Boston Pre- and Post-Roe (episode 317)

Transcript

Jake:
[0:04] Welcome to Hub History, where we go far beyond the freedom trail to share our favorite stories from the history of Boston, the Hub of the Universe.

Introduction to Boston’s History

Jake:
[0:14] This is Episode 317, Boston Pre- and Post-Row. Hi, I’m Jake. This week, I’ll be talking about a sad anniversary in Boston history. 30 years ago this week, Brookline became the site of the most deadly anti-abortion violence in American history. At least up to that point. Sadly, right-wing extremists and religious terrorists have since eclipsed the blood that was shed on Beacon Street on December 30th, 1994. On that day, two women’s health clinics were targeted by a radical with a gun because, along with pap smears, birth control, and STD screenings, they provided abortion care. His shooting spree left two people dead, five wounded, and fit into a national pattern of violence against abortion providers.

Jake:
[1:11] I’m going to spend a few minutes talking about that heartbreaking case from 1994, and then I’ll replay part of an old episode about what could happen to pregnant women in Boston before Roe v. Wade legalized abortion in America. I’m going with a partial rerun, in part because it’s important to hear the deadly consequences of abortion bans, as red states make proper healthcare criminal, and in part because I’m working on another project right now. I’m not going to say too much about it just yet, because I don’t want to jinx it, but if and when it comes together, you’re going to love listening to it. But before we talk about Boston before and after Roe, I just want to pause and say a big thank you to everyone who supports Hub History on Patreon. Our latest sponsor is Tyson L., who’s actually our financial planner, who’s busy making sure that we’ll be able to retire one of these days. If you’re in need of retirement advice, feel free to get in touch with me, and I’ll pass along his contact info. He does a good job simplifying complicated economic and financial concepts for a dummy like me, and I think he’s put us on a solid path to retirement so far.

Jake:
[2:24] Plus, if I refer you, he’ll probably send me a gift basket. The support of listeners like Tyson means that I can keep up with podcasting expenses, like the video conference software I use for interviews, our media hosts, website hosting and security fees, and all the incidentals that come up along the way. To everyone who’s already supporting the show, thank you. If you’re not yet supporting the show and you’d like to start, it’s easy. Just go to patreon.com slash hubhistory or visit hubhistory.com and click on the support us link. And thanks again to all our new and returning sponsors.

The Tragic Events of December 30, 1994

Jake:
[3:05] Now it’s time for this week’s main topic. At about 10 in the morning, on December 30th, 1994, a young man dressed all in black with a black overcoat walked up the short set of stairs outside the Planned Parenthood clinic that was located on the first floor of a typical brownstone, at 1031 Beacon Street in Brookline, just across the bridge over the pike from Kenmore Square. The building’s gone now, and the lot’s used for parking until the next round of construction redevelops it into something new. In fact, I used to park there at my last job on days when I didn’t take the train. Inside the lobby, the young man turned left, and he pressed the buzzer to be let into the waiting room. Inside the waiting room, he pulled a Ruger 10-22 rifle with a folding stock out of a black duffel bag, and he opened fire without warning.

Jake:
[3:56] Anjana Agrawal, a 30-year-old medical assistant in the clinic, was the first victim. Shot several times in the chest and abdomen, she crawled out of the room and was later able to recover after a long hospitalization. To the right of the door that led back to the exam rooms sat Shannon Lowney, the 25-year-old receptionist. She had graduated from BU in 1991 and was working toward a master’s in social work. A bullet hit her in the neck, and she died instantly. Her brother told The Globe, She died doing what she believed in. Shannon was committed to, and worked to help provide women, the right to choose. Two young men who had been accompanying patients were also hit, as the gunman fired about a dozen shots at random around the waiting room. The shooter then walked back out the front door, apparently tucking his rifle back into the duffel bag and getting into a black pickup truck outside. Investigators would later find that he had a map of Boston with the route to another maternal health clinic highlighted. He must have gotten really lucky with traffic and lights, because he made it over two miles down Beacon, almost to Cleveland Circle, and found parking in less than ten minutes.

Jake:
[5:14] Preterm Health Services was located across Beacon Street from the Englewood Ave Stop on the D-Line. Today, it’s a professional building for the Longwood Dental Group. 38-year-old Leanne Nichols was sitting at the desk inside. Over the course of several years, she’d worked her way up from receptionist and now worked as a phone counselor for the clinic. The gunman turned to her and asked, Is this preterm? When she said yes, he pulled the rifle back out of his bag and shot her in the chest from about three feet away. The shot startled Jane Sauer, who was making photocopies a few feet away. She half-turned, and the next bullets hit her in the back and hip. As the shooter leveled his rifle at her again, a security guard stepped out of the back room. The guard later said that the shooter was mumbling a prayer, but looked like the devil in that moment, with glazed eyes and a twisted countenance.

