The Career of Madame Restell—Rosensweig's Good Luck.
"Such is the fate of artless maid.
Sweet flow'ret of the rural shade!
By love's simplicity betrayed,
And guileless trust.
Till she, like thee, all soiled, is laid
Low in the dust."
—Burns, "To a Mountain Daisy."
Love's young dream—the dream of the ages—has sometimes a fearful awakening. In her "guileless trust" and unsuspecting ignorance, a young woman weaves a light web of folly and vain hopes, which one day closes around her like a poisoned garment, instantly changing all her fluttering raptures into a wail of the deepest human anguish. All at once the whole force of her nature is concentrated in the effort of concealment, and she shrinks with irresistible dread from every course that would tend to unveil her miserable secret. Overshadowed by a misfortune that is worse than death, in her half-benumbed mental condition, she hears of the professional abortionist, and braces herself for one of those convulsive actions by which a betrayed woman will sometimes leap from a temporary sorrow into the arms of Death.
The dark crime of abortion abounds in New York, as it does in all great cities. Yet this crime is conducted with so much care that rarely a case comes to light. Even when one of these ghouls is arrested and put on trial it is but seldom that conviction follows, because it is an offense extremely difficult to bring home to the perpetrator. Many indictments, for inexplicable causes, from time to time have been pigeon-holed; but as the transaction is committed in private, the victim is the only witness, and she is naturally averse to exposure.
It is only when the remains of some beautiful victim are found packed in a box, or jammed into a barrel, that the imagination realizes the imminent peril dishonored women incur by trusting themselves to the mercy of those sordid butchers. The author of her wrong usually makes the arrangement, under cover. The wily practitioner talks blandly and soothingly. If the operation succeeds, all is well; if not, the poor victim's body is secretly disposed of. She is chronicled among the mysterious disappearances, because every precaution had been taken that her friends should know nothing whatever of her condition, or of her whereabouts.
Naturally, the practice of child-murder hardens the hearts and petrifies the feelings of those systematically engaged in it. The tortures inflicted on the patient are, no doubt, in many cases unavoidable if the end is to be achieved; but many of these operators are cruelly ignorant and unscrupulous, and barbarously brutal and reckless. The mind shrinks from contemplating the thrilling honors of some of the scenes enacted within those deadened walls. Despite the tears and protestations of the suffering woman, the operation will sometimes be repeated two or even three times. But helpless and unprotected as she is, she is compelled to submit, because she is terrorized by her inquisitor's threats to send her to some hospital at once, to expose her condition to the world and to die.
When death appears only too probable, the abortionist generally has the victim either sent to a hospital or to some regular physician's premises, and leaving her before her condition or their connection with the case has been discovered. If the death occurs on their own premises, a certificate from some doctor called in at the fast moment, and deceived as to the cause of death, may enable a quiet little funeral to take place. And again, the fact cannot be denied that from time to time regular, diplomated physicians have been found who would not hesitate, for a consideration, to give "crooked" certificates. Should it be found impracticable to dispose of the body in such a convenient and regular way, in some cases it is shipped by rail to a distant and fictitious address, without any clue by which it can be traced back to the "shipper."
The pitiable case of Miss Alice Augusta Bowlsby will occur to many readers just here. The facts in her case were simply these: One Saturday night towards the end of August, 1871, a trunk containing the remains of a young and beautiful female was found at the depot of the Hudson River Railroad, checked for Chicago. The remains were subsequently recognized as those of Miss Bowlsby of Paterson, New Jersey, and the trunk was traced, by means of the truckman employed to carry it, back to the residence of Dr. Jacob Rosenzweig. It was soon discovered that the death of the unhappy girl was caused by an operation tending to produce abortion. Rosenzweig was a burly fellow, with a forbidding aspect, and a bold, confident look. His large, bullet eyes looked defiantly from behind the deep-intrenched line of wrinkles that care or conscience had gradually drawn around them. He had, in fact, a forbidding aspect, and when he was placed on trial before Recorder Hackett, according to a newspaper reporter present,
"one eye was devoted to watching the Grecian bend of his vulture-hooked nose, while the other was on duty over a precocious lock of his curling red hair, which clung to the verandah of his left ear like a Virginia creeper."
Rosenzweig was convicted of manslaughter while treating a woman for abortion, and was sentenced to state prison for seven years—a sentence so obviously out of proportion to the enormity of the crime that a howl of public indignation went up to the skies. However, Recorder Hackett had awarded the utmost penalty of the then existing law, and Rosenzweig was sent to Sing Sing. Soon after, a law was enacted by the state legislature, making the penalty of crimes like Rosenzweig's twenty years in the state prison, with hard labor. After this law was passed, and when the abortionist had served about a year of his sentence, another charge of abortion was found against him, and he was brought down the river, again put on trial and sentenced. Mr. Howe, for his defense, in appeal, raised the natural objection that it was unfair and improper to try Rosenzweig in two cases at once. Consequently, he got a new trial, in which he was acquitted, because the old law under which he had been previously convicted had been repealed. Here was a manifest miscarriage of justice effected by a wise change in the laws. This prisoner escaped, but such a result could hardly, within the range of possibility, occur under the same law again.