September 9, 2024 • 51 mins
In the late 1800s, abortion practitioner Nancy Guilford gets caught up in the death of a patient in Bridgeport, and then flees the country, before being returned to face her trial. Marcia Biederman comes into our podcast studio to talk about late 19th century intrigue, society, & medicine, as in her book, The Disquieting Death of Emma Gill.
Thanks for listening to Bridgeport Unmasked. Want to make your own podcast? Beardsley Branch Library in Bridgeport has a podcast studio, open to anyone with a library card from a Connecticut city. For more information, see https://bportlibrary.org/podcast-studios/
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of
Bridgeport Public Library'spodcast, bridgeport Unmasked.
We are recording from thepodcast studio at Beardsley
Branch Library in Bridgeport.
I'm librarian Adam Cleary andtoday I am joined by writer
Marcia Biederman, author of theDisquieting Death of Emma Gill,
(00:24):
which we will be talking abouttoday on Bridgeport Unmasked.
So, hi, marcia, thank you verymuch for braving the deluge
(00:45):
outside to be here today to talkabout your book.
How are you doing?
Speaker 2 (00:49):
Very well, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
Cool, cool.
So we were actually talking alittle bit about earlier that
this is your first time here atthe Beardsley Branch Library,
our new technology library here.
Our new technology library here.
This is the library branch thathas, like the podcast and you
know, we're actually the otherstudio.
We'll get that up and running.
That's more like for recordingguitar stuff and stuff like that
(01:15):
.
So when was it that you werewriting this book and, like you
were regularly in Bridgeportdoing research and stuff like
that?
Speaker 2 (01:22):
Well, I can't say I was regularly in Bridgeport
because it was during the COVIDrestrictions.
Okay, so I had to make anappointment and there were rules
about when I could come intothe Bridgeport History Center at
the main branch, but I wasdelighted to come in.
I think it was 2021 when I didheavy research there, because
(01:46):
the Bridgeport Public Librarymain branch has historical
copies of the Bridgeport Postand the much forgotten
Bridgeport Morning Union, whichwas also important to my
research.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
Absolutely we do.
Thank you for bringing that upso everybody out there can know
that we have Bridgeport paperswhich have gone under a number
of names over time, reachingback to the Civil War and a
little before, so you canactually research those in
person.
Come on in and we will set youup with those Microfilm is the
(02:23):
fancy word for it of thesenewspapers.
So, yeah, that's awesome thatthe Bridgeport History Center,
which is in Bridgeport PublicLibrary, was able to help you
out with that.
So I figured I'd give you ashot to talk about this and
other books you have, and youknow where people can find you,
(02:45):
online or offline or anythingelse you want to plug about your
stuff.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
Well, thank you.
I write about extraordinaryAmerican women who should be
better known, and I started bywriting about Patricia Murphy,
who had a chain of restaurantsthat reached their zenith in the
1950s and 1960s and Yonkers,new York and Southern Florida.
(03:12):
She also, during her lifetime,had nine different locations and
when I grew up in Bridgeport,everybody I knew went to
Patricia Murphy's.
It was like an experience, notjust a dinner, and they would
send me picture postcards oftheir outings with their
families at these gorgeousrestaurants.
(03:32):
The one in Yonkers coveredacres.
It also had gardens, a giftshop that was almost as big as
Macy's with Patricia Murphyperfumes, and I never got to go
there, but I did get to writeher biography.
And then my second one wasabout the speed reading marketer
(03:53):
, evelyn Wood, who promised thatyou could read you know entire
novels in 10 minutes with bettercomprehension than if you had
read them slowly.
So that's called Scan Artist.
The first one, about PatriciaMurphy, is called Popovers and
Candlelight.
She was known for the endlessservings of popovers.
(04:13):
The second one, scan Artist andhow Evelyn Wood convinced the
world that speed reading worked.
And then my third one is calledA Mighty Force, dr Elizabeth
Hayes and Her War for PublicHealth, which is set in western
Pennsylvania in 1945, just asWorld War II is winding down,
(04:34):
company-owned coal towns where,if the war brides would leave in
five minutes if they saw theseplaces, with sewage running
through the street, no way toget clean drinking water and no
running water.
And so she led a strike she waslike Joan of Arc in
(04:55):
Pennsylvania of 350 coal miners,not for higher wages or shorter
hours, but for clean drinkingwater in their company-owned
town.
Wages or shorter hours, but forclean drinking water in their
company-owned town.
And this one is my fourth theSquieting Death of Emma Gill.
To find me online, you can justlook for Emma Gill, which is
easier than my name, marshaBiederman.
(05:16):
But if you can write downMarsha Biederman, I have a
website, marshabiedermancom, andit's M-A-R-C-I-A, which is how
we used to spell it inBridgeport.
Biederman is B like boy, i-e-dlike David, e-r-m-a-ncom, and
that's where you can find them.
(05:36):
But just search Emma Gill forthis one about Bridgeport.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
Yes, and you certainly could search, emma
Gill, but obviously we will beputting that website into the
notes below and so, yeah, thosenotes being on the podcast web
page for you to use.
We have other references tootoday, so those will all be down
in the notes, and okay, so Iwanted to get into Emigil, but
(06:02):
first I have to ask so, evelynWood, was that a scam?
I only bring it up because, intalking about Emigil, you can't
talk about this book that youwrote without talking about scam
artists, for reasons that willbecome evident to the folks out
there pretty darn soon.
So, like, was there any truthbehind Emigil's claims or was it
(06:24):
just nonsense?
Speaker 2 (06:26):
Evelyn Wood's claims.
Oh, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
Speaker 1 (06:29):
I'm already fusing words.
It's going to be a long podcastepisode.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
That's quite all right.
You're very forgiven.
The Evelyn Wood speed readingmethod, which, unfortunately, I
begged my parents to pay for.
I took a course in Los Angeles.
I begged my parents to pay forit, I took a course in Los
Angeles and it has been debunkedby many reading experts.
But it was one of those ideasthat just took hold and because
(06:54):
it was endorsed, people thoughtit was endorsed by John F
Kennedy.
He didn't endorse the EvelynWood method by name, but he did
believe that everybody shouldtake speed reading and browbeat
his little brother, ted, intotaking it.
Yes, it has been debunked.
I mean there were measurementson iMotion that showed that at
(07:18):
that rate you can't even look atevery word on the page.
So one debunker after anotherwould spend their career
practically trying to bring downEvelyn Wood and she was
impervious to it all because ithad caught on with the popular
imagination.
It was endorsed by veryimportant celebrities and
(07:39):
politicians and therefore shehad Teflon.
And it's just an interestingchapter in the Cold War period,
I think because this was thetime when Americans were very,
very worried about not keepingup with the Soviet Union and
(08:01):
really JFK presented this as amatter of national security that
we just had to get smarter.
We had to study more science.
There were all kinds of scienceprograms.
My brother attended one at theUniversity of Bridgeport for
high school students while hewas at Central, to try to catch
(08:22):
up.
So because we didn't have theinternet then we didn't have
search engines, we didn't haveGoogle.
This was supposed to be a wayof plowing through the explosion
of print matter that washappening at that time.
At that time, the Library ofCongress added another building.
Speaker 1 (08:40):
Oh, interesting Solid yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:42):
Right Printing technology had become cheaper,
and there were the DisquietingDeath of Emma Gill.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
First off, just two things I feel that I should
throw out there.
So this book, if it were just ahistorical curiosity, would
have been interesting and worththe read for that.
But its themes, its topics aregoing to be, are very evident to
what is going on in the worldtoday.
(09:29):
You know you're going to forgetsometimes that this is a book
that happens in the 1880s andthe 1890s.
So I just want to throw outthere that the Bridgeport Public
Library does not take aposition on any of the topics
that we talk about today.
We're just going to talk aboutthem freely on matters, because
that's what libraries are allabout is freely talking about
(09:54):
things, but the library itself,no positions.
Also, I do want to throw out atrigger warning to everybody.
We're going to be talking aboutsome troubling topics here.
We're going to be talking aboutabortions, death from medical
complications, sexual abuse,rape and the blatant
chauvinistic social and legalstructures that allowed all this
(10:14):
nonsense to happen.
Hey, everybody, it's Adam here.
I also wanted to include thatthis discussion also touches
upon manslaughter and thedissection of a corpse.
So you know, if you thinkthat's a bit much for you to
chew, then don't worry, youwon't offend me, you can stop
(10:35):
the podcast now and you can bumpto other, maybe other, podcasts
on our webpage if you want tolisten to those, but just
throwing those out there thatwe're going to be talking about
some serious stuff today andwith that let us dig right in
Now.
The the whole, the whole bookis is has got very interesting
(10:59):
stuff.
That being said, the bookdoesn't move the scene.
The scene of the book doesn'tmove to Bridgeport until Chapter
7.
The chapters before that havelots of interesting things going
on and you need to read thatfirst to get a backup of Nancy's
(11:21):
Nancy Guilford's, that's a nameyou'll be very familiar with
soon practice, abortion practicein Bridgeport.
The way I was thinking we couldtackle that is, I could give a
few bullet points about thefirst six chapters and then,
obviously, marsha, if you thinkI glossed over something or I
(11:44):
missed out on somethingimportant, feel free to just
jump in at any time and correctme, just so we can get the
audience to.
When Nancy takes her two kidsand her stepkid to Bridgeport.
So Nancy enters into this storywhen a charming quack named
(12:09):
Henry Guilford, then a shoesalesman, comes to her town and
so so Henry has is a master ofall types of artificial medicine
.
In fact, in one year he wasable to complete a medical
course that took two years tocomplete, and also he went on to
(12:31):
be a doctor from manyuniversities, including those
that do not exist.
So yeah, so we kind of get abackground of what Henry is like
.
So Henry ends up having twochildren with Nancy, even though
he is married and has a kid athome, and Nancy and him don't
(12:52):
get married until much later.
Henry kind of supports thefamily with his, with all those
prestigious medical degrees ofhis.
