Rebel Women of the Gilded Age
What do theme parties, abortion rights, and feminist rebellion have in common? Historian Jennifer Wright unearths women who, in their own subtle and not so subtle ways, defied the patriarchy, mocking original incel Anthony Comstock whose 19th-century repressive tactics are being used today in the far-right’s war on women.
In her dazzlingly researched books about Gilded Age legends like Mamie Fish, a character on the HBO series The Gilded Age, and innovative abortionist Madame Restell, Wright shows us that women have always found ways to wield power, even in times of deep inequality and political repression. Whether through eccentric parties or underground abortion networks, these women worked with what they had, where they were, and often did it with excitement.
Mamie Fish, for instance, bent society to her will through legendary parties, supporting seamstresses on strike, and introducing actresses and artists into elite circles. Her antics, from dog banquets to a monkey posing as a prince, weren’t just performance; they were power.
And then there’s Madame Restell: the go-to abortionist of 19th-century New York who never lost a patient and defied the patriarchy until the very end, possibly faking her own death to escape persecution.
What are the rebel women of the Gilded Age trying to tell us? We need creativity in our resistance. Culture is fuel. Fashion, parties, and art can democratize power and offer joy in dark times. When we make activism fun, inclusive, and rooted in lived human experience, we inspire people to join the fight.
For more on rebel women of the Gilded Age check out Jennifer Wright’s books Madame Restell The Life, Death, and Resurrection of Old New York's Most Fabulous, Fearless, and Infamous Abortionist and also Glitz, Glam, and a Damn Good Time How Mamie Fish, Queen of the Gilded Age, Partied Her Way to Power. Now go throw a theme party fundraiser and get creative at your next protest.
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Andrea Chalupa (00:00:00):
Welcome to Gaslit Nation. I am your host, Andrea Chalupa, and today we are joined by Jennifer Wright, an acclaimed author and journalist who has written extraordinary books on extraordinary women. They include Madam Relle, the Life and Death and Resurrection of Old New York's most fabulous, fearless and infamous abortionist and her latest, Glitz Glam at a Damn Good Time: How Mamie Fish, Queen of the Guilded Age, Partied Her Way to Power and also Get Well Soon: History's Worst Plagues and the Heroes Who Fought Them. Jennifer Wright's work has been featured in The New York Times, the Washington Post, Harper's Bazaar, and the New York Observer among other great outlets, and I'm so excited to have you on Gaslit Nation. Welcome, Jennifer.
Jennifer Wright (00:00:51):
Thank you so much for having me. I am so excited to talk about these women.
Andrea Chalupa (00:00:55):
Yes. So tell us about Mamie Fish because obviously the Gilded Age, we're living it again with historic levels of income inequality. The oligarchy, the rich are just beyond fancy with their mega yachts and space shuttles. So why Mamie Fish? Why today?
Jennifer Wright (00:01:12):
I think that's actually such an interesting introduction for why I wrote this book because one of the huge differences between the Gilded Age and the age we're currently living in is that in the Gilded Age, wealth was defined by feminine aesthetics. I think when we look back on this period, we remember beautiful gal, beautiful art, beautiful architecture, these incredible mansions that are very carefully made out of marble and designed to look like old world European buildings and women were really the force behind all of this. Also, when you look at fascinating figures from the Gilded Age, we look at people like Alva Vanderbilt, we look at Lena Astor, we look at people like Manie Fish. There's now the show on HBO that really just is dominated by Gilded age. Interesting women. Indeed. Yeah. And when I think we think about wealth and power, now we think about Jeff Bezos, we think about Jeff Bezos, we think about Elon Musk, we think about overtly baic symbols like rockets going off to space like these incredibly muscular cars that are, I think, only appealing. I'm sorry, I didn't want to come out against Cybert trucks in the first five minutes of the show. That's a safe space for that. It's a safe space to think Cybert trucks are ugly. That's great.
Andrea Chalupa (00:02:39):
Yeah, the swasticars.
Jennifer Wright (00:02:40):
They're swasticars. Exactly. I think these are things that are really channeled towards a group of men who listen to Joe Rogan podcasts, and we don't really know much about these men's wives. We know that Jeff Bezos is the most divorced man in history. His girlfriend seems to appear silent and very made up by his side anytime they go any place. We know a little bit about Mackenzie Bezos because she is now divorced. We know a little bit about Melinda Gates because they're now divorced, but these women haven't really been the driving force behind the aesthetics of this age, the way they were in the Gilded Age. And I think that is an interesting kind of soft power that women were able to wield at time, that the people that people really wanted to impress were the female halves of these couples because they wielded so much social power.
Andrea Chalupa (00:03:37):
So the men were out there shaping it and making mice, and the women were throwing the parties and building the homes and decorating the homes and making fashion a thing.
Jennifer Wright (00:03:48):
And making opera a thing, and building the new opera house in New York and convincing people to use American dress makers rather than Parisian dress makers. One of Mamie Fish's contributions was patronizing the first fashion show that regular people could attend that was thrown into benefit were widows in Europe. So these things that I think we still associate with glamor and kind of the appealing feminine face of glamor, were all really carved out by women during this age.
