She was sent to the penitentiary on Blackwell's Island, and popular excitement was allayed, while the spasm of public morality, with a soft sigh, fell asleep. When Madame Restell's term of imprisonment expired she came back to the city and, purchasing a new property on Chambers street, hung out her "Midwife" shingle, and carried on her business with nearly as much effrontery, and with quite as much success, as before her prosecution and sentence.
A craving for pomp and ostentation was one of the peculiar phases of Madame Restell's character. To gratify this kind of ambition, she purchased, through a real estate agent, ten lots on Fifth avenue, between Fifty-second and Fifty-third streets. They cost at that time $1,000 each—$10,000 for the ten. When it became known that this woman was the purchaser of the ten lots, a movement was at once made by reputable citizens interested in the respectability of New York's leading avenue to repurchase the property. Five thousand dollars were offered for her bargain without avail. When, many years later, the horrified residents of the fashionable thoroughfare beheld ground broken and the abortionist's mansion gradually raising its brazen front, their indignation knew no bounds. Large sums of money were offered the woman to forego her intention, but she haughtily answered that "there was not money enough in New York" to prevent her. No expense was spared, either in the construction or decoration of this palace of infamy. The frescoed ceilings were works of art. Two Italians worked at them for a twelve-month, at an expense of twenty thousand dollars. The carpets and upholstery, ordered through the house of A. T. Stewart & Co., were manufactured specially in Paris. The paintings were selected from the productions of the greatest artists of the period. Her stable was erected at a cost of twenty-eight thousand dollars. The Osborne House, another of her investments, erected on the ground adjoining her own residence, cost about two hundred thousand dollars.
In February, 1878, evil days again fell upon Madame Restell. On the eleventh of that month she was arrested by Anthony Comstock, of the Society for the Prevention of Crime, and taken to Jefferson Market Police Court, before Justice Kilbretli. She desired her release upon bail, pending examination. The bail was fixed at $10,000, and although she offered to deposit with the court that amount in government bonds, Judge Kilbreth refused. Satisfactory bail not being forthcoming, she was committed to the Tombs, and assigned to a cell on the second tier of the women's prison. By and by, she was released on bail and, pending her trial, some time early on the morning of April 1, 1878, she committed suicide, by cutting her throat from ear to ear, in her bath-tub. The scene was described in that morning's Herald, as follows:
"Mme. Restell's chambermaid, Maggie McGraw, went to her mistress' room at about eight o'clock this morning, but not finding her there she went to the bathroom, which is on the second floor. There, hanging on the door, she saw her mistress' clothes. Thinking that she was taking a bath the girl went down-stairs, but soon returned and, seeing the clothes still there, she looked in. Not seeing the madame, she became alarmed. A peculiar smell then attracted her attention and, looking in, she saw that the bath-tub was filled with bloody water, and at the bottom of the tub lay the body of her mistress, with her throat cut from ear to ear. The instrument of death, a large carving-knife, was lying at her side. The bath-room is fitted up with Oriental splendor, being frescoed and decorated handsomely."
The suicide was buried next day, being conveyed from the Fifth-avenue mansion to the Grand Central Depot, and thence to Tarrytown, the place of interment. The funeral procession consisted merely of the hearse carrying the body and one carriage. It is a strange, revolting story, carrying its own warning and moral, besides furnishing an admirable instance of the unexpected forms in which the great Nemesis manifests herself.
[C]HAPTER XVII.
DIVORCE.
The Chicanery of Divorce Specialists—How Divorce Laws Vary in Certain States—Sweeping Amendments Necessary—Illustrative Cases.
A large proportion of the marital infelicity now so alarmingly prevalent in this country is no doubt caused by the mal-administration of our divorce laws, and by the demoralizing discord between the legislative statutes of the various States on the subject of divorce. While in the middle and a portion of the Eastern and Southern States, the conditions legally imposed, before a dissolution of marriage can be judicially obtained, are wholesomely exacting and in accord with the strict Scriptural standard, in certain of the Eastern, Southern and Western States the most trifling alleged causes of disagreement or "incompatibility" are sufficient to secure the law's disseverance of the marriage tie. The divorce business of certain courts in Illinois, Iowa, Utah, and some of the territories, enjoy an infamous notoriety all over the world; while even staid old Connecticut offers a positive reward to connubial infidelity by at once granting a full or absolute divorce upon comparatively slight pretexts, leaving both parties legally free to marry again as their altered fancies may elect.
He who, in New York,