Speaker 1: School of Humans.
Speaker 2: Hello, friends, how's it going so good? I bet life
Speaker 2: is an infinite nightmare, but we try to find the
Speaker 2: joy in between the pain. Quick reminder of top. We
Speaker 2: are doing our first live show. It's gonna be in Atlanta,
Speaker 2: Georgia on June twenty ninth at this venue called Dynamic
Speaker 2: El Dorado. That's an edgewood for you at Lanton's. And
Speaker 2: it's gonna be fun. We're gonna have stand up improv,
Speaker 2: We're gonna have a history story, we're gonna have some
Speaker 2: fun facts. We're gonna hear some really inappropriate facts too,
Speaker 2: So come on out. It's gonna be fun. That's June
Speaker 2: twenty ninth at Dynamic El Dorado. Also, it's a Saturday.
Speaker 2: Have you guys heard of this. That's a day in
Speaker 2: which you have fun. So come to the show. But
Speaker 2: you might be like, hey, Gabby, I just want to
Speaker 2: hear some history. So fine. End of promo. Into the
Speaker 2: episode we go. So last time on American filth we
Speaker 2: talked about mister Anthony Comstock, Come Come, Come, Come, Come Stock.
Speaker 2: If you recall, he was the man behind the Comstock
Speaker 2: Act that basically made everything fun illegal because he was like, oh,
Speaker 2: all that stuff. It's obscene. We shouldn't be looking at it.
Speaker 2: One thing that was greatly affected by the Comstock Act
Speaker 2: was the distribution and production of birth control. But one
Speaker 2: thing we did leave out of the episode, which was
Speaker 2: another thing that mister Anthony Comstock absolutely abhorred, was this
Speaker 2: little thing called abortion.
Speaker 1: Have you heard of it. If you haven't, I'll just
Speaker 1: tell you.
Speaker 2: It's one of the least contentious reproductive topics in the
Speaker 2: history of time. Nary a person has ever had an
Speaker 2: opinion about that. No, mister Comstock, he hated. He was like,
Speaker 2: that's gross, that's obscene, that's horrific. I want to get
Speaker 2: rid of it entirely, you know, which is so unlike today.
Speaker 1: Anyway. You might be.
Speaker 2: Surprised to know that in the early part of the
Speaker 2: nineteenth century their abortion laws weren't that bad, but it
Speaker 2: was throughout the century. It was thanks to people like
Speaker 2: Comstock who made abortion access less and less available. And
Speaker 2: as there were more laws against it, there were more
Speaker 2: and more doctors and not so licensed doctors who came
Speaker 2: out of the shadows to offer their services to anyone
Speaker 2: who was having a WHOOPSI daisy in their uterus.
Speaker 1: And one of those people.
Speaker 2: Who was perhaps the most notorious abortionist in nineteenth century
Speaker 2: New y York City was a woman who went by
Speaker 2: the name Madame Restelle. Over the course of her career,
Speaker 2: she provided a countless number of women with birth control
Speaker 2: and abortions. And if you can imagine, a lot of
Speaker 2: people did not like that. And when obscenity censor and
Speaker 2: bad boy comstock came around, Madame Rostelle lost her livelihood
Speaker 2: and then her life.
Speaker 1: Ha ha ha.
Speaker 2: What a fun subject we're talking about today. Cue the
Speaker 2: theme song. This is American Filth and I'm Gabby Watts.
Speaker 1: Every week I tell you a filthy story from American history.
Speaker 2: This week's episode Comestock, Part two, Unpregnanted.
Speaker 1: Something I will say about this episode is I will.
Speaker 2: Be saying the term abortion a lot, because there's not
Speaker 2: really that many good synonyms. There's terminated, the pregnancy, or
Speaker 2: you could say something more crass like unpregnanted. Also, being
Speaker 2: pregnant is called being knocked up, so you could say
Speaker 2: an abortion is being knocked out.