Andrea Chalupa (00:04:22):
So wouldn't this be almost like a Kristen Cinema girl boss idea of women empowerment?
Jennifer Wright (00:04:29):
Yes, absolutely. Yes. Mamie Fish hated suffragettes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think it's interesting that both Mamie Fish and Madam Elle did not see a need for women to vote. In Mamie Fish's case. Mamie Fish was the one woman in the Gilded Age who had an incredibly good husband. Every other husband you read about who is married to a wealthy woman during this period, it's like chronic philander or chronic philander, or here are his many mistresses. He was away for six months on his yacht, which was filled with showgirls. Stuyvesant Fish was the one good husband. People talk about how he was like a knight who would ride into battle at Mamie's slightest word. One time she was coughing on a veranda at a party, and he said, darling, he can I get you anything for your throat? And she said, yes. I saw a diamond necklace in the window at Tiffany's, and the next week later she was wearing it. So yeah, Stuyvesant Fish by any account was absolutely devoted to his wife. He was apparently a big, burly silent man who ran a railroad and just loved Mamie Fish, which is delightful. But it does mean that when Mamie Fish talks about like, well, why would you need to vote? You'd just talk about it with your husband and then he, he'd vote the way you both decided you should vote.
Andrea Chalupa (00:05:52):
Right. So Mamie Fish's husband would vote the way Mamie Fish wanted him to vote. But that wasn't every marriage at the time.
Jennifer Wright (00:05:59):
No, No. And I think it is incredibly shortsighted of Mamie Fish, especially in an age where women are beginning to get divorced. Women are beginning to come out of the closet about the fact that my marriage was very bad. I think one of the most terrible marriages I read about in this book is between Elizabeth Drexel and Harry Lair. Harry Lair was Mamie's best friend. He was very funny. He threw wonderful parties. He was very charming. He was very witty. He was also gay, and he did not tell Elizabeth Drexel this before they got married. Elizabeth Drexel was a very young widow. She was very beautiful. She was very rich. Harry Lair needed money. And on their wedding night, as Elizabeth Drexel, she writes in her memoir, had arranged herself for bed and was pretty excited about consummating this new marriage, came into the bedroom and said, I need you to know that you repulse me, that I will never ever go to bed with you. I never want to be alone with you. I will be a perfect husband when you're in public, but in private know that I could not be more unwilling to spend time with you.
(00:07:12):
And I've never heard a better endorsement for sleeping with someone before you marry them, but also just what an intensely horrible marriage to be trapped in. And she was trapped in it for years because of the difficulties of obtaining a divorce. So this was an age where women were starting to talk about that. They were starting to talk about how my husband hits me. My husband cheats on me relentlessly. My husband is gay and will not talk to me when we're in private.
Andrea Chalupa (00:07:44):
How are they able to talk about it finally?
Jennifer Wright (00:07:47):
Memoirs, I think by the late 1910s and 1920s, you see this flood of memoirs. Memoirs.
Andrea Chalupa (00:07:53):
Really?
Jennifer Wright (00:07:53):
Yes. Oh, yes. Yeah. Elizabeth Drexel wrote a fantastic memoir that has a huge amount of information about Mamie Fish called King Lair that talks a lot about her own personal suffering and sadness during this age, and also about the incredible glamor of this age, the incredible fun of these parties, the incredible new ability to travel to Europe because European travel is now being accomplished by faster ships, and you can get there in a matter of weeks.
Andrea Chalupa (00:08:25):
Like the Titanic.
Jennifer Wright (00:08:26):
Like the Titanic, the Titanic is unfortunately, one great example of this, part of the reason that the Titanic was a vehicle so many people were willing to pay so much to be on was that it was going to get you to Europe really fast, that this was going to be a really quick overseas trip.
(00:08:45):
There are many theories about why the Titanic sank, but maybe they should not have been striving so hard to get there and back in time. Yeah. Elizabeth Drexel, I think really captures the beauty of this age and also the incredibly confined positions that women could find themselves in during this time, but not Mamie Fish. Mamie Fish's husband just loved her and gave her tons of money, and she got to throw parties every single week.
Andrea Chalupa (00:09:14):
Why was she ... Okay obviously she had all these avenues to power and self-expression. How did these fancy birds in these gilded cages, how did they see the hairy hippie feminists like the us of the big Gilded Age?
Jennifer Wright (00:09:35):
Well, I think it's interesting because Mamie Fish actually did support a seamstress strike. There were seamstresses who went on strike because they were incredibly underpaid and just working 16 hour days. Many of these women were 15 years old. They were very, very young, and Mamie Fish correctly heard about the strike and found out that nobody can live on this amount of money. I would never pay anybody who worked for me. So little money, these women are incredibly young, and she did support the strike, and she didn't support it perfectly. When the owners of the factories came to her and were like, you actually don't know anything about this. You actually don't know how we have to keep our factories running. She swerves back and she's like, ah, I don't know. Maybe they should figure it out amongst themselves. And then she swerves back again, and it was like, no, I'm on the seamstresses side again.
