mass of St. Francis Xavier’s College, was a shabby, brownstone building,
Number 46 West Fifteenth Street. After the two years of gathering
statistical histories at 104 Fifth Avenue we decided in 1925 the time
had come to expand, and moved to this second home of the Clinical
Research Bureau. It was next to an express agency, three steps down from
the street, which was generally lined with trucks since the section was
thick with lofts, factories, and warehouses—not particularly attractive,
but inexpensive, and we had a happy Irish landlord who helped convert
the English basement into offices and reception rooms.
The clinic was a neighborly place where mothers could congregate. We
tried to keep it home-like, so that they would not feel an atmosphere of
sickness or disease. The patients were accorded just as much
consideration as a business house gave its clients, and not, as in many
doctors’ anterooms, made to wait indefinitely; they were usually nervous
enough anyhow without having to endure added suspense. Moreover, they
had husbands and children to feed and care for, and every hour was
precious to them. As they increased, staff increased; two physicians
were always on hand. We shortly included the first floor, and finally
occupied the three.
About a year before we had changed our location Lord Buckmaster had
introduced in the august House of Lords the memorable resolution which
we had discussed when I had been last in England.
Rarely had such an eloquent voice been lifted for our cause:
I would appeal on behalf ... of the women upon whose bare backs
falls the untempered lash of the primeval curse declaring that “in
sorrow thou shalt bring forth children,” the women with the pride
and glory of their life broken and discrowned, and the flower of
motherhood turned into nothing but decaying weeds; and on behalf of
the children who are thrust into this world unwanted, unwelcomed,
uncherished, unsustained, the children who do not bring trailing
behind them clouds of glory but the taint of inherited disease, and
over whose heads there may hover for ever the haunting horror of
inherited madness; on behalf of them all I would appeal and as men
who believe in the great future of our race, I beg of you, I
earnestly entreat you, to support the motion that I seek to move.
It is said that these women whom we seek to benefit are so indolent,
so ignorant, so foolish that they will not come for the information.
It is not merely that they do come, but the people who make that
statement do that which men so often do—they overlook the women’s
side of the question. What to a man may be a mere triviality, an act
between a sleep and a sleep and forgotten in a moment, may bring to
the woman the terror of consequences that we cannot measure, of
months of sickness, misery, and ill health, ending with hours of
agony that are not veiled under the cloak of chloroform’s most
merciful sleep. These are the people that we want to help.
We, too, were dedicated to help such women, and each day brought more to
the doors of our clinic than we could provide instruction for, from all
over the country and of all classes. Some weeks so many Italian women
crowded in that we had to employ an interpreter. Then droves of Spanish
or of Jewish arrived.
Merely judging by the letters that had come to me I was prepared to find
many psychological problems presented. I often thought of the high cost
of small families for women who had more or less restricted their
procreative powers through other means than contraception. Although the
size was limited, it was frequently accompanied by marital unhappiness
and hidden psychic disturbances. But the kindness of Dr. Stone aided
immeasurably in our informal “court of domestic relations.”
One hot July day when I was coming out of the clinic I saw a woman,
obviously pregnant, carrying a year-and-a-half-old baby, dragging
another one, only a trifle bigger, crying behind her. The little girl’s
shoes were too short and were pinching her toes. I squirmed myself,
remembering my own squeezed feet as a child. I caught up with her.
“Can’t I carry one of the babies? This one seems tired. Which way are
you going?”
“Can you tell me where the jail is?”
“The nearest one is on Spring Street, I think.”
“No, there’s a jail somewheres around here.”
“Didn’t you get the address?”
“Yes, but I left it on the table.”
“What do you want a jail for?”
“My man’s there.”
“What for?”
“Leaving me. He always does when I get like this.”
“How many children have you?”
“Nine.”
“How often has he left you?”
“This is the fourth time now.”
“Do you want any more children?”
“No!” emphatically.
“Did you ever know there was a way to stop having so many?”
She almost dropped the infant, took hold of me, and said, “They won’t
give it to me. I’m asking everybody. They’ll only give it to the rich.