Speaker 1: That one's very bad and will get me canceled. Don't
Speaker 1: tell us and l Also, I think this is.
Speaker 2: About the third or fourth time I have canceled myself
Speaker 2: on my own podcast, so I need somebody else to
Speaker 2: do it. Please cancel me this week. But like birth
Speaker 2: control powders and tonics and pills, throughout the nineteenth century,
Speaker 2: there was also a big rise in the number of
Speaker 2: abortions being carried out. It's hard to know concrete numbers
Speaker 2: because you know, it wasn't like people were writing down.
Speaker 1: In their diaries I have had an abortion.
Speaker 2: But some reformers from the time estimated that between eighteen
Speaker 2: hundred and eighteen thirty, for every twenty three to thirty
Speaker 2: births there was one abortion.
Speaker 1: So yeah, one in thirty one and twenty five.
Speaker 2: And then you get to the eighteen fifties and you
Speaker 2: might have had one abortion for every six births. And
Speaker 2: maybe that number was even higher because there was also
Speaker 2: a higher rate of still births at the time. And
Speaker 2: people were like, well, maybe that's because they did some
Speaker 2: abortion stuff.
Speaker 1: And sure, maybe these numbers are grim.
Speaker 2: But here's the thing, here's a little silver lining is
Speaker 2: simultaneously as abortion rates went up, the infanticide rate went down.
Speaker 2: How delightful. And then in the eighteen seventies some people
Speaker 2: were thinking that one third of all pregnancies ended in termination.
Speaker 2: The women seeking these procedures and treatments were not just
Speaker 2: single ladies. There's also people who were married who wanted
Speaker 2: to control the size of their family. Basically, anyone and
Speaker 2: everyone was having an abortion. Like even a Confederate general
Speaker 2: had his wife terminate a pregnancy. He's like, the South
Speaker 2: will rise again, but that baby won't. I'm sorry. And
Speaker 2: remember this is the nineteenth century, so a lot of
Speaker 2: the procedures for abortion were quite dangerous and a lot
Speaker 2: of women actually died. Unlike today where everything is grand.
Speaker 2: Maybe if I say it in a French accent, it
Speaker 2: will sound like I'm saying it less. So how did
Speaker 2: people feel about a bausion in the nineteenth century That
Speaker 2: actually makes it sound even worse. Well, at the beginning
Speaker 2: of it, a lot of people subscribe to this idea
Speaker 2: called quickening, which was the idea that life did not
Speaker 2: begin until a woman felt the fetus move inside of her,
Speaker 2: which would be about three to four months into pregnancy.
Speaker 2: So it's kind of like, ah, if you do something
Speaker 2: three months before, we don't care. But once you feel it, eh,
Speaker 2: we got an issue with it. There were specific laws
Speaker 2: passed about a bossion in New York State, for example,
Speaker 2: in eighteen twenty seven, there was a law that said
Speaker 2: providing or getting an abortion was a crime, and you
Speaker 2: could be punished with a year in jail and a
Speaker 2: one hundred dollars fine. But laws like this, most of
Speaker 2: them were passed not to criminalize abortion, but to protect
Speaker 2: women from being pressured into getting one, And so in general,
Speaker 2: no one was really getting arrested because of this law,
Speaker 2: and then when people did get arrested, they often weren't
Speaker 2: prosecuted for it. But then in the mid century that
Speaker 2: started to change. There were more anti abortion laws which
Speaker 2: were like quickening, we reject that life starts at conception,
Speaker 2: so if you have an abortion or provide one, we
Speaker 2: will actually now arrest you and send you to prison. Also,
Speaker 2: you can't advertise these services in the newspapers.
Speaker 1: Gross.