So the thing to know is that inthe late 1800s New England is
full of medical quacks and theyjust jump from one cure-all to
(13:16):
another, you know, as onebecomes more profitable than the
other, suddenly the wholemedical community is like oh,
that's more effective as soon asit becomes more profitable,
right.
So that's Henry.
That's Henry in a nutshell,except of course he also, you
know, loses all the moneythrough his gambling and other
(13:36):
ventures, right?
So the biggest thing that Henrydoes for this story, in my
opinion, is he introduces Nancyto the world of abortion and
gets her involved as anabortionist, which is incredibly
illegal at this time If youperform an abortion in the late
(13:57):
1800s.
You are looking, if you'recaught, at one to seven years
and if your patient dies, fiveto 20.
And on one occasion excuse me,two, including Emma herself, but
I'm getting a little ahead ofmyself she actually faces those
charges.
She gets arrested like I don'tknow Marcia, like four or five
(14:19):
times, something like that.
That seems like about how manytimes she gets arrested.
Speaker 2 (14:24):
Well, between Massachusetts and Connecticut.
Yes, it would be at least thatmany times.
Okay, yeah absolutelyAbsolutely.
Speaker 1 (14:32):
And so, yeah, and so Nancy does.
One of those arrests actuallydoes lead to a conviction.
She serves, I think, eightyears of a 10-year sentence to a
conviction she serves, I think,eight years of a 10-year
sentence, two years off, forgood behavior.
And then she moves toBridgeport with her two young
children and her stepson andthey settle in Bridgeport and
(14:55):
that's where our story, for thepurpose of this podcast, really
begins, because that's where theyou know, the Bridgeport branch
of this story goes on.
So, yeah, so, marcia, that wasa bit of a whirlwind.
I tried to do six of yourchapters in about six bullet
points.
Anything I missed that youthink we need to throw out there
.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
No, that was great, adam.
I really appreciate that.
I just would say also thatBridgeport does figure in the
prologue of the book, beforechapter one.
But since we're doing thispodcast for a family audience,
do you want to be the one totalk about the discovery in
Bridgeport of remains, or shouldI?
Speaker 1 (15:40):
So I would never take that away from you.
I imagine that's like what youwere waiting to do.
Come here, I can't wait forthat part, can't wait for that
part.
But before we do that, I wouldactually like to hear the
background of the Emigil story,how Emigil came to be under
Nancy's knife.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
Yes, it all happened really because of a crackdown on
illegal abortions.
That is what I discovered byresearching this book that Henry
and Nancy and several otherabortion providers I'm not going
to call them abortionistsbecause it's such a loaded word,
(16:18):
there's really no differencebetween abortion provider and
abortionist so they wereoperating illegally and I'm not
here to defend them.
But they had many happycustomers, or anyway satisfied
customers In New Haven, whereHenry and Nancy Guilford lived,
(16:39):
on Worcester Square, wherePepe's Pizza is and Sally's, if
I have the names right.
I lived in New Haven.
Speaker 1 (16:49):
Oh yes, Pepe's and Sally's is definitely the—I
didn't think we would be talkingabout pizza today, but yeah, no
, they're staples.
Speaker 2 (16:56):
Well, that neighborhood is very beautiful
and upscale, and it was whenthey lived there, also in the
early 1890s, and they were twopeople who had illegal practices
in New Haven and were becomingvery wealthy from them.
And one of their competitorswas a Yale Medical School
(17:19):
trained physician who also had atraditional medical practice,
but he saw nothing wrong ormaybe like lining his pockets
with doing illegal abortions.
So he was one of theircompetitors.
He was even more expensive thanthey were and also one of
Henry's old quack partners whohad been doing electromagnetic
(17:43):
medicine which claimed to cureincurable diseases.
He was in business too and itwas all very open.
In New Haven there was like aprivate hospital run by a woman
named Gertrude Vaughn who hadbeen a vaudevillian in Hartford
and she would providepost-abortion care.
All of this was going along foryears and everyone knew it
(18:09):
because all of thesepractitioners advertised in New
Haven or Meriden papers.
Henry had a branch office inMeriden and then there was
something called the Law andOrder League of New Haven.
It was actually a nationalmovement of citizen vigilantes
who said that they didn't wantnew laws, they just wanted the
(18:31):
laws on the books strictlyenforced and their focus was
really temperance and Sundaydrinking, because in Connecticut
Sunday drinking was against thelaw actually for a very long
time, but we're talking about inthe late 19th century.
So they would take it uponthemselves to go surround bars
(18:53):
and taverns that were open onSunday and serving drinks and
closed them down and for a whilethe state government supported
them and even gave them a budget.
So they decided to focus alsoon illegal abortion and there
was a crackdown.
(19:30):
There was an investigation intothe police who had been turning
a blind eye to abortion and alot of the abortions that had
gone awry, where patients wouldsay that they had felt ill for
years after the abortion.
But they had some very goodlawyers, including Isaac Wolf of
New Haven and Jacob Klein, forwhom the Klein Memorial
(19:51):
Auditorium is named atBridgeport, who got them off.
Auditorium is named atBridgeport.
Who got them off?
But in this atmosphere it'sjust Henry had to serve a three
year term in prison and Nancyended up in Bridgeport and I
think did I answer your question?
Speaker 1 (20:08):
You very much.
You very much supplemented the,the outline that I gave there
and I think, yeah, that tells,that, tells us, uh, uh, you know
how how things were for societyand for Nancy and Henry, uh,
leading up to when, uh, one one,uh one woman uh came in from
Southington, southington, yes,okay, yes, absolutely From
(20:29):
Southington, to get an abortion.
And in a bit of an ironic twistat the beginning, you know,
this seems like a slam dunk theman who got her pregnant, you
know, was getting money to herregularly.
This should have been a finething, but it was not a fine
thing.
Wait, let me just jump in andsay Absolutely.
Speaker 2 (20:51):
Because of the heat in New Haven and the fact that
Henry had been in prison, hisMeriden office was closed down.
Ordinarily, southington is asmall town in Hartford County.
She would have gone to Meridenand she and her intimate partner
Harry Oxley the man you'rereferring to did try to go to
(21:12):
Meriden only to find Henry'soffice closed down.
Did try to go to Meriden onlyto find Henry's office closed
down, and Nancy in a lot ofpanic because Henry did provide
income and he was in jail doingfull-time work in Bridgeport.
So Emma Gill of Southingtonfirst of all had to travel very
far, farther than usual, acrossthe state, instead of to Meriden
(21:35):
, to Bridgeport, farther thanusual across the state, instead
of to Meriden to Bridgeport.
And she's finding Nancy alldiscombobulated because although
she and Henry had a verytroubled marriage, they did
count on each other's incomesand they had had to sell their
house on Worcester Square in NewHaven.
(21:59):
And so here is a woman fromSouthington, far out of town,
going to Bridgeport and a veryupset practitioner is now
demanding all of her payment andshe has hiked up her fee to
make up for Henry's loss.
The loss didn't come from herhusband Henry and Harry Oxley of
Southington.
Husband Henry and Harry Oxleyof Southington.
They're both in their mid-20s.
You know, they're both youngpeople, harry and Emma Gill, and
(22:29):
they are in different socialstrata but both young.
Neither of them is married,anyway.
Speaker 1 (22:33):
Emma's engaged, though, which I'm going to touch
on later Right, and not toOxley, incidentally.
No, no, no, no, no.
Yeah, so we'll get to that.
Sorry, I do want to just throwthat in there.
No, thank you, you're welcome.
Speaker 2 (22:46):
Yes, and now Harry Oxley is being asked to pay an
enormous amount of money upfront before Nancy will start
operating Now.
Years ago Nancy would takein-kind payment.
She had practically slidingscale for lower-income patients.
No more.
(23:06):
Now she wants more and moremoney paid in advance.
It's a tremendous pressure onHarry Oxley, and meanwhile, the
person most affected by this isthe patient, Emma Gill, whose
pregnancy is advancing whileNancy waits for the money.
Speaker 1 (23:23):
Yes, obviously there's a biological timetable
that needs to be taken into that.
So, yeah, no, no.
For like three-quarters of achapter the plot is driven by is
he going to get the money intime and all that jazz, and then
on a dime it turns to Nancy,does the abortion.
It goes horribly wrong.
And I think one of the morepoetic lines in the book I love
(23:48):
how you put it you said that oneof the nurses, clara and we're
talking about Clara, don't worryabout Clara, don't worry would
watch Nancy's daughter, eudora,bring in water and coffee to
Emma, and then one day shedidn't bring water and coffee to
her because there was no onealive in the room to drink it.
(24:09):
So do you really want me totake on what happens next?
I mean, I'll let you know, ifyou know what I'm saying.
Speaker 2 (24:18):
Yes, okay.
Speaker 1 (24:19):
Yeah, so so Emiguel is dead and under unlike other
situations where in one of theother past situations they she
got a dead body out Cause thisis like this, what is this?
And like maybe the third orfourth time at least in the book
that Nancy had a patient die onher.
Speaker 2 (24:38):
This is the third death.
Speaker 1 (24:39):
This is the third death.
Speaker 2 (24:41):
And the first one.
The family just didn't want topursue it.
It was a married woman.
There was an inquest and thewoman's husband appeared at the
inquest with other relatives andthey just dropped it.
That was in Lynn Massachusetts,because the family just wanted
to close the books on the matter.
Their relative was dead andthere may have been other deaths
(25:01):
, but in this case, if peopledon't want to testify about it,
there's really nothing that theauthorities can do further.
Now the other one you'rereferring to.
Yes, this is when Henry andNancy would get at their
craziest.
Yes, this is when Henry andNancy would get at their
craziest.
There was another death in LynnMassachusetts, where the woman
(25:39):
lived very far away from herfather, who had no idea if she
was alive.
In case the police were lookinginto into the carriage that
they were driving to herfather's house and they would
say that she had died along theway, when really they had.
They had addressed a cadaver injewelry and an evening gown
strapped her to a board.
Speaker 1 (25:54):
yes, uh, yes, I agree , gracie, but also completely
different than how Emma Gillleft the house on Guilford
Street.
And yes, nancy Guilford had herpractice on Guilford Street.