He wants it. He’ll even have an operation. But nobody’ll tell us.”
I wrote down our street and number and said, “You go back to that place
where I met you, and the doctor there will tell you about it.”
The next day I was called up unofficially by a social worker, one of
those who used to send us cases on their own initiative. She wished to
explain to me: the husband would be let off if he promised to live with
his family and support them; otherwise he had to serve a sentence. His
wife had seen him and shown him my note; he had said he would rather go
to the Island for three years than come out, unless we could not only
guarantee his getting the information, but, furthermore, that it would
work. He was fed up with having a new baby every year.
We suggested he talk it over with us and bring his wife. She was silent,
glum, did not appear to know what it was all about. He was discouraged
and doubtful. We gave him the information and he departed. “I’m the one
to do this. She won’t,” glaring at his wife, who tagged on behind him.
We hoped for the best.
About half a year later both returned for the check-up, she with her
hand on his arm. This vague, dumb, immobile woman was now in spruce
jacket and skirt, head up, stepping lightly. You would never have known
her for the same person. The two were off to the movies together.
Few social workers were understanding enough to smooth the lives of
people in such difficulties. One agency was told by a doctor that a
certain family on its rolls must not increase; the mother had already
borne four babies and had a bad heart. A visiting nurse relayed this to
the husband one Sunday morning when he was home from work. “If your wife
becomes pregnant again, you’ll be a murderer.”
He was frightened. “I don’t want to kill her. What shall I do?”
“Sleep alone.”
The husband’s disposition began to change; he became gloomy, would not
talk to his wife, was ugly in sudden tempers, slapped, shouted at, and
even kicked the children, rushed into the house to eat his meals and
then out again, not retreating to his own bed until after she was in
hers, which had been made up in the kitchen where it was warm. She was
so unhappy over the metamorphosis that she made tentative approaches,
whereupon he beat her and ran into the street. The next day she marched
to the nurses’ settlement to tell them what she thought of them. “If all
you can do is keep my husband from me, stay away. I’d rather be dead
than live like this!”
The case was taken to a physician, who sensibly warned, “You can’t
separate people by such barriers. That’s not the answer.”
Then she was sent to us. After she had been instructed the tension
lessened and the domestic situation was remedied.
In another family of six children, the husband, part Italian and part
some other nationality, was affectionate and irresponsible. Every time
he walked in the door, wreathed in smiles, his wife greeted him with
frowns and scowls. She threw dishes and pots at him. He thought she was
crazy and asked to have her committed. A psychiatrist talked to her and
found she was in deadly fear of being pregnant again. When we saw her
she really appeared to be demented.
One forenoon, six months later, as I passed through the waiting room,
the nurse at the desk tendered her usual, “Good morning, Mrs. Sanger.”
Immediately a neat, trim woman came over to me.
“Look at me,” she beamed. “You don’t know me. I was the one who sat
there and they said I was crazy. I don’t look crazy now, do I? I wasn’t
crazy then—just worried to death.”
For four years we went along in the clinic, working steadily,
straightening mental tangles and relieving physical distress when we
could. Then, early in the morning of April 15, 1929, the telephone in my
apartment rang, startling me. I was pretty nervous, having been up all
night with Stuart, who had mastoiditis. His temperature was running
high, and he was suffering with terrible, indescribable pain.
I took off the receiver. “Hello. This is Anna. The police are here at
the clinic.” Briefly she related how they had descended without warning,
stamped into the basement, and were at that moment tearing things to
pieces.
With this meager information pounding through my brain I hastened to the
street, hailed a taxi, and urged the driver to go as fast as he could to
West Fifteenth Street.
The shade to the glass door was pulled down; the door itself was locked.
I knocked and a plain-clothes man of the Vice Squad opened it. “Well,
who are you?”
“I’m Mrs. Sanger and I want to come in.”
My request was passed on to a superior and I heard someone answer, “Let
her in.”
Inside, in a room more than ordinarily small because partitions had
sliced it up to make minute consultation booths, the patients were
sitting quietly, some of them weeping. Detectives were hurrying
aimlessly here and there like chickens fluttering about a raided roost,
calling to each other and, amid the confusion, demanding names and
addresses. The three nurses were standing around; Dr. Elizabeth Pissoort
was practically in hysterics.