Speaker 2: I don't know what accent that was. It came from
Speaker 2: a very dark place inside of me. And if you
Speaker 2: all can believe it. As abortion access became less and less,
Speaker 2: the whole process became more and more dangerous because women
Speaker 2: were going to quack medical practitioners who provided these services illegally,
Speaker 2: and I imagine in deep dark basements where it was
Speaker 2: gross and not hygienic at the same time.
Speaker 1: However, some of.
Speaker 2: These so called quacks were actually pretty good at what
Speaker 2: they did, and one such example was Madame Rastelle. Yeah,
Speaker 2: we're finally getting to the topic of the episode.
Speaker 1: Some things people called her throughout her career were.
Speaker 2: Female abortionist, a professor of infanticide, a child murderous, and
Speaker 2: this longer quote, the wretched creature who builds her fortune
Speaker 2: upon the misfortunes of her sex, caring no more for
Speaker 2: their suffering of mind or body than does the butcher
Speaker 2: for the lives of the animals, which it is his
Speaker 2: business to take a little bit dramatic, methinks. Madammoselle was
Speaker 2: a pseudonym. Her real name was Anne Troe Lohman, and
Speaker 2: she was the planned parenthood of mid nineteenth century New
Speaker 2: York seting. She was born Anne Troe in a small
Speaker 2: town in England in eighteen eleven or eighteen twelve. She
Speaker 2: was one of eleven children, though it's likely many of
Speaker 2: them did not survive into adulthood, and she grew up
Speaker 2: quite poor where she was.
Speaker 1: Born in Painswick, England.
Speaker 2: It was a textile town, so likely her parents worked
Speaker 2: at a mill or were in agriculture and her parents
Speaker 2: they were likely illiterate, and because of that, it's very
Speaker 2: likely that Anne didn't have any formal education. The next
Speaker 2: thing we know about her for sure was that in
Speaker 2: eighteen twenty nine she married a tailor named Henry Summers.
Speaker 2: She was seventeen, he was twenty six. A little yucky,
Speaker 2: but not illegal. Actually it was quite typical of the time.
Speaker 2: Drake would thrive during this time.
Speaker 1: Anyway.
Speaker 2: They had a daughter in eighteen thirty named Caroline, and
Speaker 2: at that point they're like, dam we really got to
Speaker 2: get our shit together because we don't have any opportunities here.
Speaker 2: So in eighteen thirty one they hopped on a boat
Speaker 2: to New York City. They moved to a neighborhood in
Speaker 2: Lower Manhattan, and it's likely that Henry got a job
Speaker 2: as a tailor and Anne got a job as a seamstress.
Speaker 2: A friend of hers said later that she was working
Speaker 2: making pentaloons. But unfortunately for Anne and Caroline, just a
Speaker 2: few months after they arrived, Henry caught a fever and died. Damn,
Speaker 2: thought Anne, I'm in a tight spot.
Speaker 1: You know. She had her job as.
Speaker 2: A seamstress of pantaloons, but the problem with that work
Speaker 2: was that it was difficult, the hours were long, and
Speaker 2: the pay was low, so it really wasn't cutting it
Speaker 2: or sewing it. But then Anne met another man who
Speaker 2: had a similar fervor to her to better himself. His
Speaker 2: name was Charles Lowman. He was also an immigrant, but
Speaker 2: from Russia, and he worked as a printer for a newspaper.
Speaker 2: He was also in some radical groups that liked to
Speaker 2: think and write about such things as birth control and
Speaker 2: reproductive health, those crazy guys. So Charles and Ann got
Speaker 2: married and they moved into a new apartment, and they
Speaker 2: just happened to live next to this guy named William Evans.
Speaker 2: His name is really not important at all, but the
Speaker 2: thing about him that is important is that he was
Speaker 2: a doctor.
Speaker 1: But not just any doctor.
Speaker 2: He was a quack aka he had no formal medicinal training.
