Madame Restell



Madame Restell (May 6, 1812–April 1, 1878) was an early-19th-century abortionist who practiced 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.

Following her arrest in early 1878, she was found in the bathroom of her Fifth Avenue home by the maid who discovered Restell in the bathtub who had slit her own throat on the morning of April 1, 1878. Upon her death, she was claimed have been worth between $500,000-$600,000.

Sources and external links

 * "In the Eye of Power: The Notorious Madam Restell" by Cynthia Watkins Richardson
 * Sins of New York As "Exposed" by the Police Gazette (1930) by Edward van Every (extract)