“Charlotte and I were school-mates and dear friends ever since I can remember anything,” said the young woman. “Our parents had been friends before us. I think we were equals in every sense, except that Lotty was handsomer than I. We became engaged and were married on the same day, when I was twenty-one and she twenty-two years of age. Our husbands are both honorable and kind men, and so far as our married lives are concerned, we have both been well situated.
“In about the usual time after marriage we found ourselves pregnant, and as we lived not far distant from each other, we made our babies’ wardrobes in company, anticipating, with much pleasure, the already dear children.
“We had passed the fifth month, when Lotty, for the first time, alluded to her most private life with her husband, saying she was so glad that she could respond so fully to his demands. It had not been so at first, but now the relation occurred almost every night, and she experienced quite as much emotion as he did, to his very great satisfaction.
“I made an exclamation of surprise, and then was silent. My own experience had been entirely opposed to hers, but I knew nothing of right or wrong in such matters; I had nothing to reply.
“In due time, to our great delight, we each held a daughter in our arms. Other children followed pretty close on their track, and our meetings, though no less cordial, became less frequent. The years flew past on swift wing. Our eldest children were thirteen years old; mine a refined, conscientious, reliable girl; hers too mature bodily, and with a rather handsome, but positive, sensual face. In order—as they intended—to check the forwardness of her manners, she was sent to boarding-school. Here she climbed out of the window at night, and having had an intrigue with a boy belonging to an academy near by, was expelled from the institution. The parents entreated, bribed, threatened, with no signs of improvement on her part. Finally, when this poor child wanted two months of reaching her fifteenth year, she left her home, and of her own free will became the inmate of a brothel. Once or twice, through the help of a detective, she was recovered; but only to escape again to follow the life that suited her organization.
“Her father’s head was bowed with grief. The mother became hard and irritable, growing to hate the child who had brought on them so much sorrow and shame. I grieved for them, but I never understood the case till I heard you speak of the mother’s power over her unborn child. Now I see that Maria was the victim of her parents’ ignorance.”[2]
[2] Dr. Sanger, who is authority on the subject of prostitution, says that the observation of years among the abandoned class, has led him to the conclusion that only one woman in a thousand is brought to adopt the life of a prostitute from the same sensual proclivities that make a man consort with the abandoned. Seduction by a lover, followed by the rejection of society, poverty, inability to labor, desire for elegant clothing, and various other causes, have brought the other nine hundred and ninety-nine into this bitter degradation. The young girl alluded to above was one of the exceptions. Since while pregnant—women, sad to say, have been constantly forced to yield their persons to the lusts of the husband, they have in spirit rebelled against the unnatural demand, instead of heartily assenting.
[VIOLATION OF SEXUAL LAW DURING PREGNANCY.]
I will briefly refer to another instance where the child so fatally endowed was a boy.