Speaker 2: But what he would do is he would make tonics
Speaker 2: and tinctures and potions and all sorts of stuff and
Speaker 2: sell it to people, being like, yeah, this this thing
Speaker 2: that I made up in my kitchen, it's going to
Speaker 2: cure you. I mean, most likely it won't do anything
Speaker 2: at all, But sometimes it's just nice to know you're
Speaker 2: trying out something a little placebo effect. But this William Evans, well,
Speaker 2: he was making money, making bank doing this, I mean
Speaker 2: not bank, but like he was making enough. And Anne,
Speaker 2: with perhaps some encouragement from her husband, was like, maybe
Speaker 2: I should try making some medicinal potions, powders and pills.
Speaker 1: And sell those.
Speaker 2: She knew she'd make more money doing that than being
Speaker 2: a seamstress. Yes, and learned something very important about America. Then,
Speaker 2: lying is much more profitable than honest labor. At first,
Speaker 2: she tried the usual stuff, you know, making elixirs and
Speaker 2: other medicines that could cure a whole variety of elms
Speaker 2: and illnesses. But then her business took a turn when
Speaker 2: one woman who bought some of her medicines was like, Hey,
Speaker 2: I have a little bit of a whoopsidaisy in my womb.
Speaker 1: Do you have anything that could fix that? Aka, I
Speaker 1: need to have one abortion on now.
Speaker 2: In the late eighteen thirties, when Antroloman got this request
Speaker 2: from her patient, birth control and abortion related merchandise.
Speaker 1: Wasn't a new thing.
Speaker 2: As I said in the last episode, people with uteruses
Speaker 2: have been trying not to have babies the whole time
Speaker 2: we've been around, and most of the solutions to getting
Speaker 2: rid of a little whoopsidaisy baby involved drinking or eating
Speaker 2: a gross combination of ingredients.
Speaker 1: Like indigenous women.
Speaker 2: They would try to induce a miscarriage using various roots
Speaker 2: and herbs. In Texas, there's a case of a black
Speaker 2: woman who drank a combination of calamel and turpin t yummy.
Speaker 1: And then there are some white.
Speaker 2: Ladies in the Midwest, and what they did is they
Speaker 2: rubbed gunpowder on their titties and drank tea made of
Speaker 2: rusty nail water. I bet it had a sharp taste.
Speaker 2: But besides ingesting gross stuff, some other things that birth
Speaker 2: control manual suggested for inducing miscarriages was, you know, jumping
Speaker 2: up and down a classic, exercising too vigorously, and douching.
Speaker 1: And as I said, you know, some.
Speaker 2: Doctors and quack doctors alike did do surgical abortions. They're
Speaker 2: just very dangerous, sometimes fatal, and even worse than that,
Speaker 2: they were all so expensive. Some doctors charged about one
Speaker 2: hundred dollars for a surgical abortion, which was a hefty sum.
Speaker 2: Or doctors would sell you a device that you could
Speaker 2: use at home. One doctor sold this eight dollars silver
Speaker 2: probe that you would just stick into your uterus and
Speaker 2: shake it around until something happened. And there is plenty
Speaker 2: of demand for these products. One lady used that silver
Speaker 2: probe twenty one times and apparently she died on the
Speaker 2: last one.
Speaker 1: Anyway, back to Anne.
Speaker 2: And you know, she had this patient who was like, help,
Speaker 2: I need to get rid of this thing inside of me.
Speaker 2: And Anne was like, hmmm, I think I smell a
Speaker 2: business idea coming along. So she indeed made some medicine
Speaker 2: for this lady to take home to remove the whoops
Speaker 2: of daisy and that started Anne down her trajectory that
Speaker 2: would make her one of the most hated yet beloved
Speaker 2: women at the time in New York City. Notorious infamous,
Speaker 2: We'll be back. After these soothing advertisements, Anne quickly made
Speaker 2: a crap ton of money after she saw that first patient.
Speaker 2: She had more and more women come to see her
Speaker 2: for her medicines. With that, she took her daughter back
Speaker 2: to England for a time to hang out with her family.