Jake:
[6:13] Raising the rifle from Sauer, he fired at the guard instead. Drawing his own gun, the guard fired back as he took cover behind an open door. The guard was shot in the wrist, bicep, and shoulder, but said he was pretty sure he had hit the gunman as well. It later turned out that he missed, but he forced the shooter to flee and to drop the duffel bag that he had carried during both shootings. The physician on duty at preterm heard the shots and rushed into the waiting room, where Leanne was already unconscious. He tried to provide first aid, but told the Globe that he was unable to stop her bleeding. She died in my arms, he said. There was nothing I could do.

Jake:
[6:56] The shooter ran back out the front door, looked up and down Beacon Street, and fired two shots at a parked car. He took a few steps, then stopped and looked up and down the street again, leading witnesses to tell the police that he seemed to be waiting for a car to pick him up. Then he walked briskly about two blocks up Beacon, turned their corner onto Air Street where his truck was parked, and disappeared. This wasn’t the first violence against women’s health care providers in the U.S., and it wouldn’t be the last. Since Roe v. Wade and tried the right to choose in 1973, a protest movement against abortion had been growing. That nascent movement was sent into overdrive when the Reagan campaign realized that abortion could be exploited as a wedge issue, with extremist rhetoric from the religious right inspiring growing violence against abortion providers. There were dozens of bombings and arson attacks against clinics that provide abortions every year from the mid-80s to the early 90s. But most of them were carried out where the clinics were closed. The first fatality came in March 1993, when OBGYN David Gunn was shot and killed as he left his office in Pensacola, Florida.

Jake:
[8:13] Five months later, Dr. George Tiller was shot five times as he left his Kansas City practice. but he lived and returned to work the next day. Another 11 months later, Dr. George Britton, who took over the Pensacola practice after Dr. Gunn’s murder, was shot and killed outside the same clinic in July 1994.

The Broader Context of Anti-Abortion Violence

Jake:
[8:34] A bodyguard was killed alongside him. Now, that same December, seven people had been shot in Brookline, and two young women were dead. You’d think that a movement that calls itself pro-life would have taken a moment for self-examination, but they did not. Instead, dozens of pro-life leaders signed a public statement that argued that the murder of abortion providers was an affirmative good, inspiring future attacks. In 1996, Eric Rudolph planted a pipe bomb in Atlanta during the Summer Olympics. He killed one person and injured over a hundred. In a statement, he He said that the attack was to confound anger and embarrass the Washington government in the eyes of the world for its abominable sanctioning of abortion on demand.

Jake:
[9:27] He went on to bomb abortion clinics in Georgia and Alabama, where an overnight security guard was killed, as well as planting a bomb in a lesbian bar in Atlanta. In October 1998, Dr. Bernard Sleepien was shot and killed by a sniper while he was standing at his kitchen sink. Another anti-abortion extremist who was suspected of shooting and wounding at least four other abortion providers in upstate New York was eventually convicted of Sleepien’s murder. Dr. George Tiller, who survived that 1993 attack in Kansas City, was shot in the head and killed in his church in 2009 by an anti-abortion extremist. And in November 2015, 13 people were shot and one killed by a gunman with an AR-15 who described himself as a warrior for babies.

Jake:
[10:20] In the meantime, hundreds of bombing and arson attacks have been carried out around the country, including at least three as recently as 2023. Though it’s been eclipsed since then, in December 1994, the attack in Brookline was the bloodiest anti-abortion violence in American history. And by the morning after the shooting, police had publicly announced the name of the suspect. After the security guard at preterm services started the shooter into dropping his duffel bag, the police found a .22 caliber handgun, hundreds of rounds of ammunition, and spare magazines and the receipt for a newly purchased Ruger 10-22, which was used to carry out the shootings. On the receipt from a New Hampshire gun store was the name of the purchaser, 22-year-old John Salvey of Hampton Beach.

Jake:
[11:12] As an aside, I know this isn’t, like, the gun podcast, but the Ruger 10-22 is a remarkably inappropriate gun for an attack like this. The .22 long rifle caliber is basically the least deadly firearm in the market, and a list of fatalities would have almost certainly been longer if Salvi had used another gun. And on top of that, a legal buyer would have had no problem buying something chambered for a heavier round in New Hampshire in 1994, so I don’t really understand why he chose the Ruger. But this puzzling choice probably saved lives. As the media shared photos of John Salvey and his black Toyota pickup plastered with dramatically retouched pictures of aborted fetuses, both clinic workers and anti-abortion protesters recognized him as a frequent presence among the snarling faces screaming at patients outside the clinics he had attacked. Salvi worked at a hair salon on the Hampton Beach Strip, but a co-worker said that he seemed more like a janitor than a hairdresser. Just a few days before his shooting spree, Salvi had stood up in the middle of Christmas Eve Mass and started haranguing the priest about what he saw as the shortcomings in the Catholic Church.

Jake:
[12:29] Now, he’d disappeared. By the time the Globe went to press the day after the shooting, John Salvi’s name was on the front page. John Salvey, however, was in Virginia. He’d apparently been driving for much of the day, and checked into an econo lodge in Emporia, Virginia at about 4 a.m. on New Year’s Eve. After a few hours sleep, he drove to the Hillcrest Women’s Clinic in nearby Norfolk. Just before noon, he opened fire again, shooting out the glass in the clinic’s unlocked back door. An arson investigator who happened to be nearby saw him open fire, called for backup, and gave chase. When police pulled him over, Salvi tossed his rifle out of the truck and surrendered.