Speaker 2 (26:07):
Gilbert Gilbert.
Speaker 1 (26:09):
Oh, that changes things a little bit.
Okay, never mind.
Never mind, I know, misread,misread that one.
Speaker 2 (26:16):
That's quite all right, it doesn't exist anymore
in Bridgeport, from what Iunderstand.
Correct me if I'm wrong, butit's where the Barnum Museum now
stands on Main Street, correct?
Speaker 1 (26:26):
Yeah, like two or three blocks away from the main
library downtown.
Speaker 2 (26:29):
Yes, but it's been covered up because it was a
People's Bank Plaza and in the70s Gilbert Street, I think, was
completely paved over for thebank plaza, but that is where
Nancy Guilford had her office onGilbert Street.
This is nonfiction, folks, it'sreal stuff.
Speaker 1 (26:49):
There are too many people named Henry.
Speaker 2 (26:51):
also, I used to write novels, and a fiction writer
would never name three or fourcharacters Henry.
But I have to work with thefacts.
Speaker 1 (27:02):
Yes, such as writing what actually happened.
Yeah, okay, so Nancy dissectsthe body, you know, the arms off
, head off, torso off, justchops up the body.
Incredibly intensive work,exhausting, few hours just
chopping up there.
In a weird twist, thechauvinism of the day actually
(27:25):
helped her, because a lot ofpeople were like no woman would
be able to make the cuts thatNancy did.
So you know silver lining there, I guess.
And then, yes, so now you gotthe parts of the body and what
they do is she and her son, sonHarry.
They, on two different nights,they go out to Yellow Mill Pond,
(27:49):
yellow Mill Pond, and they hadthe body parts wrapped up.
And they had the body partswrapped up.
It was over two days, so thatNancy wasn't traveling with a
whole bunch of stuff, whichcould have been suspicious.
Speaker 2 (28:06):
Yes, because she actually didn't own a carriage
of her own at that point,because the family had fallen on
hard times with her husband injail, so she rented one and it
would have looked suspicious tohave taken too many bundles out
at the same time.
And they went to the SeaviewAvenue Bridge which again
doesn't exist, probably becauseof the construction of the
highways which was over a thumbof yellow mill pond that has
(28:28):
since been filled in, so it wasa north-south bridge on the east
side.
And what do they do there?
Speaker 1 (28:36):
Absolutely yeah.
So, yep, they go there on twoeast side.
And what do they do there?
Absolutely yeah.
So they go there on twoconsecutive nights.
They see the water's nice anddeep, they throw the body and
they figure that's the end of it, right, the body parts are
going to just sink to theproblem.
Speaker 2 (28:46):
Right, because they attach sinkers also.
Speaker 1 (28:49):
Yes, Thank you.
Thank you for that.
Yeah, they covered their bases.
Now a lot of people botched theinvestigation that followed
right.
The press got a lot of thingswrong.
The police followed a lot ofwrong ends.
There was one father whomisidentified the body as her
daughter and as his daughter,rather, and that was a lot of
fun.
Honestly, I think, nancy, I'mnot calling murder good and
(29:13):
cover-up book good, but they dida good job at it.
They just got really unluckybecause the body of water that
they chose completely ran out ofwater at low tide.
And that's exactly whathappened.
The body of water ran out ofwater at low tide.
Some kids, you know, found theraft bundles and, you know,
(29:35):
eventually they found they werehuman body parts and that is how
the investigation of EmmaGill's death got underway.
Speaker 2 (29:43):
Right, but nobody knew she was Emma Gill or who
she was.
Speaker 1 (29:46):
Oh yeah, no, no, that was a nightmare in and of
itself.
That was like a chapter and ahalf of just like, who is this
person?
Speaker 2 (29:56):
Yes, they put the head on display at the
Bridgeport morgue and hundredsof men, women and children from
Bridgeport filed past it andcorrectly said that she couldn't
be a resident of Bridgeportbecause nobody recognized her.
There was no fingerprintingtechnology for ID at the time,
never mind DNA, so they had todo that technology for ID at the
(30:17):
time, never mind DNA, so theyhad to do that.
Speaker 1 (30:20):
One of the biggest reasons I don't murder other
than the fact that I'd like tothink I'm a decent person is
that I don't see how anyonecould get away with murder today
and, you know, 30 years fromnow, I can only imagine what's
going on.
But, yeah, back then they wererelying on dental records was
one of the big things and, justlike you know, I witnessed
testimony.
That's my daughter, which in a.
You know let's not spend toolong on this because I want to
(30:42):
focus on Nancy but essentially,guy came in, oh, my poor
daughter shipped the body parts.
They had the funeral.
His living daughter showed upand they had the body shipped
back.
A little little bit of anembarrassment there.
There was one piece of evidence, a letter that Nancy wrote that
she tried to burn and it didn'tburn correctly and the press
(31:03):
found it.
You know, the press actuallydoes a few impressive things in
this story and that's the basisof finally identifying this
woman as Emma Gill.
And that brings us to theinvestigation.
So, marsha, you know of theinvestigation.
(31:26):
I have a few points, a couplepoints I wanted to bring up.
What points do you have?
Speaker 2 (31:32):
Yeah, in a lot of ways the story turned out to be
like a police procedural.
It was very interesting.
Dental records were new at thetime so this was one of the
first times that they were used.
And that mistake about theMassachusetts young woman who
came home just in time to stopher own funeral.
The dentist had talked to theBridgeport police over the phone
(31:53):
but the phone connectionsweren't good so they had
misunderstood the dentist inMassachusetts, had misunderstood
what they were saying inBridgeport.
What did the Bridgeport copsyou want me to comment on their
investigation?
That would be amazing.
Yeah, they had made somemistakes.
(32:13):
They never should have thecoroner in Bridgeport, never
should have released the body tothe wrong family.
But he felt he said the fatherwas so sure.
And then there was.
You know, the telephoneconnection, which is just the
technology of the time wasfaulty.
It's interesting that in 1890,they had to be just as careful
(32:36):
about not arresting Nancy untilthey had a preponderance of
evidence as they would today.
I thought that that wasinteresting.
The half-burnt paper that theyfound was actually found by a
reporter, not the police, inNancy's yard, because people
used to have incinerators orburn things in their backyard,
(32:57):
and that was actually a moneyorder that had Oxley's name on
it.
So it's hide, you know they hadthe police still had no idea who
the deceased woman was.
They you know for weeks andthat was the key that somebody
in Southington named Oxley hadbeen wiring Nancy Guilford money
(33:21):
for something, and that ledthem to Southington.
And then, when they wereclosing in on Southington, there
was this almost comicalcompetition between the New
Haven cops, the Bridgeport copsand the Hartford cops.
So they all converged sort ofat the same time because this
(33:42):
was very high profile and theyall wanted to take credit for it
.
They had incorrectly arrestedEmma's fiancé, who had nothing
to do with this and in fact hadsaid he had never been intimate
with Emma so he couldn't havebeen involved in her pregnancy,
and that probably was true.
Speaker 1 (34:00):
Yeah, so obviously the only victim in all of this I
mean the one true victim isEmma Gill.
Right, she lost her life.
That being said, my heart goesout to Foster.
Speaker 2 (34:11):
And that is her fiancé, yeah.
Speaker 1 (34:14):
And yeah, so yeah.
And I mean like I just feel forthis man, I mean like there is
a good shot that when he learnedthat I mean I'm speculating,
but either he just learned it orhe learned it when the police
showed up that oh hey, yourfiancé is dead.
She died from an abortionpractice gone horribly wrong and
(34:40):
we're arresting you for it.
So come along.
And it was bad.
He spent four days in jail.
Speaker 2 (34:49):
Yes, here in Bridgeport, the chief of police,
Birmingham.
I'm wondering if BirminghamAvenue is named after Eugene
Birmingham, who figures in thisbook as a principal character.
We call them characters eventhough they're real people.
He made a big deal out offrisking Walter Foster
(35:11):
personally.
We've caught him, we know who'sresponsible and it was all that
.
Yeah, they all.
It was.
It was all wrong and they hadto release the guy four days
later.
Speaker 1 (35:23):
Yeah, and there was, there was.
There was nothing to it.
They had no evidence.
Speaker 2 (35:27):
Yes, and luckily he wrote a.
Walter Foster was such aconscientious worker he worked
for the Fleischmann's YeastCompany that he had documented
like every minute of his workdays for the past four days.
Oh and there were witnessesFascinating, yes, so he had
airtight alibis and had to bereleased.
But then the Bridgeport policeended up at square one again,
(35:52):
until that half-burned moneyorder was discovered by a
reporter.
Speaker 1 (35:56):
That's fair there.
So, yeah, he had an alibi andthere was really no evidence
against him.
You brought up my favorite late1800s head of Bridgeport Police
, Superintendent EugeneBirmingham.
He's a fun guy, so avidlisteners of this podcast this
(36:19):
might have a little bell ringingin their head, uh, that this is
not fella, who always thoughtit was the masked bandits who
you know Big Tom Kinsella andWilliam Mahoney who murdered
(36:45):
James Beardsley.
And then so he becomes, througha stupidly comical scenario,
which I will link the article todown in the comments.
A stupidly comical scenario puthim in charge of the Bridgeport
police and one of the firstthings that happens is this guy
(37:09):
who always thought it wasWilliam Mahoney and Big Tom.
One of the first things thathappens is he's going through
paperwork or he's having one ofhis officers go through
paperwork in the basement of acity building and they find a
confession just hanging outthere.
That implicates William Mahoneyand Big Tom.
(37:29):
So yeah.
So pop back to our firstepisode if you wanted more on
this.
Birmingham's big thing in thiswas he kind of got it right and
got it wrong because he kind ofguessed everything at different
points in this investigation.
So, yeah, she thought Nancy didit, but he also had a lot of
(37:52):
other wrong theories.
But he also had a lot of otherwrong theories and he was slow.
(38:18):
He was uncharacteristicallyslow to arrest Nancy because he
was worried about a lawsuit.