Speaker 2: But then when they returned to New York City, Anne
Speaker 2: and her husband started ramping up their business. They got
Speaker 2: a fancy office and Ann started going by Madame Restelle,
Speaker 2: saying that she named herself after a French doctor who
Speaker 2: taught her all the secrets to preventing and terminating pregnancies.
Speaker 2: She was like, oh, yeah, when I was back at
Speaker 2: home visiting my family, Actually I was touring around Europe
Speaker 2: learning all these treatments, because back then, if anything was
Speaker 2: advertised as French or Parisian, it was often a euphemism
Speaker 2: for birth control.
Speaker 1: Why. I don't know.
Speaker 2: Maybe it's because an IUD looks like the Eiffel Tower.
Speaker 2: The Eiffel Tower didn't even exist then. Ah, And so
Speaker 2: Madame Restelle started advertising her services in the newspaper. Her
Speaker 2: first advertisement appeared in the New York Sun in March
Speaker 2: of eighteen thirty nine. Under some very coded euphemisms, the
Speaker 2: ad said, is it not but too well known that
Speaker 2: the families of the married often increase beyond the happiness
Speaker 2: of those who give birth?
Speaker 1: Would dictate, is it desirable?
Speaker 2: Is it moral for parents to increase their families regardless
Speaker 2: of the consequences to themselves or the well being of
Speaker 2: their offspring when a simple, easy, healthy and certain remedy
Speaker 2: is within our control. She was then like, come visit
Speaker 2: me at my office, where married females can obtain the
Speaker 2: desired information, and let's just say a lot of women
Speaker 2: wanted to obtain that desired information, married, unmarried, every sort
Speaker 2: of Lady. Madame Rostelle's office in New York was open
Speaker 2: from nine am to ten pm every day, and often
Speaker 2: there is a horde of women in the waiting room,
Speaker 2: a line running out the door and around the block.
Speaker 2: At first, she was offering abortion pills and potions.
Speaker 1: She didn't call them potions.
Speaker 2: I'm just calling them back because it's fun, and she
Speaker 2: would send this stuff out in the mail.
Speaker 1: But then she diversified her.
Speaker 2: Business to include all sorts of services. You know how
Speaker 2: a lot of people think of Planned parenthood today as
Speaker 2: like an abortion factory, but it actually provides a lot
Speaker 2: of other services. That's how people start thinking about Madame Rostelle.
Speaker 2: They're like, she's the lady who gives abortions. Yucky, we
Speaker 2: don't like her.
Speaker 1: But she was also.
Speaker 2: Giving all types of health care to women. She was like, yeah,
Speaker 2: I'm just a physician, a female physician for females. Her
Speaker 2: various services include a contraception and then some herbal remedies
Speaker 2: that would.
Speaker 1: Help restore instruation.
Speaker 2: And another service she provided was that she had a
Speaker 2: boarding house where pregnant women could go and deliver their
Speaker 2: babies anonymously, and then she would coordinate adoptions and then
Speaker 2: she all so had her surgical abortions.
Speaker 1: But she had a sliding scale. Remember she had grown.
Speaker 2: Up poor, so she was like, hey, if you're a
Speaker 2: poor person, you only have to pay twenty Rich ladies,
Speaker 2: though you guys got to pay one hundred.
Speaker 1: Sorry, not sorry.
Speaker 2: And of course Madame Pistelle, she had haters the whole time.
Speaker 2: Can you believe it, someone who provides abortion has haters?
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: At the beginning of her business, people were still kind
Speaker 2: of like, hey, you can't prosecute someone until after three
Speaker 2: four months of them being pregnant, until that quickening stuff
Speaker 2: is happening. But as attitudes started changing, more and more
Speaker 2: people wanted doctor's like and to rot in prison. They
Speaker 2: were like, ugh, if women have access to birth control,
Speaker 2: if women can have abortions, they're going to be more
Speaker 2: sexually active. That's disgusting. We're gonna have all these single
Speaker 2: ladies committing all this sin. And then a lot of
Speaker 2: feminists actually hated birth control because they were like, ough,
Speaker 2: this just encourages men to have more sexual liaisons and
Speaker 2: as you guys all know.