(00:10:25):
And what she was able to accomplish that was very, very good with this was she was able to make all her friends give money to the seamstresses. She was able to support them during the strike because she was very clear that if you don't support seamstresses, then you won't get invitations to my parties anymore. I will not like you. And people pulled out their checkbooks really fast when they do that. Great. It is indeed the best thing that, and I think it is interesting that in the modern age, you very rarely see parties that are not galls, that don't have some charitable attachment that usually if a socialite wants to throw a very large party, it is no longer as Mamie Fish would've done it because she wants to throw a party where the circus comes and performs in her house. You see a little bit of that, but you see many more parties that are throwing on behalf of cancer research or children's hospitals or something that meets with a little bit less criticism if you throw a large party.
Andrea Chalupa (00:11:31):
Right. And that's to keep the poor people at bay, the bread and circus to keep the guillotine away. But back then, were the oligarchs more generous, would you say, than they are today? Because right now, we just witnessed the world's richest man mass murdering at least 300,000 people. So all this last fade up to 3 million. Right. That's some estimates say. So were the oligarchs back in the Gilded Age? Were they mass murderers too?
Jennifer Wright (00:11:57):
Oh, well, that's a good question. And it depends on how you feel about what they did to people in factories, which condition...
Andrea Chalupa (00:12:05):
Children. Get in there, get the Black Lung, yes.
Jennifer Wright (00:12:07):
If they can play, they can work. So yes, I would not say it's good. I do think part of the reason that industry and factory work is particularly terrible during this time is that in 1800, 94% of Americans lived in the countryside. 1900, 40% of Americans lived in cities. People didn't really have a good handle on who is able to work, because if you are coming out of an entirely rural society, children do start working on farms at a very young age. At least they did at the time. One of the reasons that people wanted to have many, many children if you lived in the countryside, was children can start doing simple tasks around the farm by the time they're about four more children means more people working with you on the farm. It means the farm runs better. It means you can plant more crops.
(00:12:59):
It means you can grow more crops. All of that makes for a net positive in having children. That is not a positive when you are living in a one bedroom apartment in a city. That is suddenly a huge negative because now you just have more mouths to feed. And I think a lot of people did try to figure out, well, we'll just work it the way we did in the countryside. They'll just start working at a really young age.
(00:13:23):
No, they can't. No, it's not like, oh, they clean chicken eggs. No, no. Work in a factory is different and they keep dying. So I think that is something that people are quickly finding out during this age. People also do not have a good handle on how much work a person should be doing in a factory, because again, if you are living on a farm and you are harvesting crops, maybe that's just an all day thing.
(00:13:54):
You shouldn't be working for 16 hours a day in a factory. It's different and it's really, really hard. So factory work is kind of just developing during this age, and people are developing it terribly and people are dying like crazy in the factories, triangle shirt, waist fire. So there are no good protections, and people are starting to unionize during this time, and that's the only thing that really changes him. People going on strike on mass and getting support from figures like Mamie Fish and Alva Vanderbilt is an incredible supporter of suffragettes and working women and also divorcing your bad husband. Alva Vanderbilt is very ahead of her time during this age. Mamie Fish is not Mamie Fish is effective at wielding soft power through parties. She's effective at promoting her husband's business through these, because this was the first woman who really figured out how to throw incredibly fun parties.
(00:14:59):
I think it's so fascinating. People talk so much about Mrs. Astor's Ball, and that's where we get the term, the 400 from. That it was thought that only 400 people could fit into Mrs. Astor's ball. So the 400 people who could fit were the people who had made it in New York Society. Mrs. Aston's parties, by every account of them are not actually that much fun. Everybody's crammed into a ballroom. There is dancing. Mrs. Astor sits on a luxurious van in the front of the room, and she can have five friends who sit on the van with her, and if you're not invited to sit with her, women run out of the ball crying. It sounds like a nightmarish high school dance. It sounds very unpleasant to me. And name Fish started realizing, what if we had a theme? What if theme was like, what if for Mardi Gras, she threw a devil theme party that all the flowers were red, they were made to look like Satan's garden.
(00:16:04):
There was a little post box where a man stood behind the post box and gave you a little letter from hell that would say something naughty on it, like these sound fun. She threw a banquet for dogs where a male friend of Mamie fish was complaining to her that he thought that women actually liked their dogs more than they liked men now. And Mamie Fish said, well, in that case, I'm going to change the invitation list for my parties. And she invited every socialite in Newport and their dog. They were served chicken, fricke and rice. They all sat at the table wearing necklaces from their owners, and they fell asleep on top of the table. It sounds delightful. It sounds like a very fun formal party for your dog. She once threw a party for the Prince still Drago, which Newport attended with great excitement because this was also the height of the age of trying to marry your daughters off to any European noble. There is a popular song from the period that goes, the almighty dollar will buy, you bet, a superior class of coronet. So tons of families we're just trying to marry any decaying British royal.
Andrea Chalupa (00:17:20):
That's like Winston Churchill's mom.
Jennifer Wright (00:17:22):
Yeah, Jennie Jerome of New York.
Andrea Chalupa (00:17:24):
She's from Brooklyn. Yeah. Yes. That's why Churchill gets his genius, his win from Brooklyn. And so Churchill's mom was a dollar bride, came from money in America, married into the aristocracy in the UK, and just slept with everyone. Oh, yeah. ERs three spirited American playwright artist in her own right. Churchill worshiped his mother, like the goddess that she was even sleeping with the king at the time, and the queen was just so entertained by her that didn't even mind.