But there were a couple ofsuspects for whom nothing about
it was comical, and I was hoping, marcia, you could give us a
little more down-to-earth notionon Rose and Clara Drayton, who
were treated horribly forreasons that are bad but simple.
Yeah, go ahead.
Speaker 2 (38:33):
Yeah, absolutely.
Nancy carved up the body, butshe didn't do it by herself.
She probably had the assistanceof her housekeeper, rose
Drayton, who was a black womanwho lived on Cannon Street.
And also Nancy hired her firstto do laundry and then general
(38:54):
cleaning.
Nancy hired her first to dolaundry and then general
cleaning, and Rose had a youngdaughter about middle school age
named Clara, and Clara Draytonalso worked for Nancy and may
have had something to do withthe dissection of the body and
certainly aided in the cleanupand cover up, because these
women were not in a position torefuse their employer.
(39:17):
Rose had had a very rough life.
She had been divorced from aguy who did deliveries you know
of course, as a horse andcarriage or horse and wagon age
for Howlands.
So he had left the family.
She had lost a child in ahorrible house fire, and so then
(39:41):
she had Clara and a young sonnamed Hannibal, and she was
arrested.
Yes, you're right thatBirmingham took his time, but
when he did reconstruct whathappened, he had every detail of
what happened, except notexactly what Rose had done.
Now, rose and Clara Clara beinga minor at the time spent time
(40:06):
in jail.
Nancy had left Ridgeportimmediately and was nowhere to
be found, even though her lawyer, jacob Klein, kept saying she
has nothing to do with this.
She knew she was undersuspicion.
So you can't say that justbecause a person is a fugitive
that they're necessarily guilty.
(40:27):
But she did become a fugitiveand her son, harry, were.
Eudora went to Western New Yorkwhere she had relatives where
Nancy was from, and Harry stayedat his job at the Yacht Club in
New Haven.
So they were all arrested butthey were treated very
differently, but Rose and maybeClaire.
(40:49):
The records are not aboutClaire but because she was a
minor I think she eventually gotout of jail.
But Rose was there untilthe—she was there for months.
She was the only one and therewas a, you know, a not very nice
police officer who was huge andhe was known for his methods of
(41:12):
interrogation, which would notwithstand scrutiny today and
shouldn't have then, and he wastrying to get Rose to tell him
everything that happened.
I don't know she was veryresistant.
I don't think she said anythingconclusive about Nancy, but it
helped him reconstruct what wasgoing on.
(41:32):
But she was not released untilNancy was sentenced.
Speaker 1 (41:36):
Yeah, no, rose held her own.
Rose was a slave, incidentally,you know she was, is that
correct?
Speaker 2 (41:44):
I was unable to.
She was born in the era ofslavery in.
Speaker 1 (41:48):
Virginia, oh, okay.
Speaker 2 (41:49):
So she was probably an enslaved person.
Speaker 1 (41:51):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (41:51):
I believe so.
It's very hard to trace blackBridgeporters.
I could imagine.
Yeah, I believe so, it's veryhard to trace black bridge
porters.
Speaker 1 (41:56):
I could imagine.
Yeah, I could imagine.
But you know, clara and Rose,you said there were questionable
tactics.
The big one that stuck out tome was the completely false
evidence.
Like we found this saw withhuman remains at the house and
it was just a saw.
You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 2 (42:15):
Oh, yes, and they found another.
Saw under an icebox later, so,that was fabricated evidence to
try to get her to turn.
Speaker 1 (42:25):
yes, About as fabricated as that confession
Birmingham found in the othercase.
But anywho sorry had to throwan extra punch at him.
Yes, so, marsha, as you said,you're right.
Nancy ran away extensively.
This was a transatlanticsituation.
She was eventually caught inLondon or another English city,
(42:46):
london, it was London, okay,cool.
Speaker 2 (42:48):
Yeah, she landed in Liverpool.
I think I forget my own book.
I'd have to look it up, but yes, she was found in London.
Speaker 1 (42:57):
Yeah, so yeah, in a weird legal switch situation
they had to actually change hercharge from manslaughter to
murder because England would notextradite on manslaughter to
end the book again.
As a non-fiction writer youdon't always get to choose the
(43:17):
most dramatic plot line, uh, towrite the book as uh.
The trial ended in a plea dealwhere nancy said um, you know,
I'm willing to, uh, I, I pleadguilty of manslaughter, uh, with
the biggest concession beingthat her kids and also the
Draytons got and Oxley got,roped into this.
(43:39):
They all would have theircharges dropped as a result and
that leads to.
So this is very much to me as,like a literature guy, nancy's
story Emma Gill is in the title,but to me, just as personal
opinion, this was nancy's storyand like.
So there it's hard to know whonancy really is because she lies
(44:03):
all the time, like there aresome just like blatant lies,
like no, I never did this, wherewe just learned she did it.
But the one thing I reallybelieve nancy is I can't shake
that she is is loyal to her kidsand wants what's best, or at
least what she sees is best forher kids.
(44:24):
In the previous arrest she tookthe sentence and had Henry take
no sentence, so Henry couldcare for the kids and for a
person who it's hard to sayanything truthful about.
I think that's one that youwon't convince me otherwise
about.
Speaker 2 (44:44):
about Nancy yeah, I'm not here to defend her, and
some people who have read thebook are disappointed that there
are no clear heroes.
And I'm not making Nancy into ahero.
Yes, she did.
I agree with you that she didhave true, true, sincere feeling
(45:04):
for her children, but Emma Gillwas somebody's child also.
Speaker 1 (45:10):
Absolutely yeah, and I don't know, We'll save
opinions for off the air.
In fact, I hope all of you chitchat about opinions after we're
done.
That would be like the biggestcompliment that you like this so
much that you kept talkingabout it.
That does bring us to the endof the story.
Is there anything we jumpedover or what have you or you
(45:31):
want to reiterate before westart wrapping this deal up
today?
Speaker 2 (45:36):
Well, because I'm in Bridgeport, I would just like to
note that Bridgeporters, theywere shocked when Emma Gill's
body was found and closelyfollowed what was going on with
every step of the way untilNancy was apprehended and
(46:00):
brought back to Bridgeport.
But a lot of that coverage wasfrom the New York papers.
This was the age of the yellowpress.
Everybody was readingnewspapers.
You know it's pre-radio, sothat's where you got all your
news and also you got yourentertainment.
There were these lavishpictorial papers.
(46:23):
Photographs and papers wereunusual, but there were all
these illustrators.
So the New York press wasconverging.
I was constantly taking thetrain into Bridgeport writing
about every aspect of this.
But after they disappeared aBoston reporter who was very
anti-abortion came down and hewas appalled that Bridgeport had
(46:50):
sort of settled into thinking.
Well, what Nancy Guilford didwas not so bad because she also
provided a service to needywomen and that is part of the
story that she had for everydeath you know, and this is
called abortion, death andconcealment.
In Victoria and New England sheprobably had hundreds of
(47:13):
customers who didn't suffer anyinjuries or ill effects from
their abortion and were able toend an unwanted pregnancy.
So this Boston reporter said hequoted actually the New Haven
leader as saying there's awishy-washy sentiment around
Bridgeport.
A wishy-washy sentiment aroundBridgeport, it's the kind of
(47:41):
sentiment that prompts women tobring flowers to wife murderers
in prison.
In other words, he was appalledthat Bridgeport didn't want to
hang Nancy Guilford and also theprison matron at the Bridgeport
who worked for the BridgeportPolice Department who had gone
to England.
She had gotten a free voyage toEngland to help identify Nancy
(48:01):
Guilford.
There she was saying I knowcases in which she's done a lot
of good.
And that leads us to believethat this prison matron, who
knew very low-income people, sexworkers in Bridgeport, et
cetera, et cetera, knew thatsome women really desperately
wanted to end their pregnancies,and Nancy there was no legal
(48:23):
way to do it.
So Nancy had done it and theBridgeport Herald was way ahead
of its time it was a weeklypaper at the time and after
Nancy was sentenced they saidwell, what she did was illegal
and you should not break the law.
But a lot of people would sayand this is because the
editorial writers of theBridgeport Herald were saying it
(48:45):
that what she did was simplyher only mistake really was to
get caught doing a procedurethat goes on every week in every
corner of the state, so thatall shows you that abortion was
commonplace at the time.
You have to remember thatcontraception reliable
(49:05):
contraception was not yetavailable, that the size of the
American family had changed fromthe census of 1800, when the
average American woman had sevenchildren, to 1900 when the
average American woman had abouthalf that many children.
And how did this magicallyhappen?
Probably because abortion wasillegal underground but
(49:28):
advertised in newspapers the wayit wasn't in the 50s and 60s,
in the immediate pre-Roe, epicor decades.
And it was not something in aback room, it was not a back
alley kind of business.
Nancy had a permanent office,or she worked in her home at a
(49:54):
fixed address, and of course itwas clean.
Who wouldn't you know?
She lived there.
She wanted it to be clean andwell furnished.
Speaker 1 (50:00):
If you want to tell the folks more and more time
where they can find you, yourbooks, et cetera, before we head
out today.
Speaker 2 (50:06):
Okay, so all of my books are on my website
MarshaBiedermancom and that'sM-A-R-C-I-A Like
MarshaBiedermancom, and that'sM-A-R-C-I-A just like in the
Brady Bunch.
And Biederman B like boyI-E-D-E-R-M-A-Ncom.
Or the Disquieting Death ofEmma Gill.
If you just search Emma Gill,it's on Amazon, barnes Noble,
(50:28):
sold by many independentbookstores.
Rj Julia has it at some oftheir stores stores.
Rj Julia has it at some oftheir stores.
And thank you so much, adam,for giving me this opportunity
and for your careful reading ofthe book.
It's just so exciting for anauthor to talk to someone who
actually read the chapters.
I can't tell you how gratifyingthis is.
Speaker 1 (50:49):
You're very welcome, marsha, marsha, marsha, I wonder
how many of our Gen Z viewerswill get that.
Well, anywho, everybody, thishas been another episode of
Bridgeport Unmasked.