Jake:
[13:17] After his extradition to Massachusetts, John Salvey stood trial at the courthouse in Dedham Square, where defendants like Sacco and Vanzetti, the Mill and Faber gang, and Karen Reed have been tried over the decades. The trial started on the 6th of February, 1996. With media interest around the case reaching a frenzy, TV crews were barred from the courtroom, while still cameras were allowed. Salvi took advantage of the coverage, repeatedly holding up handwritten manifestos to the cameras in hopes of getting them into the newspapers. After being admonished by the judge for this, he flipped over the defense table on the second day of the trial and had to be tackled by court officers. Salvi never denied having carried out the attacks, but his attorneys tried to pursue an insanity defense. A jury found him guilty of two counts of first-degree murder and five counts of armed assault with intent to murder. He was given two life sentences, plus an additional 18 to 20 years for the assaults. You know, just in case. After eight months at MCI Walpole, John Salvey was found under his bed with a garbage bag secured around his neck. His death was ruled a suicide.

Jake:
[14:39] Now I want to pivot to a classic story from Boston history. This was originally released in January 2020, in the last year of President Trump’s first term. He had already appointed two right-wing justices to the U.S. Supreme Court, and it seemed increasingly likely that Roe was in danger as the balance on the court shifted further and further to the right. Just a few months later, extremist judge Amy Coney Barrett was appointed to succeed liberal lion Ruth Bader Ginsburg. And in 2022, this new court ruled in the Dobbs decision that abortion was no longer constitutionally protected in the United States.

A Look Back: Boston in 1879

Jake:
[15:19] Since then, much of the country has been plunged back into the dark conditions that existed in Massachusetts in 1879, which is when this story takes place. The headline on the front page of the Boston Globe screamed, Murder and Mutilation in the City of Shoes. The year was 1879, and the city of Lynn was in the middle of an industrial boom that earned it the nickname City of Shoes.

Jake:
[15:47] Shoemaking had been a cottage industry since the city’s founding, and by the early 19th century, ten-footer shops abounded in backyards and alleys around Lynn. A single artisan could hand-make about five shoes per day in one of these ten-foot-by-ten-foot shops, as immortalized by Henry Wilson, the shoemaker from Natick who went on to be Ulysses S. Grant’s vice president. A replica of his 10-footer is a familiar landmark along the Boston Marathon course, just before Mile 9.

Jake:
[16:17] Later in the 1800s, backyard shops gave way to factory floors, as industrialization allowed the mass production of punched and shaped leather uppers, stamped soles, and stacked heels, thanks to machines largely developed in Lynn. In 1879, workers still hand-stretched the uppers over a wooden form called the last, then nailed them to the soles and heels. A few years later, however, another Lynn innovator, emigrant Jan Metzlinger, would develop a machine to automate that step as well. For about a century, Lynn’s title as the City of Shoes would be unchallenged. It was along the banks of the river dividing Lynn from its neighbor Saugus, along today’s Salem Turnpike near the Rumney Marsh, where evidence of a terrible tragedy washed up on February 27, 1879. The next day’s Boston Globe described the scene.

Jake:
[17:13] Shortly before 6 o’clock this afternoon, a man named Michael Daly, who was employed as a coal screener on William Newell’s coal wharf near the Saugus and Lynn line, discovered an object lying on the marshes, about 20 rods to the south of Fox Hill Bridge, and within a few rods of the place where he was at work. At first, Daly thought it was a block of wood, and he started to get it for firewood. But upon closer examination, he found it was an old-fashioned leather trunk. And upon still closer examination, he found to his horror that it contained the dead body of a young lady. One end of the trunk was broken in, evidently by the floating ice, and through the aperture protruded one of the woman’s arms.

Jake:
[17:58] Shocked, Daly called the Lynn police, who began an investigation. The article continues, The trunk measured 2 feet 4 3⁄8 inches in length, fifteen and one quarter inches in depth and eighteen and seven eighths inches in width and when it was opened the woman was found doubled up the right leg was drawn up under the body and the left drawn up over the breast the head inclined to one side and the position of the body gave unmistakable evidence that the brutal murderers were in great haste when they packed the body.

Jake:
[18:36] Imagine the horror you would feel if you discovered a grown woman’s disfigured body stuffed into a box just two feet long and a foot and a half wide. There was no thought that this might be an accident. However, discovering who the woman was and what had happened to her turned out to be surprisingly challenging. The medical examiner later published an article in the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal about the case, and it describes the efforts that had been expended to disguise and dispose of the body. The trunk had been weighted with several bricks and three old porter bottles, one of which, by a curious miscalculation as it appeared, was empty and corked, thus acting as a buoy.