Jennifer Wright (00:17:57):
Let is slide. It's fine. Yeah.
Andrea Chalupa (00:17:58):
Well, that should be your next book as the woman that made Churchill.
Jennifer Wright (00:18:01):
Jennie Jerome. She's incredible. She's incredible. There are a lot of good Jennie Jerome biography out there. Believe me.
Andrea Chalupa (00:18:08):
Yeah. I just want to say finally to wrap that up, I love studying Churchill, especially for these times that we're in with war with Russia and so on. But it's just so funny. Churchill's mom didn't take an interest in him and so at all. Yeah. Until he became more interesting, Prime Minister.
Jennifer Wright (00:18:25):
It's because of his mom breaking letters from him in school yo his mom worshiping, just worshiping her. And she writes back every fifth letter like she is clearly...
Andrea Chalupa (00:18:38):
I'm having too much fun. I'm writing my No, I'm a Bohemian. Writing a place breaking hearts of men and women left and right, cross the Blue Bloods of the world. But she also, I just want to wrap this up, but Churchill wins the Pulitzer Prize as a writer because of his mom. She shaped him into a brilliant wordsmith and helped get him used her connections to get him published. His accounts of the Great War published, and he developed his sharp tongue, his masterful speech, oratory skills because of his mom and win the Pulitzer for it.
Jennifer Wright (00:19:13):
Yeah. Yes, yes.
Andrea Chalupa (00:19:16):
Renewable prize. Well, some big, one of the major prides is he won, but yes, but Sorry, go on.
Jennifer Wright (00:19:21):
Yes.
Andrea Chalupa (00:19:21):
Little ...
Jennifer Wright (00:19:23):
Yeah. The party for the Prince of Drago, people kept asking if he was related to various people and Mamie and Harry Lair kept telling everyone, everybody's from the same family, but he's an older branch. The Prince of Drago was a monkey. He was Mamie Fish's new monkey. She got all of Newport to show up and bow, very deep European port bows, and then they all found out that the Prince del Drago was just her new monkey. I love it.
Andrea Chalupa (00:19:49):
A new monkey. Literally a monkey.
Jennifer Wright (00:19:52):
Literally a monkey. Literally a monkey.
Andrea Chalupa (00:19:54):
Wow. She literally had high society thinking this was a prince.
Jennifer Wright (00:19:58):
Oh, yeah. Oh yeah. It was a monkey in a suit. It was a monkey. She got a little dinner suit made for it. Elizabeth Drexel writes that he actually behaved a lot better than most Royal Sheik Noah. He ate with a knife and fork. They had taught him to eat with a knife and fork. People went around and treated him as though he was a real royal. It was very charming. I love her animal themed parties. I think she was doing fascinating weird things during this age.
Andrea Chalupa (00:20:25):
Very performance art.
Jennifer Wright (00:20:26):
Very performance art.
Andrea Chalupa (00:20:28):
Yeah, a tinge sort of racist. Right. It's like we're going to take a monkey and dress it up in a suit and tell you it's like a prince from far flung country
Jennifer Wright (00:20:37):
From Italy, prince from Italy.
Andrea Chalupa (00:20:40):
Okay. So anti Italian sentiment during a time of anti Italian sentiment.
Jennifer Wright (00:20:44):
I think it was less anti Italian sentiment. I genuinely don't think there's a racist element to this. I think the element is Mamie Fish is so tired of going to parties where Americans are just falling over themselves to meet anyone who is a Lord.
Andrea Chalupa (00:20:58):
Oh my goodness. So she was sort of like Andy Kaufman.
Jennifer Wright (00:21:00):
Yeah. Mamie Fish is very pro-American. There are a lot of interactions where she will be with European royalty and they will express the press that her husband works, that her husband still goes to an office every day. And Amy Fish says, yes, I wish it were the case in Europe, but would've made you a lot more useful. Interesting people. She very strongly believe that society should be filled up with people who work, people who do interesting things. She's the first person who starts having actresses and fashion designers at her parties that Caroline Astor found it horrifying, like an actress would even come to a party. Cooper four, of course. And so there's an Andy Warhol element to this. There is Mamie Fish becomes great friends with vaudeville actresses who are very funny. So these parties sort of see a change from being incredibly regimented during the beginning of the 1800s to two being fun, be what we think of as appealing in parties today.
(00:22:07):
I think what makes some fun is an element of creativity, an element of democratization. Democratization, yes. I think to some extent there is a democratization here. Now, look, to be fair, there's no seamstresses on strike are not getting a lot of invitations to man these parties. But suddenly you are seeing people in creative professions who are attending parties now and talking to socialites and talking to wellborn women in a way that they never would have at the beginning of the century. At the beginning of the century, it would be unthinkable, say for a well-born woman to go and eat in a restaurant. Mamie Fish is one of the people who changes that.
Andrea Chalupa (00:22:46):
Really?
Jennifer Wright (00:22:47):
Yeah.
Andrea Chalupa (00:22:48):
What was wrong with women eating in restaurants? It's like my favorite thing to do.
