Cue the credits.
American Field is a production of School of Humans and
iHeart Podcast. This episode was written, hosted, sound designed, etc.
By Me Gabby Watts. Our senior producer is Amelia Brock,
and our executive producers are Elsie Crowley, Virginia Prescott, and
Brandon Barr. You can follow along with the pod at
(31:51):
American filth Pod on Instagram and please leave a review,
leave some stars, leave some comments. Get that algorithm going.
Tell your friends about the show, Tell your enemies about
the show, Tell your doctor, tell your guy no about
the freakin show. Okay, School of Humans,
Host
Gabbie Watts
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