Jake:
[19:17] The nose of the victim had been severed by a clean cut, extending from the bridge downwards through bones and cartilage, with the obvious purpose of preventing the recognition of the body in case it should be discovered. That this mutilation was accomplished after death, I assured myself, from the fact that there was no injection of the edges of the wound, no retraction of the skin, and no traces whatsoever of the copious bleeding, which must inevitably have occurred if it had been affected during life. The hair had been cut recently and hastily as it appeared, inasmuch as the ends were irregular and some loose masses adhered to the person of the deceased. In their efforts to prevent the identification of the body, the criminals in this case may manifested considerable shrewdness in cutting off the nose, for the effect of depriving the face of this important feature is very largely to destroy its characteristic expression.

Jake:
[20:10] This is an element of the case that I found surprising when I read it. You wouldn’t think that a missing nose would make a familiar face completely unrecognizable, but that seems to have been the case. In fact, over the three weeks it took to identify the victim, there were several cases of false identification. The ME describes the process.

Jake:
[20:33] While I was making the autopsy, a member of the police force in Lynn confidently asserted that the body was that of Miss C, who had disappeared from among her friends some two weeks previously. In order to make assurance doubly sure, a brother-in-law of the young woman was sent for, and the autopsy suspended to allow him to look upon the face. He came in excited and trembling, and after some hesitation declared his belief that the dead body was that of his wife’s sister, but a few hours later she was found in a boarding house. This was only the beginning of a long series of positive identifications, all but the last ending either in finding the person alive or in the development of some other circumstance which disproved the supposed identity. One man from a neighboring town declared the remains to be those of his daughter who was missing from home, he being convinced to the contrary only by the discovery of the erring one in a house of ill fame in Boston.

Jake:
[21:31] Another man was sure that it was his niece, but she too was found. In my opinion, these strange mistakes were the result of the peculiar effect produced by cutting off the nose. Had the mutilation been carried so far as to destroy all the features, those who were seeking to identify the body would have been obliged to depend on some mark or scar, and in this, they would be much less likely to be deceived, although such an occurrence would be quite possible. In death, of course, those peculiarities of expression which result from the play of the facial muscles and from the eyes are lost entirely.

Jake:
[22:07] The victim was of medium size, had tolerably regular features and brown hair, a description in brief which applies to a very large number of young women. Imagine these faces deprived of their living expression and of their most prominent feature, the nose, and you can understand to what a condition of uniformity all would be reduced, and what a confusion might arise from the attempt to identify.

The Discovery of a Horrific Crime

Jake:
[22:34] Despite having hastily cut her hair and mutilated her face, whoever threw the body in the river hadn’t thought to remove the earrings she was wearing. They were eventually found to match a pendant belonging to Jenny P. Clark of Boston Highlands. She’d been missing since she left the Dorchester home where she was employed as a domestic servant on February 12th. Her body was found on February 27th, which would have been her 20th birthday. Another careless mistake would eventually lead the police to make a series of arrests. The Boston newspapers covered the case in great detail, and a neighbor soon reported seeing a trunk matching the one in which Jenny Clark’s body was found in his neighbor’s shed. The neighbor lived and worked at 21 LaGrange Street, just off Tremont, steps from the Boston Common. The tenants at 21 LaGrange were Carolyn C. Goodrich and Daniel F. Kimball. who advertised themselves as physicians, with Carolyn also moonlighting as a storefront psychic. It turns out that they also had a different business, as the medical examiner’s report indicated. An autopsy held a few hours later developed the fact that the woman had died of peritonitis following or accompanying an abortion. The next section is going to be a bit graphic, so those with a weak stomach may want to fast forward by about a minute.

Jake:
[24:00] The medical examiner’s report further states that his autopsy revealed that an extremely aggressive infection had begun in the pelvic cavity, then it had extended but a short time before death to the parts above the brim. The proofs that an abortion had occurred may be summarily stated as follows. 1. The vulva was dark-colored and open and emitted a bad odor. The vagina was injected intensely so in its upper part. 2. The interior of the uterus was covered in a black, shreddy slime. On the right side, near the fundus, was a rough, raised, spongy-looking portion, obviously the point of a placental attachment. 3. The uterus was enlarged. 4. The ovaries were dark purple, and in the left was what appeared to be a true corpus luteum of pregnancy. 5. The breasts were full, and on pressure, milk exuded in considerable quantity from both breasts. In view of all these facts, it was to be regarded as certain, from a medical point of view, that an abortion had occurred, and that the inflammation which was the direct cause of death was its sequence.

Jake:
[25:18] In the months after her death, police, prosecutors, and reporters put together the details of the final days of Jenny Clark’s life. She worked in the home of Roxbury Hardware store owner Alan Adams and his wife, whose name isn’t given in the newspapers, as was customary at the time. Their shop was on Blue Hill Avenue, and their home was on Dudley Street. The Adamses would claim that they had no idea that Jenny was in distress or afflicted at the time she disappeared. Relying on their accounts, the July 17th Globe describes how Jenny made an excuse to be away from work on a certain day in February.

