Monday, March 19, 2012

Professional Abortionists' Work in 1867, 1907, 1916, and 1932.

Mary E. Noble, age 38, died at her home on March 19, 1867. She had been separated from her husband, Ayers, due to her involvement with another man, George Carson. She had moved to New York from Jersey City with her son, D.W., to help to keep her pregnancy a secret. Mary's lover helped to arrange the abortion, giving the doctor, Wm. F.J. Thiers, alias Dr. Dubois, a down payment of $10 toward a $35 abortion. It took Thiers three tries to successfully abort Mary's unborn baby. She took in on February 21. Her lover fetched in Thiers several times to care for her, but after two treatments Thier, like many modern safe-n-legal abortionists, had washed his hands of her, so Carson found another doctor whose efforts to save Mary ultimately failed. Mary's husband had been summoned to her bedside when she took sick, but she died before he could reach her. Before her death, she had confessed the abortion to her brother-in-law. The coroner's jury concluded that Mary had died from pyemia, "resulting from an abortion produced by the prisoner. They further hold Amelia Armstrong, alias Madame Dubois, as accessory before the fact." When the police went to arrest Thiers, they had found his home "sumptuously and comfortably fitted up." There were four women there who admitted that they were there for abortions, and "An examination of the premises resulted in the discovery of an immense collection of letters ... in relation to malpractices."

On March 19, 1907, Mrs. Bessie Simons, age 30, died at her Chicago home from complications of a criminal abortion performed there that day. Dr. C. D. Hughes was arrested in the death.

On March 19, 1916, 30-year-old Carolina Petritz died at the Chicago office of midwife Paulina Erlomus, who had perpetrated the fatal abortion there that day. Erlomus was held by the Coroner but the case never went to trial.

Geraldine Easley, age 19, admitted before her death on March 19, 1932, that she had undergone a criminal abortion. Since Dr. James W. Eisiminger and Dr. Richard E. Thacker had been responsible for a string of other criminal abortion deaths in the Oklahoma City area, suspicion in Geraldine's death naturally leaned toward the two known quack abortionists.

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