Speaker 1: Sexuality is bad for society.
Speaker 2: Her enemies were like, Madame Rosselle is making everyone im moral. Also,
Speaker 2: she's only aborting the babies of rich people, which means.
Speaker 1: That she's aborting white babies.
Speaker 2: And soon we're just gonna have all these other babies
Speaker 2: and not enough white ones. Another thing that people hated
Speaker 2: about Madame Rousselle was that she was this thing called
Speaker 2: a successful woman.
Speaker 1: Have you heard of this?
Speaker 2: Like she was making a lot of money, she was
Speaker 2: operating her own business. People hated that. They hated her wealth,
Speaker 2: which she flaunted in her fancy carriages and fancy clothes,
Speaker 2: and they're all like, oh, she's not even a real MD.
Speaker 2: She shouldn't be doing this medical stuff. The only people
Speaker 2: who should be doing medicine are men, because men get licensed.
Speaker 2: Men are smart men men. Despite her successes, though madem
Speaker 2: Mirtelle could not avoid the law. The first time she
Speaker 2: was arrested was less than a year after she opened
Speaker 2: her business in eighteen thirty nine, and at that point
Speaker 2: she was accused of performing an abortion on a woman
Speaker 2: who later died. The woman was named Maria Pardi, and
Speaker 2: she had visited Madame Ristelle looking for a tonic to
Speaker 2: unpregnant herself. Madame Martelle obliged, but then Maria stopped taking
Speaker 2: it because she was afraid she might get poisoned. So
Speaker 2: what she did instead is she went back to Madame
Speaker 2: Morstelle and was like, Hey, can I actually have a
Speaker 2: surgical abortion? I don't want to take this weird juice,
Speaker 2: and she was given the surgical abortion, and then she
Speaker 2: got sick and she was convinced it was from the procedure.
Speaker 2: But after Mademoiselle was arrested, her charges were eventually dropped
Speaker 2: because there simply wasn't enough evidence. Few years later, in
Speaker 2: eighteen forty five, abortion laws changed again in the stay
Speaker 2: of New York. It became extra legal for anyone to
Speaker 2: get or perform an abortion, and two years later Madame
Speaker 2: Mirstelle was arrested again. There's this woman named Maria Bodine
Speaker 2: who had gone to see Madame Mirstelle and asked for
Speaker 2: an abortion, but she was already too far along. Mademoiselle
Speaker 2: was like, yeah, you're definitely more than three or four
Speaker 2: months pregnant, so I'm not going to do it because.
Speaker 1: I don't want to get arrested.
Speaker 2: But then Maria's lover was like, hey, I demand that
Speaker 2: you give her an abortion, so Mademoistelle was like.
Speaker 1: Okay, fine.
Speaker 2: But then after the procedure, Maria got sick and went
Speaker 2: to a doctor who was like, m I can tell
Speaker 2: that you got an abortion, and that doctor reported her
Speaker 2: and Madame Mirstelle, so she had to spend a year
Speaker 2: in prison and pay a hefty fine. When she got
Speaker 2: out of prison, and Tree Lowman decided to make a change,
Speaker 2: at least on the surface. She was like, I'm not
Speaker 2: going to do surgical abortions anymore, but I am going
Speaker 2: to resume my business and just sell these concoctions that
Speaker 2: I make and not do the surgical ones.
Speaker 1: Wink wink mm.