Dr. Stone was aloof, utterly unmoved by the tumult and the noise. I have
always admired her attitude. This was the first time in her life she had
been arrested, yet she treated it so lightly. “Isn’t this fantastic?”
she remarked. “Only a few moments ago a visiting physician from the
Middle West asked one of the nurses whether we ever had any police
interference. ‘Oh, no,’ the nurse cheerfully replied. ‘Those days are
over.’”
Stocky Mrs. Mary Sullivan, head of the City Policewomen’s Bureau, was
superintending the raid in person. Her round, thick-set face might have
been genial when smiling, but was very terrifying when flushed with
anger. She was giving orders to her minions in such rapid succession
that it seemed impossible to keep pace with them. I tried to talk to
her, asking why she had come and what it was all about.
“You’ll see,” said Mrs. Sullivan, and went on directing the patrolmen
who were removing books from shelves, pictures and diagrams from walls,
and sweeping out the contents of medical cabinets. In their zeal I
noticed they were seizing articles from the sterilizers, such as gloves
and medicine droppers, having no sinister significance whatsoever. They
were also gathering up the various strange, weird devices patients had
brought us to inquire as to their efficacy, and which we exhibited as
curios.
Patrolwoman Anna McNamara, far less assured than her chief, was
consulting a list in her hand and turning over the case histories in the
files as swiftly as her fingers could move. Many of these contained the
personal confessions of women, some of whom had entrusted us with the
knowledge that their husbands had venereal disease or insanity. It ran
through my mind that dire misfortune could follow in the way of being
blackmailed by anyone obtaining the records.
I requested Mrs. Sullivan to show me her search warrant, and saw it had
been signed by Chief Magistrate McAdoo. Nevertheless, I cautioned her,
“You have no right to touch those files. Not even the nurses ever see
them. They are the private property of the doctors, and if you take them
you will get into trouble.”
“Trouble,” she snapped back. “I get into trouble? What about the trouble
you’re in?”
“I wouldn’t change mine for yours.”
“Well, this is _my_ party. You keep out.”
One of the policemen scooped up all the name cards and stuffed them into
a waste basket to be carried off as “evidence.” This was a prime
violation of medical ethics; nothing was more sacred to a doctor than
the confidences of his patients. Immediately Anna telephoned Dr. Robert
L. Dickinson at the Academy of Medicine that the police were
confiscating the case histories of patients and asked him to recommend a
lawyer. He suggested Morris L. Ernst, whom Anna then called.
Doctors, nurses, and evidence were being hustled into the street. The
patrol wagon had arrived, but I summoned taxicabs in which we rode to
the West Twentieth Street station. On the way I heard part of the story,
which accounted for my non-arrest. About three weeks earlier a woman who
had registered under the name of Mrs. Tierney had come for contraceptive
advice and, on examination, was found by both doctors to have rectocele,
cystocele, prolapsus of the uterus, erosions, and retroversion. Although
not informed of her exact condition, she was instructed, because another
pregnancy would be dangerous, and told to return for a check-up. She had
now done so under her rightful name of McNamara, including in her
entourage Mrs. Sullivan and a police squad.
Dr. Stone, Dr. Pissoort, and the three nurses were booked for violation
of Section 1142, though I attempted to explain the clinic had been
active for six years quite legally under the exception, Section 1145. At
Jefferson Market Court, to which we next traveled, Magistrate Rosenbluth
looked over the warrant and ordered a three-hundred-dollar bond for
each.
The succeeding morning I sent Stuart to a hospital for treatment; I had
to attend a meeting in Boston, and the day after that go to Chicago for
a series of lectures. Again I was obliged to leave him, and this time
with even more misgivings. At Buffalo came a telegram saying a mastoid
operation had been performed. At Chicago I telephoned the doctor and was
reassured. The moment my duties were over I hurried back to be with him,
and, incidentally, to attend the hearings.
