MADAME RESTELL

A biography of the determined woman who battled misogyny to help women in need in 19th-century New York City.

Ann Trow (1812-1878) came to the U.S. from her native England in 1831 with her husband and young daughter, hoping to make a living as a seamstress. Two years later, her husband was dead, she and her daughter were living in a Manhattan slum, and she was desperate to earn enough to support them both. As Wright recounts in a sharp, lively biography, Ann soon managed not only to support herself, but to become one of the wealthiest women of her time. From a local apothecary, she learned how to create pills that would bring on a miscarriage; it’s likely that he taught her, as well, how to perform surgical abortions. In 1836, she remarried, and she and her new husband set out to bolster her business as an abortion and birth control provider. She styled herself the faintly aristocratic Madame Restell, claimed she had learned medicine from her French grandmother, and advertised widely. Praised as a “female physician to the human race” and widely profiled by journalists who found her charming, Restell took up residence in a respected part of town, where her business thrived. In narrating Restell’s story, Wright chronicles the history of abortion in America, which became increasingly criminalized during the 19th century, as physicians, religious leaders, and politicians demanded control over women’s bodies. Restell was first arrested in 1839, spent two months in the notorious Manhattan prison The Tombs in 1841, and six months in a penitentiary in 1848—where she was given unheard-of privileges, such as wearing her own fashionable clothing rather than prison garb. Several times she was falsely accused by women of having botched their abortions, and even though her own lawyers prevailed, Restell’s reputation became tarnished. Now, when once again women’s access to reproductive care is being impeded, Wright’s well-researched biography is not only interesting, but, sadly, timely.

A fresh contribution to women’s history.