Speaker 2: Because even though she limited her business, she just kept
Speaker 2: getting richer and richer. By that point, she and her
Speaker 2: family had moved into a ginormous mansion on Fifth Avenue,
Speaker 2: and that's where she moved her offices as well. And
Speaker 2: for even more people to take her seriously, she applied
Speaker 2: for citizenship, which was granted in eighteen fifty four. And
Speaker 2: the thing is other women also provided this type of
Speaker 2: medical services, but she was just so well known in
Speaker 2: making such a huge impact on the city that the
Speaker 2: mayor himself officiated Madame Rostelle's daughter's wedding. Misseelle wasn't going
Speaker 2: to stay on top for much longer, because, as we
Speaker 2: all know, a woman with power pooh, sheesh, that's not
Speaker 2: gonna last. People hate when women are powerful, and she
Speaker 2: especially wasn't gonna last. If anti abortion, anti birth control,
Speaker 2: anti fun crusader Anthony Comstock had anything to say about it,
Speaker 2: We'll be back after these soothing advertisements. After the Comstock
Speaker 2: Act was passed in eighteen seventy three, mister Anthony Comstock
Speaker 2: was on a rampage. And the great thing about him
Speaker 2: is not only did he want to destroy all obscene material,
Speaker 2: but he also just seemed to really hate women in general.
Speaker 1: What a guy.
Speaker 2: So obviously, women were usually the ones buying birth control
Speaker 2: and seeking abortions, so he doubly hated them because they
Speaker 2: were doing that, but then also because again, yuck, they're women.
Speaker 2: He especially hated a woman who was independent. He disliked
Speaker 2: women who had jobs, who had thoughts, and he even
Speaker 2: hated when women put too much effort into their appearance
Speaker 2: because he thought that was immodest. He said that when
Speaker 2: a woman was too done up that it made her
Speaker 2: seem too independent and didn't belong to any man. That's right, ladies,
Speaker 2: that's what a little lip can do for you. So
Speaker 2: Madame Rastelle, she was the perfect target, and he wanted
Speaker 2: to pull her down off her high horse on Fifth Avenue,
Speaker 2: even though I guess she's more of like a British, So.
Speaker 1: Pull it down from a high horse on Fifth Avenue.
Speaker 1: So here's what he did. In eighteen seventy eight. He
Speaker 1: was like, I'm gonna go undercover.
Speaker 2: Mister Anthony comes costumed himself as a man who was
Speaker 2: seeking an abortion for his imaginary wife.
Speaker 1: He knocked on the door of her office, went in
Speaker 1: and was.
Speaker 2: Like, oh help, I need some abortion stuff and she
Speaker 2: was like, okay, chill, yeah, I can give you some stuff.
Speaker 2: And while he was there, he looked around at all
Speaker 2: the abortion birth control materials and was like, I'm gonna
Speaker 2: get this bitch. So after Madame Rostelle gave him what
Speaker 2: he asked for in his little dress up costume, Comestock
Speaker 2: scurried home like the little rat he is, and the
Speaker 2: next day he came back with some of his vice
Speaker 2: squad and arrested her. At this point, Bail's fines for
Speaker 2: people who gave or had an abortion, were really high,
Speaker 2: and allegedly Madame Rostelle was like, hey, I got thousands
Speaker 2: of dollars with me on hand.
Speaker 1: I can just give that to you right now, get
Speaker 1: me out of jail.
Speaker 2: But then they wouldn't let her out until she we
Speaker 2: had two men come and bail her out. They're like,
Speaker 2: we won't accept this woman's money. We need man money.
Speaker 1: After the arrest, Mademe Morstelle was pissed.
Speaker 2: She wrote into a newspaper and said, Comestock is in
Speaker 2: this nasty detective business, and there are a number of
Speaker 2: little doctors who are in the same business behind him.