I still had no idea of the fate of the case histories and had been very
worried. Now I learned that the evening after the raid Magistrate McAdoo
had been dining with Dr. Karl Reiland, my husband’s pastor. Dr. Reiland,
much upset, had remarked upon its outrageousness. Justice McAdoo, aghast
and horrified to find that, without reading it, he had signed this
warrant, just one of many laid on his desk, had called up the police
station without delay, saying that all the twenty-four histories must be
put in his safe and kept there until he arrived in the morning. He had
perceived instantly that those doctors’ records were going to be a
serious embarrassment.
One hundred and fifty cards, our sole memoranda of names and addresses,
were never restored. Catholic patients, whose records had thus been
purloined, received mysterious and anonymous telephone calls warning
them if they continued to go to the clinic their private lives would be
exposed. They came to us asking fearfully, “Will I get in the papers?”
Immediately after the raid various doctors volunteered to go on the
stand and testify as to the medical principles involved. The New York
County Medical Society was aroused and passed a resolution protesting
against the seizure. Through Dr. Dickinson’s foresightedness and
energetic interest the Academy of Medicine held a special meeting which
resolved:
We view with grave concern any action on the part of the authorities
which contravenes the inviolability of the confidential relations
which always have and should obtain between physicians and their
patients.
Police Commissioner Grover A. Whalen, then embroiled in a mortifying,
futile investigation of the murder of Arnold Rothstein, the gambler, had
termed the raid a “routine matter,” but when Dr. Linsley Williams,
Director of the Academy, wrote a letter of protest, he decided it might
not have been so routine as it had appeared, and apologized.
What had caused the raid in the first place? I employed the Burns
Detective Agency to sift the affair. Approximately fifty percent of our
cases were being sent by social workers on the lower East and West
Sides, a conglomerate of all peoples and classes, including Irish,
Italians, and other Catholics. So many had benefited and told their
neighbors that others also were asking of their agencies how to get to
our clinic. Catholic social workers, at a monthly meeting with officials
of the Church, had sought guidance in replying to parishioners, and the
ecclesiastics had been shocked to find that a clinic existed. Catholic
policewomen had been summoned, Mary Sullivan had been chosen to wipe out
the Clinical Research Bureau, and Mrs. McNamara selected for the decoy.
Morris Ernst, who had accepted our case, had already won a reputation
for his espousal of liberal causes. It was most encouraging to discover
a lawyer who was as convinced as we that the principle of the law was
the important issue. Although he seemed very young, the moment I talked
with him I recognized here was the person for us. He was a good
psychologist as well as a good lawyer. He tried to bring everything out,
but wanted the evidence correct and the minds of the witnesses straight
as to what had happened.
On April 21st, when Magistrate Rosenbluth called the case, the attitude
in the courtroom was far different from anything exhibited at previous
birth control hearings. Only one witness was heard that day, Mrs.
McNamara. In spite of the hostility of Assistant District Attorney
Hogan, which was to be expected, and in spite of the Magistrate’s
prompting that she was a policewoman and not required to tell all, Mrs.
McNamara was made to confess she had set out deliberately to deceive the
clinic doctors. As she testified under Mr. Ernst’s cross-examination
what she had done, her stolid face turned from pink to purple. On her
first visit she had learned the routine and on her second, being left
alone, had copied down the number of every name card lying on Dr.
Stone’s desk.
Murmurs rose among the spectators, a melodious sound to ears still
echoing with the harsh and suspicious accents of a mere twelve years
before.
After forty minutes Magistrate Rosenbluth adjourned the hearing over our
protests; if the object had been to secure a quieter and less
sympathetic audience the ensuing day it failed. Now physicians took the
stand: Dr. Dickinson, Dr. Frederick C. Holden, Dr. Foster Kennedy, the
neurologist. The climax came when Mr. Hogan asked Dr. Louis T. Harris,
former Commissioner of Health of New York City, whether he had ever
given any information to a patient regardless of a marriage certificate.
Dr. Harris answered, “The birth control clinic is a public health work.
Every woman desiring treatment is asked whether she is married.”
“Don’t they have to bring their marriage certificates with them?”
“No.”
