In the majority of cases, the victims of abortion are gotten rid of by the practitioner before they die. The operation once over, they are hurried from the premises with all possible dispatch, even though the fatigue and exposure may imperil their lives. Many die a few days after reaching home, in which case the name of the abortionist is never known, and many more linger for a few months or years, mere physical wrecks of their former selves, till merciful Death folds them in his leaden arms.
Before the recent laws were passed, making it a punishable offense to offer to produce abortions, either by medicine or instruments, there were many nostrums, in the form of pills and powders, covertly advertised for the alleged purpose of producing miscarriages. When a person called on one of those quacks and explained the purpose for which the medicine was needed, he was told that it was very dear—from five, ten, to fifteen dollars a box. At the same time he would be assured that his lady friend was merely suffering from "an obstruction arising from cold." If he insisted on explaining, the hard face of the quack would grow darker and harder, and a mysterious gleam of intelligence would shoot from the speculative eye as he was told:
"I will not sell medicine for anything else but a cold; nor will I treat any lady for anything else. Your young friend has only taken cold, and if she is not relieved by these pills she had better come and see me herself."
No doubt most of those medicines were deceptive, fraudulent and futile. But they had the intended effect of advertising the person who sold them, whose "professional" services were generally brought into request when the pills proved inoperative. This was the secret of Madame Restell's reputation and immense accumulated fortune. Her occupation was that of a midwife, and in that assumed capacity she advertised her "Female Pills." As all the world knows now, her real vocation was the ante-natal destruction of unwelcome babies. To her gorgeous palace at the corner of Fifth avenue and Fifty-second street went for years some of the most wealthy and fashionable women of this metropolis. It is a dreadful admission, and a sad commentary on our boasted civilization, but the truth must be told. Some of her patrons were married ladies who, finding themselves likely to become mothers, and being too heartless and frivolous to desire the pains and cares of maternity, sought this woman's aid and, in some instances, paid her fabulous sums to have their innocent offspring destroyed before they saw the light. Others who sought her services were unmarried girls, who, having sacrificed their honor were prepared to pay any price to conceal their shame, by the destruction of the little life which would blazon it to the world.
Madame Restell's clients were all, or nearly all women of the higher orders of society, and of liberal means. Of this disgraceful fact there can be no manner of doubt. Her scale of charges was so extravagant as to positively prohibit her employment by any one unable to pay a handsome fee for the gratification of their murderous project. Sometimes a poor girl, ruined by some wealthy libertine, would be supplied by him with funds to pay for the terrible operation which would conceal her folly; but in the great majority of cases they were ladies of wealth and social standing who went dressed in elegant apparel, loaded with jewelry, and double veiled, to her palatial mansion to obtain her aid.
Madame Restell, whose name was a scandal and her Fifth-avenue house an outrage upon New York for years, was a native of Painswick, Gloucestershire. She was the daughter of a humble laborer named Trow, and first saw the light in 1813. Her educational facilities—as indeed were all those similarly or even better circumstanced in England seventy years ago—were of the humblest kind. But she was made to work, taught to use her needle, and "sent out to service" in her early teens. And so it came to pass that, at the age of sixteeen, she was "maid of all work" for a butcher in her native town. She was quite good-looking, with piercing black eyes and thick, luxuriant black hair, and shapely form. She had many candidates for her young affections among the young weavers of the place, but a journeyman tailor named Henry Somers was the successful wooer. A year or two after the wedding, Mr. and Mrs. Somers emigrated and came to the city of New York, settling over on the east side, about Oliver street. Somers was lazy, improvident and a tippler, and after a short sojourn in America Mrs. Somers found herself a young and blooming widow, with one child, a girl, to provide for. She had all along industriously supplemented her husband's earnings by her needle. She was now wholly dependent upon it for the subsistence of herself and child.
It was while in these pinched circumstances that she made the acquaintance of Charles R. Lohman, a printer poor as herself, and became his wife. There was no immediate improvement in their condition. Both were impatient of the pinchings of poverty. Neither was constitutionally disposed to work hard and patiently for an honest competence. The celebrated "Female Pills" formed the philosopher's stone which released them from this condition of chafing discontent and brooding unrest. From what source a knowledge of the ingredients requisite for the composition of a pill for such a diabolical purpose was derived, or whether, indeed, the pill was effective or diabolical at all, remains a mystery, inasmuch as none of her medicine seems to have been subjected to chemical analysis. Suffice to say that the couple rented a small room, and the first advertisement of the female physician was printed in the old Sun, and paid for with borrowed money.
Under such auspices the abortion business dawned upon this city, and in more than one of the daily newspapers, between the years 1836 and 1840, appeared glowing puffs of "the beautiful young female physician," as she was termed, accompanied by elaborate advertisements setting forth her specialty. No wonder this Upas tree flourished by the river of crime on whose banks it was fed. No wonder that her brother Joseph, who had been imported from madame's native English town, was kept busy in putting up medicines and compounds for the ladies of New York. No wonder that the Lohmans, alias the Restells, waxed fat and insolent, or that, with only thirty years actual existence, madame informed the public that she had been for "thirty years physician in European hospitals"!
By and by her boldness attracted the attention of the Albany Solons, and in 1846 a law was enacted which was intended to prevent the dark crime which Madame Restell had helped to make so fashionable. In September, 1847, a minion of justice invaded her Gehenna, then at No. 146 Greenwich street, and, upon an affidavit, she was arrested and put in prison. On the tenth of that month she was arraigned and, pleading "Not guilty," was sent back to jail to await her trial. At this preliminary proceeding it appeared that Dr. Samuel C. Smith had been called upon to attend professionally a young woman of Orange County, by the name of Mary Bodine, and, upon discovering evidences of foul play, communicated with the Mayor of New York, and Madame Restell's arrest followed. Public excitement rose to an intense pitch. A spasm of morality shook the city to its foundations. Nothing was talked of but the hideous crimes of the woman abortionist. People lost sight of the war, then raging in Mexico, while listening to the stories of imaginative people about heaps of babies' skulls supposed to be mouldering beneath the floors of the Greenwich-street Golgotha. There were threats of mob violence, and of incendiary proceedings. It was necessary to guard the premises, and Lohman kept himself religiously secluded from public observation.
On the twentieth of October, 1847, the abortionist was placed in the dock of the Court of General Sessions, before Recorder Scott and two aldermen. For the prosecution there appeared Ogden Hoffman, John McKeon and Jonas B. Phillips; for the defense, James T. Brady and David Graham, Jr. The prisoner was charged in the indictment with manslaughter in the second degree. Considerable difficulty was experienced in obtaining a jury. Mary Bodine, herself, was the first witness. She described her engagement as a servant with a person of the name of Cook; her seduction three days after entering upon her duties, and the consequences that followed her visit to Madame Restell's establishment; the conversation that took place; her sojourn in an apartment of the dreadful den; her diet and treatment, and all the revolting details were given with a pre-Raphaelite sharpness of outline that carried the conviction of truth. It was a long trial, and not before November 12th did the Recorder sum up, when the jury, after a brief retirement, found the prisoner "Guilty."