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Madame Restell




Madame Restell ( 18121878 ) was an early- 19th-century Abortion ist who practised in New York City .

Restell was born Ann Trow on 6 May 1812 in Painswick , Gloucestershire , England . Her father was a labourer. At the age of fifteen she started work as a Maid in a butcher's family, and at sixteen she married a Wiltshire man called Henry Summer. After three years living in England, in 1831 they emigrated to New York, where Summer died of Yellow Fever . Restell was forced to make a poor living as a Seamstress .

Restell remarried in 1836, to a German–Russian immigrant, Charles Lohman , who worked in the printing trade. Lohman was a Radical and Freethinker , a friend and colleague of George Matsell , the publisher of the radical journal the '' Free Inquirer ''. With Matsell, Lohman was involved in the publication of Robert Dale Owen 's book ''Moral Physiology; or, a Brief and Plain Treatise on the Population Question'' (1831) and Charles Knowlton 's ''Fruits of Philosophy; or, The Private Companion of Young Married People'' (1831).

Restell's brother, Joseph Trow, had also emigrated to New York, and was working as a sales assistant in a Pharmacy . Restell began to develop an interest in women's health, selling Patent Medicine , and (probably in partnership with her husband and brother) creating Birth Control products, advertised under the name "Madame Restell".

Her business was one of a number at the time, and like them was under constant attack by both the respectable and the Penny Press . Restell herself was particularly persecuted by Horace Greeley of the ''Tribune'', George Washington Dixon of the ''Polyanthos'', and later by the '' National Police Gazette ''.


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