I'm Librarian Adam and I'vebeen talking with Marsha
Biederman, author of theDisquieting Death of Emma Gill,
a Bridgeport story from the late1800s, which you can purchase
(51:13):
at links that I'll put below.
Tell your friends, your enemiesand total strangers you run
into to listen to all episodesof Bridgeport Unmasked.
We'll meet real soon to recordanother one of these right here.
Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of
Bridgeport Public Library'spodcast, bridgeport Unmasked.
We are recording from thepodcast studio at Beardsley
Branch Library in Bridgeport.
I'm librarian Adam Cleary andtoday I am joined by writer
Marcia Biederman, author of theDisquieting Death of Emma Gill,
(00:24):
which we will be talking abouttoday on Bridgeport Unmasked.
So, hi, marcia, thank you verymuch for braving the deluge
(00:45):
outside to be here today to talkabout your book.
How are you doing?
Speaker 2 (00:49):
Very well, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
Cool, cool.
So we were actually talking alittle bit about earlier that
this is your first time here atthe Beardsley Branch Library,
our new technology library here.
Our new technology library here.
This is the library branch thathas, like the podcast and you
know, we're actually the otherstudio.
We'll get that up and running.
That's more like for recordingguitar stuff and stuff like that
(01:15):
.
So when was it that you werewriting this book and, like you
were regularly in Bridgeportdoing research and stuff like
that?
Speaker 2 (01:22):
Well, I can't say I was regularly in Bridgeport
because it was during the COVIDrestrictions.
Okay, so I had to make anappointment and there were rules
about when I could come intothe Bridgeport History Center at
the main branch, but I wasdelighted to come in.
I think it was 2021 when I didheavy research there, because
(01:46):
the Bridgeport Public Librarymain branch has historical
copies of the Bridgeport Postand the much forgotten
Bridgeport Morning Union, whichwas also important to my
research.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
Absolutely we do.
Thank you for bringing that upso everybody out there can know
that we have Bridgeport paperswhich have gone under a number
of names over time, reachingback to the Civil War and a
little before, so you canactually research those in
person.
Come on in and we will set youup with those Microfilm is the
(02:23):
fancy word for it of thesenewspapers.
So, yeah, that's awesome thatthe Bridgeport History Center,
which is in Bridgeport PublicLibrary, was able to help you
out with that.
So I figured I'd give you ashot to talk about this and
other books you have, and youknow where people can find you,
(02:45):
online or offline or anythingelse you want to plug about your
stuff.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
Well, thank you.
I write about extraordinaryAmerican women who should be
better known, and I started bywriting about Patricia Murphy,
who had a chain of restaurantsthat reached their zenith in the
1950s and 1960s and Yonkers,new York and Southern Florida.
(03:12):
She also, during her lifetime,had nine different locations and
when I grew up in Bridgeport,everybody I knew went to
Patricia Murphy's.
It was like an experience, notjust a dinner, and they would
send me picture postcards oftheir outings with their
families at these gorgeousrestaurants.
(03:32):
The one in Yonkers coveredacres.
It also had gardens, a giftshop that was almost as big as
Macy's with Patricia Murphyperfumes, and I never got to go
there, but I did get to writeher biography.
And then my second one wasabout the speed reading marketer
(03:53):
, evelyn Wood, who promised thatyou could read you know entire
novels in 10 minutes with bettercomprehension than if you had
read them slowly.
So that's called Scan Artist.
The first one, about PatriciaMurphy, is called Popovers and
Candlelight.
She was known for the endlessservings of popovers.
(04:13):
The second one, scan Artist andhow Evelyn Wood convinced the
world that speed reading worked.
And then my third one is calledA Mighty Force, dr Elizabeth
Hayes and Her War for PublicHealth, which is set in western
Pennsylvania in 1945, just asWorld War II is winding down,
(04:34):
company-owned coal towns where,if the war brides would leave in
five minutes if they saw theseplaces, with sewage running
through the street, no way toget clean drinking water and no
running water.
And so she led a strike she waslike Joan of Arc in
(04:55):
Pennsylvania of 350 coal miners,not for higher wages or shorter
hours, but for clean drinkingwater in their company-owned
town.
Wages or shorter hours, but forclean drinking water in their
company-owned town.
And this one is my fourth theSquieting Death of Emma Gill.
To find me online, you can justlook for Emma Gill, which is
easier than my name, marshaBiederman.
(05:16):
But if you can write downMarsha Biederman, I have a
website, marshabiedermancom, andit's M-A-R-C-I-A, which is how
we used to spell it inBridgeport.
Biederman is B like boy, i-e-dlike David, e-r-m-a-ncom, and
that's where you can find them.
(05:36):
But just search Emma Gill forthis one about Bridgeport.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
Yes, and you certainly could search, emma
Gill, but obviously we will beputting that website into the
notes below and so, yeah, thosenotes being on the podcast web
page for you to use.
We have other references tootoday, so those will all be down
in the notes, and okay, so Iwanted to get into Emigil, but
(06:02):
first I have to ask so, evelynWood, was that a scam?
I only bring it up because, intalking about Emigil, you can't
talk about this book that youwrote without talking about scam
artists, for reasons that willbecome evident to the folks out
there pretty darn soon.
So, like, was there any truthbehind Emigil's claims or was it
(06:24):
just nonsense?
Speaker 2 (06:26):
Evelyn Wood's claims.
Oh, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
Speaker 1 (06:29):
I'm already fusing words.
It's going to be a long podcastepisode.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
That's quite all right.
You're very forgiven.
The Evelyn Wood speed readingmethod, which, unfortunately, I
begged my parents to pay for.
I took a course in Los Angeles.
I begged my parents to pay forit, I took a course in Los
Angeles and it has been debunkedby many reading experts.
But it was one of those ideasthat just took hold and because
(06:54):
it was endorsed, people thoughtit was endorsed by John F
Kennedy.
He didn't endorse the EvelynWood method by name, but he did
believe that everybody shouldtake speed reading and browbeat
his little brother, ted, intotaking it.
Yes, it has been debunked.
I mean there were measurementson iMotion that showed that at
(07:18):
that rate you can't even look atevery word on the page.
So one debunker after anotherwould spend their career
practically trying to bring downEvelyn Wood and she was
impervious to it all because ithad caught on with the popular
imagination.
It was endorsed by veryimportant celebrities and
(07:39):
politicians and therefore shehad Teflon.
And it's just an interestingchapter in the Cold War period,
I think because this was thetime when Americans were very,
very worried about not keepingup with the Soviet Union and
(08:01):
really JFK presented this as amatter of national security that
we just had to get smarter.
We had to study more science.
There were all kinds of scienceprograms.
My brother attended one at theUniversity of Bridgeport for
high school students while hewas at Central, to try to catch
(08:22):
up.
So because we didn't have theinternet then we didn't have
search engines, we didn't haveGoogle.
This was supposed to be a wayof plowing through the explosion
of print matter that washappening at that time.
At that time, the Library ofCongress added another building.
Speaker 1 (08:40):
Oh, interesting Solid yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:42):
Right Printing technology had become cheaper,
and there were the DisquietingDeath of Emma Gill.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
First off, just two things I feel that I should
throw out there.
So this book, if it were just ahistorical curiosity, would
have been interesting and worththe read for that.
But its themes, its topics aregoing to be, are very evident to
what is going on in the worldtoday.
(09:29):
You know you're going to forgetsometimes that this is a book
that happens in the 1880s andthe 1890s.
So I just want to throw outthere that the Bridgeport Public
Library does not take aposition on any of the topics
that we talk about today.
We're just going to talk aboutthem freely on matters, because
that's what libraries are allabout is freely talking about
(09:54):
things, but the library itself,no positions.
Also, I do want to throw out atrigger warning to everybody.
We're going to be talking aboutsome troubling topics here.
We're going to be talking aboutabortions, death from medical
complications, sexual abuse,rape and the blatant
chauvinistic social and legalstructures that allowed all this
(10:14):
nonsense to happen.
Hey, everybody, it's Adam here.
I also wanted to include thatthis discussion also touches
upon manslaughter and thedissection of a corpse.
So you know, if you thinkthat's a bit much for you to
chew, then don't worry, youwon't offend me, you can stop
(10:35):
the podcast now and you can bumpto other, maybe other, podcasts
on our webpage if you want tolisten to those, but just
throwing those out there thatwe're going to be talking about
some serious stuff today andwith that let us dig right in
Now.
The the whole, the whole bookis is has got very interesting
(10:59):
stuff.
That being said, the bookdoesn't move the scene.
The scene of the book doesn'tmove to Bridgeport until Chapter
7.
The chapters before that havelots of interesting things going
on and you need to read thatfirst to get a backup of Nancy's
(11:21):
Nancy Guilford's, that's a nameyou'll be very familiar with
soon practice, abortion practicein Bridgeport.
The way I was thinking we couldtackle that is, I could give a
few bullet points about thefirst six chapters and then,
obviously, marsha, if you thinkI glossed over something or I
(11:44):
missed out on somethingimportant, feel free to just
jump in at any time and correctme, just so we can get the
audience to.
When Nancy takes her two kidsand her stepkid to Bridgeport.
So Nancy enters into this storywhen a charming quack named
(12:09):
Henry Guilford, then a shoesalesman, comes to her town and
so so Henry has is a master ofall types of artificial medicine
.
In fact, in one year he wasable to complete a medical
course that took two years tocomplete, and also he went on to
(12:31):
be a doctor from manyuniversities, including those
that do not exist.
So yeah, so we kind of get abackground of what Henry is like
.
So Henry ends up having twochildren with Nancy, even though
he is married and has a kid athome, and Nancy and him don't
(12:52):
get married until much later.
Henry kind of supports thefamily with his, with all those
prestigious medical degrees ofhis.
So the thing to know is that inthe late 1800s New England is
full of medical quacks and theyjust jump from one cure-all to
(13:16):
another, you know, as onebecomes more profitable than the
other, suddenly the wholemedical community is like oh,
that's more effective as soon asit becomes more profitable,
right.
So that's Henry.
That's Henry in a nutshell,except of course he also, you
know, loses all the moneythrough his gambling and other
(13:36):
ventures, right?
