Wednesday, September 03, 2008

1859: Two doctors bungle abortion, killing factory worker

Mary E. Visscher, who worked at a hoop-skirt factory in Brooklyn, was keeping company with a man named Mr. Wright. On August 23, 1859, she left the home of Mrs. C. Perrine, where she had been a boarder, saying that she was going first to Jersey City, then to Philadelphia. She asked Mrs. Perrine to keep the trip a secret.

Mrs. Perrine said that Mary "always behaved like a lady" and had been in good health as long as she had been at her home. Mrs. Perrine had never seen Mary take any medicine except salts for headaches.

Mrs. Mary Sherman, who owned the hoop-skirt factory, said that Mary had worked for her for about a year. She said that Mary had come to her saying she was going to New Jersey and Philadelphia and asking her to keep the trip a secret. Like Mrs. Perrine, Mrs. Sherman had no idea that Mary might be pregnant.

Mary did not, however, go to New Jersey or Philadelphia. She instead went to the "stylish" house of two female physicians, Elizabeth Byrns and Mary E. Smith, who practiced "midwifery", as obstetrics was often then referred to, especially when practiced by a female physician. Byrns and Smith said that Mary had come to their home to be treated for back pain due to a fall, and that they'd not even know she was pregnant until after the abortion, which they attributed the abortion "to the imprudence of deceased herself." The abortion took place on August 27, and Mary "lingered" until her death from peritonitis on Saturday, September 3.

The coroner's jury decided that Byrnes had performed the abortion, with the prior knowledge of Smith, who was charged as an accessory before the fact.

For more on pre-legalization abortion, see The Bad Old Days of Abortion

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