Jennifer Wright (00:22:51):
Men could see you with their eyes, perhaps poor men.
Andrea Chalupa (00:22:54):
What? It was like that hidden.
Jennifer Wright (00:22:57):
I can see you. I mean, obviously men could see you with arise if you were at a family's ball or a dinner that once you were under chaperone of all the men in your, but you were under chaperone at mass balls were forbidden in New York and punishable with big fines. Mass balls. Yeah. At the beginning of the century, in large part because a wealthy woman went there, met a man whose costume matched her costume, and they immediately fell in love and ran away and eloped and were married by the next morning to the absolute horror of her family. If you let your wealthy young daughter loosen a situation where she might find a man who she is, anything in common, and to be fair, if I was 16 and I showed up at a mask ball and I was like, I don't know, dressed as super girl, and a man was dressed as Superman, I would be like, we have to get married. We have to get we match.
Andrea Chalupa (00:24:02):
I mean, that's your one night out the whole, is that
Jennifer Wright (00:24:04):
Your one night
Andrea Chalupa (00:24:06):
Blooming for you?
Jennifer Wright (00:24:07):
Yes. The world bloomed and her family was horrified and they were banned for a long time afterwards. There are newspapers from the early 18 hundreds talking about how if you go to Paris, you could attend a MassPAT every single night. I love that. That's the rebellious thing that people are pushing for during this time.
Andrea Chalupa (00:24:28):
So what advice do you have for us today in terms of how socializing, parties creativity could help us in our resistance to trying to force greater democratization?
Jennifer Wright (00:24:41):
I think that's a really interesting question. I think honestly, allowing women to shine in a way that we do not mock them for is important. That I think I've always kind of felt like the Real Housewives was popular in part because it came out during a financial crisis and people wanted to make fun of these gaudy women for being like gaudy and excessive and silly, rather than direct the blame towards their husbands. I think we should take some of women's work seriously in a way that we haven't taken some feminine aesthetic seriously in a way that we haven't done very much of in the past century. I think insofar as there are good things to come out of the Gilded Age, they are things like the architecture is incredible. The architecture is all masterminded by women designing their homes and by women who wanted to give to museums and by women who wanted to make purchases of art.
(00:25:41):
And I think supporting the creative industries now is going to be more important than ever because the government is not supporting any of them. And there is also rebellion to be found in those industries that I think fashion gets dismissed as being like this frivolous feminine pursuit for much of the time. But fashion can be incredibly rebellious. Fashion also serves underrepresented people and minorities for a lot of history. It is an industry where they can express themselves and express their creativity. That's important. I think one thing that we can do is when we hear about women throwing parties or when we hear about women designing clothing or working on artistic projects, I think there is still a tendency to think, well, if a man isn't doing this, this is silly. If a man isn't doing this, this isn't important. Well, it's important enough. It is the visual that you have in your head. When you think of two decades surrounding the late 18 hundreds, I think we should maybe take those things a little bit more seriously. I think we should assume that women expressing their creativity does have a great influence on society and does have a great influence on the age that we're living in.
Andrea Chalupa (00:27:05):
And women can be allowed to be feminine. They don't have to wear big doxy shoulder pads like a new working girl to try to fit into a man's world. And I think there needs to be space for feminine expression across all sectors of the halls of power in industry and not see it as women's work. That's how women choose for the women that choose to express themselves that way, because not all women do, but the feminine spectrum can be alive and well. And also, and I worry that protest theme parties, all of our protesting parties protest who have fun themes.
Jennifer Wright (00:27:38):
Yes. Oh God. Who was it who said that? If I can't dance, it's not my revolution.
Andrea Chalupa (00:27:42):
We'll find the person.
Jennifer Wright (00:27:43):
Emma Goldman said that. Exactly. I think it is also important to make revolution, make it seem fun, make it seem like this is a fun thing that is enjoyable to participate in instead of making it seem like if you want to be progressive, you are going to be scolded all the time.
Andrea Chalupa (00:28:03):
Exactly. I mean, look, the far right, they have their monster truck rallies. They have WWF wrestling.
Jennifer Wright (00:28:07):
I'm sorry. I want to hang out on a boat. I want to hang out on a boat. It seems fun. I worry that for a little while among some circles of the far left, they're too serious and they're too late. Yeah. Yes. You'll never be progressive enough. There's so much. I am listening. I'm learning. I'm trying to do better, but honestly, I also just have to get my kid to school and make lunch and go about my day, and maybe I want to do something fun in the evening. Maybe there is a benefit to offering a little bit more fun to people.
Andrea Chalupa (00:28:49):
Wait. Mamie Fish's decade. The 1910s then is followed by the Women's Lib movement of the 1920s with the flappers. The girls cutting their hair short, showing their knees, drinking the men under the table, and it just takes off from there. I mean, obviously we've gone forward. We've gone back. It's been this two steps forward, two steps back, but it just shows that Mamie Fish did what she could where she was with what she's at, and probably didn't even realize it half the time. She was probably just busy having fun.