So the biggest thing that Henrydoes for this story, in my
opinion, is he introduces Nancyto the world of abortion and
gets her involved as anabortionist, which is incredibly
illegal at this time If youperform an abortion in the late
(13:57):
1800s.
You are looking, if you'recaught, at one to seven years
and if your patient dies, fiveto 20.
And on one occasion excuse me,two, including Emma herself, but
I'm getting a little ahead ofmyself she actually faces those
charges.
She gets arrested like I don'tknow Marcia, like four or five
(14:19):
times, something like that.
That seems like about how manytimes she gets arrested.
Speaker 2 (14:24):
Well, between Massachusetts and Connecticut.
Yes, it would be at least thatmany times.
Okay, yeah absolutelyAbsolutely.
Speaker 1 (14:32):
And so, yeah, and so Nancy does.
One of those arrests actuallydoes lead to a conviction.
She serves, I think, eightyears of a 10-year sentence to a
conviction she serves, I think,eight years of a 10-year
sentence, two years off, forgood behavior.
And then she moves toBridgeport with her two young
children and her stepson andthey settle in Bridgeport and
(14:55):
that's where our story, for thepurpose of this podcast, really
begins, because that's where theyou know, the Bridgeport branch
of this story goes on.
So, yeah, so, marcia, that wasa bit of a whirlwind.
I tried to do six of yourchapters in about six bullet
points.
Anything I missed that youthink we need to throw out there
.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
No, that was great, adam.
I really appreciate that.
I just would say also thatBridgeport does figure in the
prologue of the book, beforechapter one.
But since we're doing thispodcast for a family audience,
do you want to be the one totalk about the discovery in
Bridgeport of remains, or shouldI?
Speaker 1 (15:40):
So I would never take that away from you.
I imagine that's like what youwere waiting to do.
Come here, I can't wait forthat part, can't wait for that
part.
But before we do that, I wouldactually like to hear the
background of the Emigil story,how Emigil came to be under
Nancy's knife.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
Yes, it all happened really because of a crackdown on
illegal abortions.
That is what I discovered byresearching this book that Henry
and Nancy and several otherabortion providers I'm not going
to call them abortionistsbecause it's such a loaded word,
(16:18):
there's really no differencebetween abortion provider and
abortionist so they wereoperating illegally and I'm not
here to defend them.
But they had many happycustomers, or anyway satisfied
customers In New Haven, whereHenry and Nancy Guilford lived,
(16:39):
on Worcester Square, wherePepe's Pizza is and Sally's, if
I have the names right.
I lived in New Haven.
Speaker 1 (16:49):
Oh yes, Pepe's and Sally's is definitely the—I
didn't think we would be talkingabout pizza today, but yeah, no
, they're staples.
Speaker 2 (16:56):
Well, that neighborhood is very beautiful
and upscale, and it was whenthey lived there, also in the
early 1890s, and they were twopeople who had illegal practices
in New Haven and were becomingvery wealthy from them.
And one of their competitorswas a Yale Medical School
(17:19):
trained physician who also had atraditional medical practice,
but he saw nothing wrong ormaybe like lining his pockets
with doing illegal abortions.
So he was one of theircompetitors.
He was even more expensive thanthey were and also one of
Henry's old quack partners whohad been doing electromagnetic
(17:43):
medicine which claimed to cureincurable diseases.
He was in business too and itwas all very open.
In New Haven there was like aprivate hospital run by a woman
named Gertrude Vaughn who hadbeen a vaudevillian in Hartford
and she would providepost-abortion care.
All of this was going along foryears and everyone knew it
(18:09):
because all of thesepractitioners advertised in New
Haven or Meriden papers.
Henry had a branch office inMeriden and then there was
something called the Law andOrder League of New Haven.
It was actually a nationalmovement of citizen vigilantes
who said that they didn't wantnew laws, they just wanted the
(18:31):
laws on the books strictlyenforced and their focus was
really temperance and Sundaydrinking, because in Connecticut
Sunday drinking was against thelaw actually for a very long
time, but we're talking about inthe late 19th century.
So they would take it uponthemselves to go surround bars
(18:53):
and taverns that were open onSunday and serving drinks and
closed them down and for a whilethe state government supported
them and even gave them a budget.
So they decided to focus alsoon illegal abortion and there
was a crackdown.
(19:30):
There was an investigation intothe police who had been turning
a blind eye to abortion and alot of the abortions that had
gone awry, where patients wouldsay that they had felt ill for
years after the abortion.
But they had some very goodlawyers, including Isaac Wolf of
New Haven and Jacob Klein, forwhom the Klein Memorial
(19:51):
Auditorium is named atBridgeport, who got them off.
Auditorium is named atBridgeport.
Who got them off?
But in this atmosphere it'sjust Henry had to serve a three
year term in prison and Nancyended up in Bridgeport and I
think did I answer your question?
Speaker 1 (20:08):
You very much.
You very much supplemented the,the outline that I gave there
and I think, yeah, that tells,that, tells us, uh, uh, you know
how how things were for societyand for Nancy and Henry, uh,
leading up to when, uh, one one,uh one woman uh came in from
Southington, southington, yes,okay, yes, absolutely From
(20:29):
Southington, to get an abortion.
And in a bit of an ironic twistat the beginning, you know,
this seems like a slam dunk theman who got her pregnant, you
know, was getting money to herregularly.
This should have been a finething, but it was not a fine
thing.
Wait, let me just jump in andsay Absolutely.
Speaker 2 (20:51):
Because of the heat in New Haven and the fact that
Henry had been in prison, hisMeriden office was closed down.
Ordinarily, southington is asmall town in Hartford County.
She would have gone to Meridenand she and her intimate partner
Harry Oxley the man you'rereferring to did try to go to
(21:12):
Meriden only to find Henry'soffice closed down.
Did try to go to Meriden onlyto find Henry's office closed
down, and Nancy in a lot ofpanic because Henry did provide
income and he was in jail doingfull-time work in Bridgeport.
So Emma Gill of Southingtonfirst of all had to travel very
far, farther than usual, acrossthe state, instead of to Meriden
(21:35):
, to Bridgeport, farther thanusual across the state, instead
of to Meriden to Bridgeport.
And she's finding Nancy alldiscombobulated because although
she and Henry had a verytroubled marriage, they did
count on each other's incomesand they had had to sell their
house on Worcester Square in NewHaven.
(21:59):
And so here is a woman fromSouthington, far out of town,
going to Bridgeport and a veryupset practitioner is now
demanding all of her payment andshe has hiked up her fee to
make up for Henry's loss.
The loss didn't come from herhusband Henry and Harry Oxley of
Southington.
Husband Henry and Harry Oxleyof Southington.
They're both in their mid-20s.
You know, they're both youngpeople, harry and Emma Gill, and
(22:29):
they are in different socialstrata but both young.
Neither of them is married,anyway.
Speaker 1 (22:33):
Emma's engaged, though, which I'm going to touch
on later Right, and not toOxley, incidentally.
No, no, no, no, no.
Yeah, so we'll get to that.
Sorry, I do want to just throwthat in there.
No, thank you, you're welcome.
Speaker 2 (22:46):
Yes, and now Harry Oxley is being asked to pay an
enormous amount of money upfront before Nancy will start
operating Now.
Years ago Nancy would takein-kind payment.
She had practically slidingscale for lower-income patients.
No more.
(23:06):
Now she wants more and moremoney paid in advance.
It's a tremendous pressure onHarry Oxley, and meanwhile, the
person most affected by this isthe patient, Emma Gill, whose
pregnancy is advancing whileNancy waits for the money.
Speaker 1 (23:23):
Yes, obviously there's a biological timetable
that needs to be taken into that.
So, yeah, no, no.
For like three-quarters of achapter the plot is driven by is
he going to get the money intime and all that jazz, and then
on a dime it turns to Nancy,does the abortion.
It goes horribly wrong.
And I think one of the morepoetic lines in the book I love
(23:48):
how you put it you said that oneof the nurses, clara and we're
talking about Clara, don't worryabout Clara, don't worry would
watch Nancy's daughter, eudora,bring in water and coffee to
Emma, and then one day shedidn't bring water and coffee to
her because there was no onealive in the room to drink it.
(24:09):
So do you really want me totake on what happens next?
I mean, I'll let you know, ifyou know what I'm saying.
Speaker 2 (24:18):
Yes, okay.
Speaker 1 (24:19):
Yeah, so so Emiguel is dead and under unlike other
situations where in one of theother past situations they she
got a dead body out Cause thisis like this, what is this?
And like maybe the third orfourth time at least in the book
that Nancy had a patient die onher.
Speaker 2 (24:38):
This is the third death.
Speaker 1 (24:39):
This is the third death.
Speaker 2 (24:41):
And the first one.
The family just didn't want topursue it.
It was a married woman.
There was an inquest and thewoman's husband appeared at the
inquest with other relatives andthey just dropped it.
That was in Lynn Massachusetts,because the family just wanted
to close the books on the matter.
Their relative was dead andthere may have been other deaths
(25:01):
, but in this case, if peopledon't want to testify about it,
there's really nothing that theauthorities can do further.
Now the other one you'rereferring to.
Yes, this is when Henry andNancy would get at their
craziest.
Yes, this is when Henry andNancy would get at their
craziest.
There was another death in LynnMassachusetts, where the woman
(25:39):
lived very far away from herfather, who had no idea if she
was alive.
In case the police were lookinginto into the carriage that
they were driving to herfather's house and they would
say that she had died along theway, when really they had.
They had addressed a cadaver injewelry and an evening gown
strapped her to a board.
Speaker 1 (25:54):
yes, uh, yes, I agree , gracie, but also completely
different than how Emma Gillleft the house on Guilford
Street.
And yes, nancy Guilford had herpractice on Guilford Street.
Speaker 2 (26:07):
Gilbert Gilbert.
Speaker 1 (26:09):
Oh, that changes things a little bit.
Okay, never mind.
Never mind, I know, misread,misread that one.
Speaker 2 (26:16):
That's quite all right, it doesn't exist anymore
in Bridgeport, from what Iunderstand.