The Magistrate leaned forward ponderously and heavily. “Does not the
clinic send out social workers to discover the truth of patients’
statements?”
Mr. Ernst interpolated, “Did you ever know of a situation where a doctor
dispatched a detective to find out whether his patient were married?”
Loud laughter came from the listeners. Judge Rosenbluth pounded his
gavel. “Unless there is absolute silence I shall clear the court room.”
Then, seeming to grow more angry, he added, “On second thought I shall
clear it anyhow. Out you go.”
The joke was on him. It was the doctors who had laughed the loudest and
their presence as witnesses could not be dispensed with. Following a
fifteen-minute recess the audience was once again in the room, more
partisan than ever.
Young Mr. Hogan tried to be dramatic, but he failed before our
attorney’s cold uncompromising logic. He took up one of the pessaries
that had been appropriated in the raid and addressed Dr. Harris. “You
know that the laws of New York State are that contraception may be given
only for the cure or prevention of disease. Do you dare to claim this
article will cure tuberculosis? Will it cure cancer, high blood
pressure, heart disease, kidney disease?”
Again came mirth. No one assumed a pessary or any other form of
contraceptive could effect a cure. “But,” replied Dr. Harris, “in
preventing conception it may be said to cure because pregnancy can often
be the cause of furthering the progress of a disease.”
A month later the defendants were discharged, Magistrate Rosenbluth
writing an admirably lucid, fair, and definite decision:
Good faith in these circumstances is the belief of the physician
that the prevention of conception is necessary for a patient’s
health and physical welfare.
Mrs. Sullivan was temporarily demoted. She continued, however, to be
paid the same salary as before, and was eventually restored to rank.
It was an ill wind that did not blow somebody good. After this our
calendars were filled three weeks in advance, and we had to add two
evenings a week to the daily routine. To our amazement among the many
patients there appeared one afternoon Mrs. McNamara, who had first heard
in court of her five ailments, every one of which legally entitled her
to contraceptive information. She had come back to ask Dr. Stone whether
she really had so many things the matter with her, and was assured the
diagnosis was correct.
The raid had been one of the worst errors committed by the opposition,
because it had touched the doctors in a most sensitive spot, the
sanctity of records, and they were obliged to stand by us, whether they
wanted to or not. Even so we were not yet certain that the question had
been settled for all time. At any moment our Irish landlord might
receive orders from his bishop to eject us. To avoid any such
contingency and to take care of the increasing numbers, in 1930 we
bought a house of our own at Seventeen West Sixteenth Street.
Our new building gave us not only more room for patients but better
opportunities for research. It was a sad commentary that though medicine
had evolved into the preventive state where it was causing a revolution
in sanitation and health education, contraceptive technique had been
little advanced since the days of Mensinga.
However, research was going on in various lands under the most diverse
conditions. A modern clinic had started up again in the Netherlands, a
memorial to Aletta Jacobs and bearing her name. It was based on the old
Rutgers standards which had lapsed for so long. America and England, as
the consequence of guiding the movement along professional lines and
putting emphasis on the keeping of records, had made the greatest
strides. But all accomplishments needed to be correlated, co-ordinated,
unified in a scientific conference. Zurich was a central location for
many countries, and, in addition, offered beautiful scenery in
abundance; it was a pleasant place to be.
September 1, 1930, some one hundred and thirty physicians and directors
of clinics from different parts of the world began comparing notes and
reporting progress. Only the present generation was behind the times. A
representative from the Netherlands one day stood up, a rather youthful
person, and said, “I am glad to announce that at last we in the
Netherlands have also a birth control clinic.” This was extraordinary in
view of the fact that the Netherlands had been the pioneer country and
had inspired us all.
Even more recently I encountered a young matron, a member of the
American Birth Control League and head of the state organization in New
Jersey, who had again utterly disassociated herself from history. She
urged, “Mrs. Sanger, can’t we convert you to the establishment of
clinics? You know, they’re going, they’re being established all over the
country.”
“When were you born?” was all I could gasp.
These two women epitomized a day which had not studied what had gone
before; if new to their minds, then it was new.