Jennifer Wright (00:29:20):
I think she didn't, I think Mamie Fish was also, I think there is an element of, I'm not like other girls to Mamie Fish. That is a little limiting. Most of Mamie Fish's friends were men. A lot of Mamie Fish's friends were gay men. She was really funny. They were coming up with creative ideas for parties together all the time. They were playing pranks, taking over a streetcar and riding it through the streets. They were having a great time, but they were having a great time that was available to a tiny minority of people during this period. But that doesn't mean that it wasn't important that she started introducing actresses and comedians and fashion designers and artists to parties. It still means that she was doing interesting things within the confines of a life that was accessible to very few people.
Andrea Chalupa (00:30:17):
I want to ask you also about Madam Restell, your book about, and I'll say the title again, Madam Restell, the Life and Death and Resurrection of Old New York's Most Fabulous, Fearless, and Infamous Abortionist. When this book first came out, you were giving lots of talks on because it was right in the midst of Roe v. Wade losing our abortion rights. What was it about Madam Restell in terms of when you were digging into the story of this renegade abortionist, what lessons did you learn from her that we need to stand by today in the fight for abortion healthcare?
Jennifer Wright (00:30:54):
Wow. Well, we go from the fancy parties to Underground Railroad. Oh, don't worry. Don't worry. Madam Michelle also loved making money and threw a lot of fancy parties. Madam still also felt like women didn't need the vote because she just ride politicians. She,
Andrea Chalupa (00:31:09):
Oh my goodness. So she's like, why go to all the trouble ladies? We could just buy them off.
Jennifer Wright (00:31:13):
Just buy 'em off. Yeah. No, I just send them a gold watch for Christmas. That's why my industry is going fine.
Andrea Chalupa (00:31:19):
But as have to say, wait, so Jennifer, you've done all these historical books, so you have such a deep bird's eye view of how corrupt America has basically always been. You've seen Trump through and through and all your research over the last 200 years. So basically everyone's pulling their hair out and curled up in the fetal position going, America's over, America's doomed. And I'm like, study history.
Jennifer Wright (00:31:44):
Oh, no, it's real bad. It's real bad. Look, it took a hundred years to get from the Comstock clause that really put Madam Restell out of business in 1873 to get to Roe v. Wade. When Madam Restell began performing abortions in the 1850s, it was a misdemeanor. It was punishable by a fine. Really all you needed to do was charge more for an abortion than the fine was going to be in you were in business. This was also a period, again, America's urbanizing. People do not want to have 12 children on a farm anymore. That is not a positive in a city. And in New York, it was estimated in the 1850s that one out of five women had had an abortion, and many of these women would have many abortions. So abortion is the most effective means of birth control during this. Now, Madam Restell was an immigrant.
(00:32:42):
She came over from England. She was married to an alcoholic tailor. She did all his work for him. He died basically as soon as they got to America. So they're living near the five points area of which you might remember, if you've seen the movie Gangs of New York, it's not a great part of town. Madam Restell now has a toddler. She's trying to figure out how she will make any money. Like many women, she tried taking in washing and sewing and doing men, but you don't make enough on that to live. You can't support yourself on that. So there are really two options available for her during this period. She can either do factory work, which means she's going to be working 16 hour days, but she has a toddler. So what a lot of people did during that period was they gave their toddlers ladenum, which is basically liquid heroin, and it means that your kid will be passed out most of the day.
(00:33:39):
It was called the Poor Child's Nurse. So yeah, so people were, oh, it's very bad. It's a bad blood. It doesn't work. They die a lot. So you either render your child unconscious for most of the day, or you become a prostitute. And I remember reading this and thinking like, great prostitution. That's my option. Fewer hours not going to have to drag my child. Like, okay, that's fine. I guess most prostitutes only lived about four years. Syphilis was rampant. The violence against prostitutes was absolutely rampant. So your average life expectancy, if you go into that profession is four years. So two terrible options. And I also, I know this has nothing to do with her, but I love, there was this well-intentioned man doing a survey of prostitutes to talk about what immoral qualities led them into this. And there was one who I think very sensibly said, well, why are you talking to us?
(00:34:41):
Why didn't you talk to factory owners? Because if they pay us more and let us work hours where we could be with our children, we'd probably just work in factories. And the men writing this report was like, that's actually a really good idea. I don't know why we don't do that, because corporate greed is absolutely unchecked during this period. That's why. But men were so got really lucky. She lived down the street from a pill compounder, and there's no regulation or oversight during this time. So you can grind up any herbs you want, put them into a pill and tell people they're going to cure their headaches or their stomach complaints or nothing else. And madam still did that. And she actually got really good, she figured out how to mix turpentine and al in a way that would produce a miscarriage. And not perfectly, and you shouldn't do this, but through the 1970s, doctors said that turpentine is an absolutely recurring motif among women who induce their own abortions.
(00:35:47):
It will work. It will make you very, very ill. You should not ever do this. Women should never be put in a position where they're thinking about doing this. But Manama still figures out basically like a little potion that she sells to women for $2 a pop, that with some effectiveness does produce miscarriages. And then she figured out, because a lot of women were like, it didn't work. I'm coming back for more because it didn't work the first time I tried. She figures out how to do a surgical abortion using a piece of whale bone, whale bone whalebone from a corset that she has sharpened to an incredibly fine point. And the most amazing thing about Madam Restell is that she never loses a patient. It's shocking. And by the end of her life, people really wanted to find anybody Madam Restell has killed, she never kills anybody. She must have had the steadiest hand in the world because it wouldn't be really easy to have that piece of whale bone punch your bladder or just nick something in a way that brought on sepsis or have any other number of things go wrong.