Correct me if I'm wrong, butit's where the Barnum Museum now
stands on Main Street, correct?
Speaker 1 (26:26):
Yeah, like two or three blocks away from the main
library downtown.
Speaker 2 (26:29):
Yes, but it's been covered up because it was a
People's Bank Plaza and in the70s Gilbert Street, I think, was
completely paved over for thebank plaza, but that is where
Nancy Guilford had her office onGilbert Street.
This is nonfiction, folks, it'sreal stuff.
Speaker 1 (26:49):
There are too many people named Henry.
Speaker 2 (26:51):
also, I used to write novels, and a fiction writer
would never name three or fourcharacters Henry.
But I have to work with thefacts.
Speaker 1 (27:02):
Yes, such as writing what actually happened.
Yeah, okay, so Nancy dissectsthe body, you know, the arms off
, head off, torso off, justchops up the body.
Incredibly intensive work,exhausting, few hours just
chopping up there.
In a weird twist, thechauvinism of the day actually
(27:25):
helped her, because a lot ofpeople were like no woman would
be able to make the cuts thatNancy did.
So you know silver lining there, I guess.
And then, yes, so now you gotthe parts of the body and what
they do is she and her son, sonHarry.
They, on two different nights,they go out to Yellow Mill Pond,
(27:49):
yellow Mill Pond, and they hadthe body parts wrapped up.
And they had the body partswrapped up.
It was over two days, so thatNancy wasn't traveling with a
whole bunch of stuff, whichcould have been suspicious.
Speaker 2 (28:06):
Yes, because she actually didn't own a carriage
of her own at that point,because the family had fallen on
hard times with her husband injail, so she rented one and it
would have looked suspicious tohave taken too many bundles out
at the same time.
And they went to the SeaviewAvenue Bridge which again
doesn't exist, probably becauseof the construction of the
highways which was over a thumbof yellow mill pond that has
(28:28):
since been filled in, so it wasa north-south bridge on the east
side.
And what do they do there?
Speaker 1 (28:36):
Absolutely yeah.
So, yep, they go there on twoeast side.
And what do they do there?
Absolutely yeah.
So they go there on twoconsecutive nights.
They see the water's nice anddeep, they throw the body and
they figure that's the end of it, right, the body parts are
going to just sink to theproblem.
Speaker 2 (28:46):
Right, because they attach sinkers also.
Speaker 1 (28:49):
Yes, Thank you.
Thank you for that.
Yeah, they covered their bases.
Now a lot of people botched theinvestigation that followed
right.
The press got a lot of thingswrong.
The police followed a lot ofwrong ends.
There was one father whomisidentified the body as her
daughter and as his daughter,rather, and that was a lot of
fun.
Honestly, I think, nancy, I'mnot calling murder good and
(29:13):
cover-up book good, but they dida good job at it.
They just got really unluckybecause the body of water that
they chose completely ran out ofwater at low tide.
And that's exactly whathappened.
The body of water ran out ofwater at low tide.
Some kids, you know, found theraft bundles and, you know,
(29:35):
eventually they found they werehuman body parts and that is how
the investigation of EmmaGill's death got underway.
Speaker 2 (29:43):
Right, but nobody knew she was Emma Gill or who
she was.
Speaker 1 (29:46):
Oh yeah, no, no, that was a nightmare in and of
itself.
That was like a chapter and ahalf of just like, who is this
person?
Speaker 2 (29:56):
Yes, they put the head on display at the
Bridgeport morgue and hundredsof men, women and children from
Bridgeport filed past it andcorrectly said that she couldn't
be a resident of Bridgeportbecause nobody recognized her.
There was no fingerprintingtechnology for ID at the time,
never mind DNA, so they had todo that technology for ID at the
(30:17):
time, never mind DNA, so theyhad to do that.
Speaker 1 (30:20):
One of the biggest reasons I don't murder other
than the fact that I'd like tothink I'm a decent person is
that I don't see how anyonecould get away with murder today
and, you know, 30 years fromnow, I can only imagine what's
going on.
But, yeah, back then they wererelying on dental records was
one of the big things and, justlike you know, I witnessed
testimony.
That's my daughter, which in a.
You know let's not spend toolong on this because I want to
(30:42):
focus on Nancy but essentially,guy came in, oh, my poor
daughter shipped the body parts.
They had the funeral.
His living daughter showed upand they had the body shipped
back.
A little little bit of anembarrassment there.
There was one piece of evidence, a letter that Nancy wrote that
she tried to burn and it didn'tburn correctly and the press
(31:03):
found it.
You know, the press actuallydoes a few impressive things in
this story and that's the basisof finally identifying this
woman as Emma Gill.
And that brings us to theinvestigation.
So, marsha, you know of theinvestigation.
(31:26):
I have a few points, a couplepoints I wanted to bring up.
What points do you have?
Speaker 2 (31:32):
Yeah, in a lot of ways the story turned out to be
like a police procedural.
It was very interesting.
Dental records were new at thetime so this was one of the
first times that they were used.
And that mistake about theMassachusetts young woman who
came home just in time to stopher own funeral.
The dentist had talked to theBridgeport police over the phone
(31:53):
but the phone connectionsweren't good so they had
misunderstood the dentist inMassachusetts, had misunderstood
what they were saying inBridgeport.
What did the Bridgeport copsyou want me to comment on their
investigation?
That would be amazing.
Yeah, they had made somemistakes.
(32:13):
They never should have thecoroner in Bridgeport, never
should have released the body tothe wrong family.
But he felt he said the fatherwas so sure.
And then there was.
You know, the telephoneconnection, which is just the
technology of the time wasfaulty.
It's interesting that in 1890,they had to be just as careful
(32:36):
about not arresting Nancy untilthey had a preponderance of
evidence as they would today.
I thought that that wasinteresting.
The half-burnt paper that theyfound was actually found by a
reporter, not the police, inNancy's yard, because people
used to have incinerators orburn things in their backyard,
(32:57):
and that was actually a moneyorder that had Oxley's name on
it.
So it's hide, you know they hadthe police still had no idea who
the deceased woman was.
They you know for weeks andthat was the key that somebody
in Southington named Oxley hadbeen wiring Nancy Guilford money
(33:21):
for something, and that ledthem to Southington.
And then, when they wereclosing in on Southington, there
was this almost comicalcompetition between the New
Haven cops, the Bridgeport copsand the Hartford cops.
So they all converged sort ofat the same time because this
(33:42):
was very high profile and theyall wanted to take credit for it
.
They had incorrectly arrestedEmma's fiancé, who had nothing
to do with this and in fact hadsaid he had never been intimate
with Emma so he couldn't havebeen involved in her pregnancy,
and that probably was true.
Speaker 1 (34:00):
Yeah, so obviously the only victim in all of this I
mean the one true victim isEmma Gill.
Right, she lost her life.
That being said, my heart goesout to Foster.
Speaker 2 (34:11):
And that is her fiancé, yeah.
Speaker 1 (34:14):
And yeah, so yeah.
And I mean like I just feel forthis man, I mean like there is
a good shot that when he learnedthat I mean I'm speculating,
but either he just learned it orhe learned it when the police
showed up that oh hey, yourfiancé is dead.
She died from an abortionpractice gone horribly wrong and
(34:40):
we're arresting you for it.
So come along.
And it was bad.
He spent four days in jail.
Speaker 2 (34:49):
Yes, here in Bridgeport, the chief of police,
Birmingham.
I'm wondering if BirminghamAvenue is named after Eugene
Birmingham, who figures in thisbook as a principal character.
We call them characters eventhough they're real people.
He made a big deal out offrisking Walter Foster
(35:11):
personally.
We've caught him, we know who'sresponsible and it was all that
.
Yeah, they all.
It was.
It was all wrong and they hadto release the guy four days
later.
Speaker 1 (35:23):
Yeah, and there was, there was.
There was nothing to it.
They had no evidence.
Speaker 2 (35:27):
Yes, and luckily he wrote a.
Walter Foster was such aconscientious worker he worked
for the Fleischmann's YeastCompany that he had documented
like every minute of his workdays for the past four days.
Oh and there were witnessesFascinating, yes, so he had
airtight alibis and had to bereleased.
But then the Bridgeport policeended up at square one again,
(35:52):
until that half-burned moneyorder was discovered by a
reporter.
Speaker 1 (35:56):
That's fair there.
So, yeah, he had an alibi andthere was really no evidence
against him.
You brought up my favorite late1800s head of Bridgeport Police
, Superintendent EugeneBirmingham.
He's a fun guy, so avidlisteners of this podcast this
(36:19):
might have a little bell ringingin their head, uh, that this is
not fella, who always thoughtit was the masked bandits who
you know Big Tom Kinsella andWilliam Mahoney who murdered
(36:45):
James Beardsley.
And then so he becomes, througha stupidly comical scenario,
which I will link the article todown in the comments.
A stupidly comical scenario puthim in charge of the Bridgeport
police and one of the firstthings that happens is this guy
(37:09):
who always thought it wasWilliam Mahoney and Big Tom.
One of the first things thathappens is he's going through
paperwork or he's having one ofhis officers go through
paperwork in the basement of acity building and they find a
confession just hanging outthere.
That implicates William Mahoneyand Big Tom.
(37:29):
So yeah.
So pop back to our firstepisode if you wanted more on
this.
Birmingham's big thing in thiswas he kind of got it right and
got it wrong because he kind ofguessed everything at different
points in this investigation.
So, yeah, she thought Nancy didit, but he also had a lot of
(37:52):
other wrong theories.
But he also had a lot of otherwrong theories and he was slow.
(38:18):
He was uncharacteristicallyslow to arrest Nancy because he
was worried about a lawsuit.
But there were a couple ofsuspects for whom nothing about
it was comical, and I was hoping, marcia, you could give us a
little more down-to-earth notionon Rose and Clara Drayton, who
were treated horribly forreasons that are bad but simple.
Yeah, go ahead.
Speaker 2 (38:33):
Yeah, absolutely.
Nancy carved up the body, butshe didn't do it by herself.