Jake:
[25:58] Perhaps urged into consenting by her paramour in order that his name might be saved from dishonor, perhaps desirous of so doing in order to conceal her own guilt, certain it is that for a day or two prior to the 12th of February, she spoke of her desire to visit her uncle in Milton. Mrs. Adams made no objection to her being absent from the house, and on February 12th, she left the house, taking with her not even a change of clothes, and only such things as could be put in a small paper bundle. She rode in a horse car from her home to the corner of Washington and Neyland Streets, where she alighted, and went directly to No. 21 LaGrange Street, where the arrangements had already been made for Mrs. Goodrich to perform the operation upon her.

Jake:
[26:43] The operation that Mrs. Goodrich performed on Ginny Clark was the 19th century equivalent of a pre-Roe v. Wade coat hanger abortion. A long, thin metal implement, exactly what she used was never proven, was inserted through the cervix and into the uterus. The idea behind this was to damage the fetal tissue or uterus enough that the pregnancy would no longer be viable, and a miscarriage would soon result. However, this procedure, like any abortion carried out without proper medical supervision, was incredibly risky. Dirty instruments or a puncture through the uterine wall into the intestines could very easily produce a fatal infection. Ginny Clark underwent the procedure on February 12th and remained under the care of Goodrich and Kimball overnight. The next day, she was moved to a private home in Somerville. There, a mother and daughter team would act as her nurses through the recovery process The duo were identified at first only as Mrs. And Miss Smith in police reports and news stories The July 17th Globe continues.

Jake:
[27:53] Arrangements have been made that Jenny should go to the house of a woman in Somerville who followed the vacation of nurse and also practiced baby farming Jenny remained at No. 21 LaGrange Street that night The operation was performed in the early hours of the evening, and at 9.30 on the following day, she left the house, walked to Tremont Street, and from there rode in the horse cars to the house wherein she died.

Jake:
[28:18] Now, baby farming was not a familiar term to me. I’m honestly not sure if it was a real thing in New England or simply an urban legend or cautionary tale. Baby farmers were believed to be women who would adopt children who were born as a result of unwanted pregnancies. Because they took in many infants for little money, it was widely believed that baby farmers would neglect or even murder their wards. There’s no evidence that Mrs. and Miss Smith acted as baby farmers, and they’re elsewhere simply referred to as nurses. Plus, they seem to have had good reputations in their community.

Jake:
[28:55] Almost immediately after arriving at this home in Somerville, Jenny Clark began complaining of cold-like symptoms. Soon she was wracked with chills, shivering, and her fever was spiking. By the 14th, she complained of searing pain throughout her body. And on February 18th, the procedure produced its intended result, a miscarriage. In the days before antibiotics, however, there was no recovering from the advanced infection taking over her body.

The Investigation Begins

Jake:
[29:25] After another week of conscious agony, Jenny Clark finally died on February 25th, nearly two weeks after she left home for the last time. After Kimball and Goodrich were arrested, Mrs. and Miss Smith turned themselves in to the police and agreed to testify in the case. They were able to confirm that in the evening after Ginny’s death, Daniel Campbell had come to their house. He cut Ginny’s hair and used a pair of dental forceps to amputate her nose. Then he contorted her body and forced it into the tiny trunk.

Jake:
[30:00] That night, Kimball drove a buggy pulled by a team of horses around Somerville, then around Saugus, looking for any way to dispose of the body. The ground was frozen solid, so he couldn’t bury it. He couldn’t risk leaving it in a field or woodlot where a farmer or a hunter might stumble across it. His best bet was to sink it in the water, but at bridge after bridge, the river or lake below was iced over. Finally, as he was about to cross into Lynn, he saw open water on the Saugus River below. He reined in the team, heaved the leather trunk over the rail, and watched it disappear presumably forever into the water below. The next day, Michael Daly found it.

Jake:
[30:44] With physical evidence and testimony from the Smiths, prosecutors felt confident in pressing charges against Kimball and Goodrich. They also made one more somewhat surprising arrest. Alan Adams, the hardware store owner who employed Jenny Clark, was arrested as an accomplice. The Globe reported on the deathbed statement by Jenny that the Smiths had relayed to the police. She said that until her acquaintance with Alan N. Adams, she had been a pure, virtuous girl. She was interested in the church, her Sabbath school class, and had many friends there. But to no one, save her mother, had she ever confessed her fall. To her mother she had confessed that she had yielded to her employer and promised to do so no more. Adams himself had counseled the procuring of the abortion and had himself attended to the preliminary arrangements, such as treating with Mrs. Goodrich and Dr. Kimball. She declared that he was the father of her child and that she had sinned with him alone.

Jake:
[31:48] Now, Kimball and Goodrich stood as the perpetrators, Adams was an accomplice, and the Smiths were cooperating witnesses who might otherwise be charged as accessories after the fact.

Understanding the Legal Context of Abortion

Jake:
[31:59] But what was the crime? You might imagine that before our modern, supposedly wildly permissive era, abortion was strictly outlawed in Puritan-descended Boston, and that perhaps it only became accessible after Roe v. Wade. As it turns out, nothing could be further from the truth.