Andrea Chalupa (00:36:58):
Infection. She must have kept things extremely clean ahead of time of when people understood to do that.
Jennifer Wright (00:37:03):
She used to be a maid. She was a fastidious cleaner.
Andrea Chalupa (00:37:06):
There you go. She was extremely ahead of her time ahead of this.
Jennifer Wright (00:37:10):
Luckily, by sheer luck, IWE lives during this period, and he's the first one to notice that doctors at his clinic have women die after childbirth all the time. So much that it's called doctor's fever. And midwives really don't so much, and maybe it's because they're plunging their hands into corpses and then plunging their hands into women's birth canals. And he tells people to start washing their hands. And when they do, the death rate for women drops to about the rate it was for midwives. And then Charles migs, the father of American gynecology comes forward and says that this is insulting because doctors are, gentlemen and gentlemen have clean hands. And the doctors said that they shouldn't actually have to wash their hands. GNA Vice is thrown into a mental asylum where he dies. Yeah, it's a terrible time. It's a terrible time. The children are all drunk on heroin. Everybody's hands are filthy.
Andrea Chalupa (00:38:10):
And you think today is hard. No, I mean, that sounded like Trump when you said that we don't need to wash our hands. That's why Jesus.
Jennifer Wright (00:38:19):
Well, RFK doesn't seem to believe in juror theory. So we're back.
Andrea Chalupa (00:38:23):
Yeah, we are back. We are back. In some ways we're headed there, guys. We're headed there. We don't stop it. We're headed there. We don't throw these theme parties in the streets.
Jennifer Wright (00:38:31):
I know. Yeah. If we don't bring joy to the revolution, I don't know what we're going to do.
Andrea Chalupa (00:38:36):
Exactly. Exactly. Culture is where the policy follows. So
Jennifer Wright (00:38:41):
Yeah, I mean, to some extent it is. Creative outlets change people's minds as much as any serious speech ever given. Good songs and good art can influence people, and they can make them hopefully see the world in a new way, fingers crossed. But Madam Marcel continued to do this. She started having incredibly wealthy clients. She worked on a sliding financial scale where if wealthy men came to her, were like, my mistress needs another abortion, she charged them a tremendous amount of money. If a servant came to her and said, I need an abortion, she charged them very, very little, which seems very admirable. And she became one of the wealthiest women in New York in a fantastic little turn, an archbishop at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York gave a speech about how she was immoral at one point, and he was about to build a house across from the cathedral. And Madam was still outbid him for the land by so many hundreds of thousands of dollars that they could not refuse it to her. So she built a huge mansion there where she performed abortions so he would have to see her every day.
Andrea Chalupa (00:40:06):
Shero.
Jennifer Wright (00:40:07):
Yeah. Inspiring. Amazing. Love it. She 10/10 no notes. That's amazing. Also because people didn't want to live next to her because this is like a woman of bad reputation. She figured out that she could build apartment buildings. She bought the land around her house, and instead of building other houses there, because family's wealthy enough to buy a house in this prestigious part of town, wouldn't want to be her neighbor. She built apartment buildings like she had seen in Paris, because there would be people who would be like, okay, we want to live in this really nice part of town, but we're 24. We cannot build a beautiful brownstone on this plot of land, but we can afford to live in one of four apartments that are in this building that all have eight beautiful rooms, and they're so beautifully laid out. And I looked at the floor plan of these apartments when I was writing the book, and it made me want to cry because an apartment like this in New York would go for like $15 million today.
(00:41:17):
They were just so lovely. So she created affordable housing. Well, she created moderately affordable housing for younger, very wealthy people who were going to be building a brownstone 10 years down the road. But yeah, she figured out you can have apartments. I think it's the second apartment building in New York. Yeah, New York was what before then, brownstones New York would be brownstones. If you were rich, you would have a house or you would rent a house. And if you were poor, you would live in a tenement. So she's got the whole apartment thing going. Okay, tenements existed. But the idea of a nice piata tear, I see idea of you have money, but you do not have enough money for a brownstone. So you could live
Andrea Chalupa (00:42:05):
Not a slum, not a brownstone or house, but the in-between. Exactly. Yes. So she got that going.
Jennifer Wright (00:42:10):
She got that going. Yeah.
Andrea Chalupa (00:42:13):
Wow.
Jennifer Wright (00:42:14):
Yeah, she was really smart. She was really, really smart for someone who started her life as a maid of all work in England.
Andrea Chalupa (00:42:24):
And how did the political establishment see her? Was she untouchable? Because all these powerful men needed abortions for their mistresses.