She probably had the assistanceof her housekeeper, rose
Drayton, who was a black womanwho lived on Cannon Street.
And also Nancy hired her firstto do laundry and then general
(38:54):
cleaning.
Nancy hired her first to dolaundry and then general
cleaning, and Rose had a youngdaughter about middle school age
named Clara, and Clara Draytonalso worked for Nancy and may
have had something to do withthe dissection of the body and
certainly aided in the cleanupand cover up, because these
women were not in a position torefuse their employer.
(39:17):
Rose had had a very rough life.
She had been divorced from aguy who did deliveries you know
of course, as a horse andcarriage or horse and wagon age
for Howlands.
So he had left the family.
She had lost a child in ahorrible house fire, and so then
(39:41):
she had Clara and a young sonnamed Hannibal, and she was
arrested.
Yes, you're right thatBirmingham took his time, but
when he did reconstruct whathappened, he had every detail of
what happened, except notexactly what Rose had done.
Now, rose and Clara Clara beinga minor at the time spent time
(40:06):
in jail.
Nancy had left Ridgeportimmediately and was nowhere to
be found, even though her lawyer, jacob Klein, kept saying she
has nothing to do with this.
She knew she was undersuspicion.
So you can't say that justbecause a person is a fugitive
that they're necessarily guilty.
(40:27):
But she did become a fugitiveand her son, harry, were.
Eudora went to Western New Yorkwhere she had relatives where
Nancy was from, and Harry stayedat his job at the Yacht Club in
New Haven.
So they were all arrested butthey were treated very
differently, but Rose and maybeClaire.
(40:49):
The records are not aboutClaire but because she was a
minor I think she eventually gotout of jail.
But Rose was there untilthe—she was there for months.
She was the only one and therewas a, you know, a not very nice
police officer who was huge andhe was known for his methods of
(41:12):
interrogation, which would notwithstand scrutiny today and
shouldn't have then, and he wastrying to get Rose to tell him
everything that happened.
I don't know she was veryresistant.
I don't think she said anythingconclusive about Nancy, but it
helped him reconstruct what wasgoing on.
(41:32):
But she was not released untilNancy was sentenced.
Speaker 1 (41:36):
Yeah, no, rose held her own.
Rose was a slave, incidentally,you know she was, is that
correct?
Speaker 2 (41:44):
I was unable to.
She was born in the era ofslavery in.
Speaker 1 (41:48):
Virginia, oh, okay.
Speaker 2 (41:49):
So she was probably an enslaved person.
Speaker 1 (41:51):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (41:51):
I believe so.
It's very hard to trace blackBridgeporters.
I could imagine.
Yeah, I believe so, it's veryhard to trace black bridge
porters.
Speaker 1 (41:56):
I could imagine.
Yeah, I could imagine.
But you know, clara and Rose,you said there were questionable
tactics.
The big one that stuck out tome was the completely false
evidence.
Like we found this saw withhuman remains at the house and
it was just a saw.
You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 2 (42:15):
Oh, yes, and they found another.
Saw under an icebox later, so,that was fabricated evidence to
try to get her to turn.
Speaker 1 (42:25):
yes, About as fabricated as that confession
Birmingham found in the othercase.
But anywho sorry had to throwan extra punch at him.
Yes, so, marsha, as you said,you're right.
Nancy ran away extensively.
This was a transatlanticsituation.
She was eventually caught inLondon or another English city,
(42:46):
london, it was London, okay,cool.
Speaker 2 (42:48):
Yeah, she landed in Liverpool.
I think I forget my own book.
I'd have to look it up, but yes, she was found in London.
Speaker 1 (42:57):
Yeah, so yeah, in a weird legal switch situation
they had to actually change hercharge from manslaughter to
murder because England would notextradite on manslaughter to
end the book again.
As a non-fiction writer youdon't always get to choose the
(43:17):
most dramatic plot line, uh, towrite the book as uh.
The trial ended in a plea dealwhere nancy said um, you know,
I'm willing to, uh, I, I pleadguilty of manslaughter, uh, with
the biggest concession beingthat her kids and also the
Draytons got and Oxley got,roped into this.
(43:39):
They all would have theircharges dropped as a result and
that leads to.
So this is very much to me as,like a literature guy, nancy's
story Emma Gill is in the title,but to me, just as personal
opinion, this was nancy's storyand like.
So there it's hard to know whonancy really is because she lies
(44:03):
all the time, like there aresome just like blatant lies,
like no, I never did this, wherewe just learned she did it.
But the one thing I reallybelieve nancy is I can't shake
that she is is loyal to her kidsand wants what's best, or at
least what she sees is best forher kids.
(44:24):
In the previous arrest she tookthe sentence and had Henry take
no sentence, so Henry couldcare for the kids and for a
person who it's hard to sayanything truthful about.
I think that's one that youwon't convince me otherwise
about.
Speaker 2 (44:44):
about Nancy yeah, I'm not here to defend her, and
some people who have read thebook are disappointed that there
are no clear heroes.
And I'm not making Nancy into ahero.
Yes, she did.
I agree with you that she didhave true, true, sincere feeling
(45:04):
for her children, but Emma Gillwas somebody's child also.
Speaker 1 (45:10):
Absolutely yeah, and I don't know, We'll save
opinions for off the air.
In fact, I hope all of you chitchat about opinions after we're
done.
That would be like the biggestcompliment that you like this so
much that you kept talkingabout it.
That does bring us to the endof the story.
Is there anything we jumpedover or what have you or you
(45:31):
want to reiterate before westart wrapping this deal up
today?
Speaker 2 (45:36):
Well, because I'm in Bridgeport, I would just like to
note that Bridgeporters, theywere shocked when Emma Gill's
body was found and closelyfollowed what was going on with
every step of the way untilNancy was apprehended and
(46:00):
brought back to Bridgeport.
But a lot of that coverage wasfrom the New York papers.
This was the age of the yellowpress.
Everybody was readingnewspapers.
You know it's pre-radio, sothat's where you got all your
news and also you got yourentertainment.
There were these lavishpictorial papers.
(46:23):
Photographs and papers wereunusual, but there were all
these illustrators.
So the New York press wasconverging.
I was constantly taking thetrain into Bridgeport writing
about every aspect of this.
But after they disappeared aBoston reporter who was very
anti-abortion came down and hewas appalled that Bridgeport had
(46:50):
sort of settled into thinking.
Well, what Nancy Guilford didwas not so bad because she also
provided a service to needywomen and that is part of the
story that she had for everydeath you know, and this is
called abortion, death andconcealment.
In Victoria and New England sheprobably had hundreds of
(47:13):
customers who didn't suffer anyinjuries or ill effects from
their abortion and were able toend an unwanted pregnancy.
So this Boston reporter said hequoted actually the New Haven
leader as saying there's awishy-washy sentiment around
Bridgeport.
A wishy-washy sentiment aroundBridgeport, it's the kind of
(47:41):
sentiment that prompts women tobring flowers to wife murderers
in prison.
In other words, he was appalledthat Bridgeport didn't want to
hang Nancy Guilford and also theprison matron at the Bridgeport
who worked for the BridgeportPolice Department who had gone
to England.
She had gotten a free voyage toEngland to help identify Nancy
(48:01):
Guilford.
There she was saying I knowcases in which she's done a lot
of good.
And that leads us to believethat this prison matron, who
knew very low-income people, sexworkers in Bridgeport, et
cetera, et cetera, knew thatsome women really desperately
wanted to end their pregnancies,and Nancy there was no legal
(48:23):
way to do it.
So Nancy had done it and theBridgeport Herald was way ahead
of its time it was a weeklypaper at the time and after
Nancy was sentenced they saidwell, what she did was illegal
and you should not break the law.
But a lot of people would sayand this is because the
editorial writers of theBridgeport Herald were saying it
(48:45):
that what she did was simplyher only mistake really was to
get caught doing a procedurethat goes on every week in every
corner of the state, so thatall shows you that abortion was
commonplace at the time.
You have to remember thatcontraception reliable
(49:05):
contraception was not yetavailable, that the size of the
American family had changed fromthe census of 1800, when the
average American woman had sevenchildren, to 1900 when the
average American woman had abouthalf that many children.
And how did this magicallyhappen?
Probably because abortion wasillegal underground but
(49:28):
advertised in newspapers the wayit wasn't in the 50s and 60s,
in the immediate pre-Roe, epicor decades.
And it was not something in aback room, it was not a back
alley kind of business.
Nancy had a permanent office,or she worked in her home at a
(49:54):
fixed address, and of course itwas clean.
Who wouldn't you know?
She lived there.
She wanted it to be clean andwell furnished.
Speaker 1 (50:00):
If you want to tell the folks more and more time
where they can find you, yourbooks, et cetera, before we head
out today.
Speaker 2 (50:06):
Okay, so all of my books are on my website
MarshaBiedermancom and that'sM-A-R-C-I-A Like
MarshaBiedermancom, and that'sM-A-R-C-I-A just like in the
Brady Bunch.
And Biederman B like boyI-E-D-E-R-M-A-Ncom.
Or the Disquieting Death ofEmma Gill.
If you just search Emma Gill,it's on Amazon, barnes Noble,
(50:28):
sold by many independentbookstores.
Rj Julia has it at some oftheir stores stores.
Rj Julia has it at some oftheir stores.
And thank you so much, adam,for giving me this opportunity
and for your careful reading ofthe book.
It's just so exciting for anauthor to talk to someone who
actually read the chapters.
I can't tell you how gratifyingthis is.
Speaker 1 (50:49):
You're very welcome, marsha, marsha, marsha, I wonder
how many of our Gen Z viewerswill get that.
Well, anywho, everybody, thishas been another episode of
Bridgeport Unmasked.
I'm Librarian Adam and I'vebeen talking with Marsha
Biederman, author of theDisquieting Death of Emma Gill,
a Bridgeport story from the late1800s, which you can purchase
(51:13):
at links that I'll put below.
Tell your friends, your enemiesand total strangers you run
into to listen to all episodesof Bridgeport Unmasked.
We'll meet real soon to recordanother one of these right here.
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