Speaker 2: They think if they can get me in trouble and
Speaker 2: out of the way, they can make a fortune. If
Speaker 2: the public are determined to push this matter, they will
Speaker 2: have a good laugh when they learn the nature of
Speaker 2: the terrible items of the preventative prescriptions. Of course, if
Speaker 2: there's a trial, it will all come out. And Madame
Speaker 2: Mostelle was totally right because at this point male doctors
Speaker 2: were trying to take over the jobs that women like
Speaker 2: Madame Rostelle and then also midwives usually did with their
Speaker 2: female patients. These male doctors were like, actually, we've decided
Speaker 2: we want to control all healthcare, So these little women,
Speaker 2: we need to get them out of the way. And sure,
Speaker 2: let's leak up with comstock and we can be like,
Speaker 2: boo boo boo abortion, we hate that, because that will
Speaker 2: help us round up all the women who provide these services,
Speaker 2: and then we can just take their jobs, take their industry,
Speaker 2: take their money, take their clientele, and we get to
Speaker 2: be the winners and the arbiter.
Speaker 1: Of all things healthcare.
Speaker 2: Like can you imagine how frustrating that was, because not
Speaker 2: only is madem Rousselle being arrested, her whole career is
Speaker 2: being usurped by a bunch of little angry dudes. She's like,
Speaker 2: all I've been doing my whole life is helping women
Speaker 2: providing healthcare, and now you're trying to make me out
Speaker 2: to be some sort of villain.
Speaker 1: Fuck all the way off.
Speaker 2: And the thing is also at this point, this came
Speaker 2: just a few months after her husband had died, So
Speaker 2: when Madame Rosselle got out of that jail cell, she
Speaker 2: did not feel good. And the end of the story
Speaker 2: takes a really dramatic turn.
Speaker 1: There ended up being no trial.
Speaker 2: Because in the days before Madame Mirtelle's maid found her
Speaker 2: dead in her bathtub. Her neck had been sliced with
Speaker 2: a knife from one side to the other, and she
Speaker 2: had bled out in the water. Most people at the
Speaker 2: time and also historians, agreed that this was a suicide.
Speaker 2: Other people say it might have been a murder, but
Speaker 2: there's very little evidence to support that. Guys, I know
Speaker 2: this is really sad at the end, and I promise
Speaker 2: next week, well not next week, because we're going to
Speaker 2: do another sad one, but the week after that, we're
Speaker 2: going to do something really stupid.
Speaker 1: Okay, I promise.
Speaker 2: After Madame Marstelle was found dead, there's a huge response
Speaker 2: to it in the newspapers. Most people at the time
Speaker 2: were saying they didn't like the fact that she did abortions,
Speaker 2: but another newspaper called out Comstock, being like, why the
Speaker 2: hell are you dressing up and tricking people into selling
Speaker 2: you stuff that incriminates them.
Speaker 1: That's fucked up.
Speaker 2: This one newspaper wrote, no matter what the wretched woman
Speaker 2: was who took her own life with her own hand yesterday,
Speaker 2: her death has not freed the world from the last
Speaker 2: of detestable characters. Whatever she was, she had her rights.
Speaker 2: As always, we learn a lesson on American Filth and
Speaker 2: I think the lesson we learned today is that it
Speaker 2: has always been.
Speaker 1: Great to be a woman in America. Que the credits.
Speaker 2: American Film is a production of School of Humans and
Speaker 2: iHeart Podcast. This episode was written, hosted, sound designed, etc.
Speaker 1: By Me Gabby Watts.
Speaker 2: Our senior producer is Amelia Brock, and our executive producers
Speaker 2: are Elsie Crowley, Virginia Prescott and Brandon Barr. You can
Speaker 2: follow along with the pod at American Filth Pod on Instagram,
Speaker 2: and please leave a review, leave some stars, leave some comments,
Speaker 2: get that algorithm going. Tell your friends about the show,
Speaker 2: tell your enemies about the show, tell your doctor, tell
Speaker 2: your GUYO about the frickin' show. Okay, and also come
Speaker 2: to American phil Live on June twenty ninth, talk at
Speaker 2: you next time.
Speaker 1: School of Humans