Jake:
[32:19] In trying to understand the case of Jenny Clark, I went looking for the earliest regulation of abortion I could find in Massachusetts. As far as I can tell, the first precedent in Massachusetts’ jurisprudence was Commonwealth v. Isaiah Bangs. The case was decided by the Mass Supreme Judicial Court in 1812. Here’s the statement of fact summarizing the case. The defendant was indicted October term 1810 for assaulting and beating one Lucy Holman and administering to her a certain dangerous and deleterious draft or potion against her will, with intent to procure the abortion and premature birth of a bastard child, of which she was then pregnant, and which the defendant had before that time begotten of her body, et alien enormia, etc., to the great damage of the said Lucy, against good morals and good manners, in evil example to others in like case to offend, contrapecium, etc.

Jake:
[33:20] Isaiah Bangs sounds like a terrible boyfriend. The Solicitor General at the trial entered a noli prosiqui as to the assault and battery charged in the indictment. A verdict was found, at the same term, that the defendant was guilty of all the several matters charged in the indictment, accepting that the said potion was taken by the said Lucy voluntarily.

Jake:
[33:43] And I’ll just go ahead and apologize for all my Latin pronunciations. Attorneys and others, please send corrections. So the prosecutor in that case had elected not to pursue the assault and battery charge. Bangs was found guilty of some lesser charges, and testimony showed that Lucy had taken the abortifacient willingly. Because she had taken it willingly, the case ended up before the SJC on appeal, and the court’s ruling set an important precedent. If an abortion had been alleged and proved to have ensued, the averment that the woman was quick with child at the time is a necessary part of the indictment. Based on that, an indictment for criminal abortion requires affirmation that the woman was quick with child, so it’s going to help if we understand what that means. A case that was decided in 1845 both helps define what the law means by quick with child and builds on the precedent set in the 1812 case. The Mass. SJC and Chief Justice Lemuel Shaw ruled on an appeal by a woman who’d been arrested for providing abortions in 1843.

Jake:
[34:54] Lucyba Parker was charged with three counts of abortion and convicted of two, both of which the SJC overturned. The quarter of the opinion that at common law no indictment will lie for attempts to procure abortion with the consent of the mother until she is quick with child. It was only considered by the ancient common law that the child had a separate and independent existence when the embryo had advanced to that degree of maturity designated by the terms quick with child, although to many purposes, in reference to civil rights, an infant in vitri sem mer is regarded as a person and being. The words quick with child must be taken to be according to the common understanding, which was proved to be this, that a woman is not considered to be quick with child till she herself has felt the child alive and quick within her. The court are all of the opinion that although the acts set forth are in a high degree offensive to good morals and injurious to society, yet they are not punishable at common law, and that this indictment cannot be sustained.

Jake:
[36:04] So, in the mid-19th century, Massachusetts law looked to the precedent of ancient English common law to determine that any abortion before the mother had felt the fetus move was not a crime. Soon after that SJC decision, the legislature passed additional restrictions on abortion. This was near the beginning of a long, nationwide effort in the mid- and late-19th century to criminalize abortion. Starting in the 1850s, the American Medical Association would push to make abortion a crime. Largely because they wanted to delegitimize unlicensed medical practitioners who competed with their members. At the same time, social reformers of a certain class pushed to make abortion a crime because they believed that its widespread availability would lead to the extinction of the Anglo-Saxon race, as it was replaced by the offspring of Irish Catholics and other undesirable immigrants.

Jake:
[37:01] While these seemingly crackpot approaches would appear in Massachusetts in coming decades, the first round of abortion regulation was focused on the health of the mother. A law passed in 1845 had as its main goal the survival of the mother. It allowed for the prosecution of anyone who provided the medical or surgical means of abortion, but as long as the woman survived, the practitioner could only be charged with a misdemeanor. If she died, however, a felony was in order. Here’s the text of the law.

Jake:
[37:34] Whoever maliciously or without lawful justification with intent to cause and procure the miscarriage of a woman then pregnant with child shall administer to her prescribe for her or advise or direct her to take or swallow any poison drug medicine or noxious thing or shall cause or procure her with like intent to take or swallow any poison drug medicine or noxious thing and whoever maliciously and without lawful justification shall use any instrument or means whatever with the like intent, and every person with the like intent knowingly aiding and assisting such offender or offenders, shall be deemed guilty of felony, if the woman die in consequence thereof, and shall be imprisoned not more than twenty years, nor less than five years in the state prison. And if the woman doth not die in consequence thereof, such offender shall be guilty of a misdemeanor, and shall be punished by imprisonment, not exceeding seven years, nor less than one year, in the state Prisoner House of Correction or Common Jail and by fine not exceeding $2,000.

Jake:
[38:37] Now, I know that by the turn of the 20th century, there were more stringent abortion restrictions in place in Massachusetts. But as far as I can tell, when Jenny Clark died in 1879, only the 1845 law that differentiated between a fatal and non-fatal abortion was on the books. If we have any experts in 19th century abortion law in the audience, this is a time when I would welcome your corrections. The only other restriction I could find at the time was an 1847 law that banned advertising for medical or surgical abortions.

The Trial of Carolyn Goodrich and Daniel Kimball

Jake:
[39:11] Every person who shall knowingly advertise, print, publish, distribute, or circulate, or knowingly cause to be advertised, printed, published, distributed, or circulated, any pamphlet, printed paper, book, newspaper, notice, advertisement, or reference, containing words or language giving or conveying any notice, hint, or reference to any person or to the name of any person, real or fictitious, from whom or to any place, house, shop, or office where any poison, drug, mixture, preparation, medicine, or noxious thing, or any instrument or means whatever, or any advice, directions, information, or knowledge may be obtained for the purpose of causing or procuring the miscarriage of any woman pregnant with child, Shall be punished by imprisonment in the state prison, house of corrections, or common jail, not more than three years, or by fine not exceeding $1,000.

Jake:
[40:10] The laws passed in 1845 and 1847 would stand as part of the Massachusetts General Code, Chapter 272, until they were repealed in the year 2018. Despite the ban on advertising, providers used guarded language to continue advertising abortifacients. I found ads for female pills of several different brands through the late 1890s. For example, the Boston Globe carried this ad in 1875.

Jake:
[40:40] McClellan’s Female Pills, The Woman’s Friend The never-failing and safe pills are the most prompt, certain, and effectual known. One box sufficient, price $5, sent by mail, 45 LaGrange Street, Boston, Mass. Another, from 1889, advertised both medical and surgical services for women who found themselves in trouble. Dr. and Mrs. Gordon, 228 Tremont Street, have invented an improved method of treating female complaints which excels all others, being safe, painless, and warranted effectual or money refunded. Dr. and Mrs. Gordon are regular graduates of medicine and the longest established ladies physicians in Boston, having no equal in safety and quickly curing all female diseases. Ladies who are sick or in trouble and require skillful medical or surgical treatment will save time and money by consulting one of them before calling elsewhere, being assured of honorable treatment and reliable advice. Those who have been unsuccessfully treated by other doctors are especially invited to call. Bored and careful nursing during confinement. Consultation free and confidential. Hours 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily.

Jake:
[41:59] So, when Jenny Clark died in 1879, abortion was nominally illegal. Yet, like it had been throughout recorded history, it was common, readily available, and even publicly advertised. It was only in cases like hers, when unregulated, unlicensed practitioners used unsafe methods that led to the patient’s death, that the criminal statutes were actually enforced. In Jenny Clark’s case, that enforcement came in the form of a highly publicized trial. After months of front-page stories about her death, the trial finally got underway in September of 1879. Besides reporters from every local paper, the courtroom was packed with at least 50 onlookers. The defendants, Drs. Daniel Kimball and Carolyn Goodrich, had been confined at the Charles Street Jail, today’s Charles Hotel, since July, and the Globe described their appearance as they arrived in public for the first time in months. Madam Goodrich was attired in a black velvet bonnet, cashmere shawl, and black silk dress. She appeared very pale, and her eyes were sunken, giving evidence of her confinement. Kimball appeared quite robust and was very neatly attired and black. He was cleanly shaved and wore a mustache, quite long, and waxed and twisted at the ends.

Jake:
[43:22] Goodrich was charged with a felony count of procuring an abortion, while Kimball was charged with aiding and abetting, as well as with being an accessory before the fact. As the witnesses were sworn in, the leather trunk where Ginny’s body had been found was wheeled in and propped up in the front corner of the courtroom, in full view of the jury.

Jake:
[43:42] Ginny’s mother testified. Posthumous photographs of Ginny’s disfigured face and identifying marks were introduced into evidence. Mrs. and Ms. Smith were revealed to be Mrs. Forsyth and Ms. Mary Jones. Jones testified that she had repeatedly taken horse cars from Somerville into Boston to consult with Goodrich as Jenny Clark’s condition got worse and worse. According to the September 24th Globe, she said, Mrs. Goodrich told me to tell Mrs. Forsyth to get her own physician. I saw nobody but Mrs. Goodrich on the first visit, saw Kimball the second time. Kimball sent over nothing by me. I went over a third time and asked for some brandy for the girl. I got some. I went over again after the girl died. I went the same day that she died. Mrs. Goodrich was not in when I got to her house. I told her that the girl was dead, and she said that she would see Dr. Simmons in regard to what could be done, and that she would send Dr. Kimball over in the evening. Mrs. Goodrich told me to keep my mouth shut, and they would do nothing to me. She also told me she would give me all the money I wanted. I saw Kimball at the house every night before the girl died. He was there also after she died.

Jake:
[44:56] After both sides concluded their arguments, the judge read that 1845 abortion statute to the jury and gave them their instructions. Mrs. Goodrich is charged as the principal in procuring this abortion by some unlawful means. The question for you to consider in relation to her is whether she is guilty, and you will return a general verdict of guilty or not guilty on these counts, because it’s evident that a felony, although it may be charged in several different forms, can only be committed once. As to Kimball, he is charged in the same counts as being present and aiding and abetting, bringing him within the provisions of the statute when I have read to you whoever aides or assists therein. I understand that the attorney does not claim conviction against him upon the count. Thus, the charge against him is left in the second count, charging him with being accessory before the fact, and another count charging with being accessory after the fact.

Jake:
[45:55] After a long deliberation, that trial ended in a hung jury, with one juror refusing to convict without an eyewitness to the abortion. The retrial commenced in October, though the charges against Alan Adams, the older man in a position of power who either seduced or raped Ginny Clark, were dropped. This time, both Campbell and Goodrich were convicted. The October 25th issue of the Boston Globe carried a notice about their sentencing. The jury in the Ginny P. Clark trial came in at 10 o’clock yesterday morning after having been out all night. The verdict was as follows. Mrs. Goodrich, guilty on the second count of the indictment and not guilty on the other counts. Dr. Kimball, guilty on the fourth count and not guilty on the others. That Mrs. Goodrich performed an abortion on Jenny Clark by some unknown means, and that Kimball was an accessory before and after the fact. The courtroom was crowded when the verdict was given. The prisoners were pale and calm and exhibited no emotion whatever.

Jake:
[47:03] On October 30th, a syndicated wire service story related the sentencing details for both defendants. Dr. Daniel F. Kimball and Mrs. Carolyn C. Goodrich, recently convicted as principals in the Ginny P. Clark murder case, were this afternoon sentenced, the former receiving six years in the state prison, the latter ten years in the House of Correction. It is stated that Kimball, to avoid the sentence, attempted to cut his throat. A Boston Globe article fills in some of the details that are missing from the wire service story. Dr. Kimball took the sentence very lightly, stepping aside and handing Mrs. Goodrich out of the dock with the same nonchalance that he would display in handing her out of a carriage. It appears that before coming to court, Dr. Kimball expressed a desire to shave himself, and the implements were given to him. When the attendant’s back was turned, Kimball caught a gash on the right side of his neck, evidently intending suicide. But he was not successful and the wound was dressed. When he appeared in court, there was a bandage around his neck to show the result of his work.

Jake:
[48:08] This wasn’t the first time that people in Massachusetts were prosecuting for attempting to procure or provide abortions, and it surely wouldn’t be the last. While state law would later crack down on abortion, Roe v. Wade overturned those restrictions. However, many Massachusetts residents began to worry about Roe after President Trump’s election.

The Aftermath and Modern Implications

Jake:
[48:28] In an era when the president has already appointed two staunchly anti-abortion justices, and one of the court’s liberals seems to, unfortunately, often be on death’s doorstep, women in Massachusetts no longer wanted to rely on Roe. In July of 2018, the state legislature passed, and Governor Baker signed the Negating Archaic Statutes Targeting Young Women Act, or Nasty Women Act. It formally repealed the laws that had been rendered obsolete by Roe v. Wade. In the event that Roe is someday overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court, this new law explicitly invalidates the 1847 ban on providing information about abortion and the portions of the 1845 law regarding drugs and potions, which might be interpreted as limiting access to emergency contraception. While they were at it, they repealed the state ban on fornication, just for good measure.

Jake:
[49:24] Since that story originally aired, the Dobbs decision overturned Roe, and some states have passed new abortion bans, and others have allowed total abortion bans that were superseded by Roe to come back into effect. Pregnant women who experience miscarriages keep dying in states like Georgia and Texas because doctors can’t provide the care they need to save their lives without risking going to prison for violating the state’s draconian abortion bans. This has led maternal deaths to spike to levels not seen in decades. And in Texas, the governor has also tried to cover up this increase by preventing the state health department’s Maternal Mortality Review Committee from reviewing post-Dobbs deaths.

Jake:
[50:08] In Georgia, I even know a woman who almost died after having a miscarriage on the side of the road while stuck in traffic on the way to work. She almost succumbed to septicemia, which is a terrifying full-body infection that causes your organ systems to fail and shut down, because the doctors in the ER couldn’t finish terminating this pregnancy that she had prayed for but already lost in order to save her life. This is the America we live in now.

Jake:
[50:38] To learn more about Jenny Clark and abortion in 19th century Boston, check out this week’s show notes at hubhistory.com slash 317. I’ll have links to all the sources I used for the original episode, including links to the 1812 and 1843 Supreme Judicial Court cases that provided the legal precedent for the Jenny Clark case, as well as the text of 1845 and 1847 laws restricting access to abortion in Massachusetts.

Jake:
[51:08] I’ll also link to a bunch of Boston Globe and Wire Service articles about the case, along with the medical examiner’s report that goes into extreme, even horrifying detail about Jenny Clark’s death. If you’d like to get in touch with us, you can email podcast at hubhistory.com. I still have profiles for Hub History on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, but I’ve been having a good time lately posting and interacting with listeners on Blue Sky, where you can find me by searching for hubhistory.com. I haven’t been as active on Mastodon, but you can find me over there as at hubhistoryatbetter.boston. If none of that’s up your alley, just go to hubhistory.com and click on the Contact Us link. While you’re on the site, hit the subscribe link, and be sure that you never miss an episode. If you subscribe on Apple Podcasts, please consider writing us a brief review. If you do, drop me a line, and I’ll send you a Hub History sticker as a token of appreciation. That’s all for now.