Jennifer Wright (00:42:30):
For while for of while. Yes. And she writes, we also know so much about her because she writes newspaper editorials, and one of them is like, how many of you have I helped? And she's really cracked down on by Anthony Comstock is such a fucking dark. So said Anthony Comstock was an intensely religious man. He was also a chronic masturbator. He was very, very guilty about his chronic masturbation. And his plan was kind of like, what if everybody else covered up? What if there was nothing to tempt me? And I think it's interesting, Anthony Comstock got a letter from a professor at a university, I can't remember which one saying that in his experience, about 90% of young men masturbate that maybe Anthony Comstock shouldn't feel the level of all compass and guilt that he feels about this. And Anthony Comstock writes back saying, that means that their souls have been blotted out 90%. We have to stop this. It's a disease.
Andrea Chalupa (00:43:34):
It's like Elon Musk trying to get everyone pregnant with his baby.
Jennifer Wright (00:43:38):
Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ. All right. So Anthony Comstock comes to New York after a time in the Civil War where everybody absolutely hates him because you got liquor rasht in the Civil War, and people drank a huge amount during this time. Anthony Comstock didn't drink. That was fine, by the way. There were a lot of religious young men who didn't drink. And the thing was like, you pass your bottle of liquor to whoever had a friend die that week. You just give it to somebody else who's going to use it. And so Comstock dumped his liquor out on the ground while reciting religious passages in front of everybody else who was drinking, and they hated him so much. Anthony, to his credit, does seem to realize this. He talks about how there's a strong feeling of hatred towards him from all the men in his unit who keep destroying his things.
(00:44:31):
He is deeply despised. He goes to New York where he gets work at a shop where the man he's working with has maybe a sexually transmitted disease. It's somewhat ambiguous. And historians go back and forth on what exactly happened here. But his friend basically tells him that he shows Anthony Comstock a pornographic picture, and then he tells him that he looked at this picture and his dick fell off. I personally have always felt that man is joking. I think that man is making fun of an incredibly prudish man who he is now working alongside. But Anthony Comstock makes it a personal crusade to ban all pornography then. So he starts buying pornography, which is technically illegal, photographs, by the way. The photographs are fucking raunchy.
Andrea Chalupa (00:45:27):
Go on.
Jennifer Wright (00:45:27):
I always thought like, ah, yes, pornography from this period. A woman with her breasts exposed wearing jewels. What a lovely photograph.
Andrea Chalupa (00:45:38):
Listening to a gramophone. Yeah.
Jennifer Wright (00:45:39):
No, no, no. It's full fully erect penises, like lots of blow job pictures. So Anthony Comstock makes it a point to go to the bookstores, sell books of these pictures, bring them to the police office, bring the police officer back to the store, at which point the police officer reluctantly finds the men who is selling these pictures and the day goes on. But Antony Comstock notices that he's spending a lot of his own money doing this. So he meets the head of the YMCA, who is also very Christ, and also believes that young men moving to the city, this is a blight on them. They love porn. We have to go back to traditional family values. And he gets funding from the head of the YMCA, and very quickly he is able to start passing legislation that forbids not just pornography, although it does forbid pornography, but any writing about sex.
(00:46:43):
Our knowledge about sexual intercourse falls off a cliff during this period, because while before this, people are writing to each other quite readily about sexual affairs. They're having suddenly it's illegal by order of the US Post Office to write letters that contain reference to sex because they could be examined. So no more writing about sex, certainly no more distribution of birth control through the mail, and no more information about how to regulate your period in any way. It's all illegal now. So whereas before Madam Marcelle was able to write a lot of editorials in the newspapers about family limitations and the benefits of birth control after 1873 in the passage of the comms law, she can't write anything. Her ads are reduced to being like, I'm a female physician. This is my office. If you know you don't. And this is how we end up with a whisper network regarding abortion, where people can't talk about it publicly.
(00:47:44):
People can't write about it. People can't share information about it, and people can't send birth control through the mail. And it's one of the reasons that they're pushing to reinstitute the Comstock laws in Texas, because it would mean that you can't send the abortion pill through the mail to anyone in Texas anymore. It's bad. It falls off a cliff so fast. It goes from being a pretty normal thing that people talked about to, no one talks about this ever. And by the way, it doesn't stop people from having abortions. It's thought that in some areas, the rate of abortion actually goes up after this. It's just you don't have Madam Elle anymore. You have women trying to do it themselves with coat hangers. You have women trying to fling themselves down the stairs. You have women going to doctors who are very, very unskilled, or friends who are just willing to try this because they think they heard about something about it from a friend of a friend. So when you have less information about reproduction, it gets worse. It gets a lot worse. It does not produce happy, smiling children all just lining the streets of New York. It produces unwanted children who you're drugging with, laden them now. And it produces a lot of women who have been incredibly injured by abortions.
Andrea Chalupa (00:49:04):
Wow. And this really hated idiot, this prude who's just dumb as rocks, had such a huge impact.
(00:49:13):
The year before the Comstock Clause a newspaper at the time writes, some people have been asking us why we don't write about Anthony Comstock for the same reason that we don't write about mosquitoes in summer. They're annoying, but they're not going to do anything.
(00:49:26):
But how is he able to be successful?
Jennifer Wright (00:49:29):
Next year? Next year? They're always a joke until they're not. They're always a joke until you find just enough other men who have money. And those men will always see a benefit of putting women back in their place, establishing themselves. And look, I don't think it's a coincidence that these men seem so silly that they seem like such jokes. I think the people who want to feel superior and who want to put women in an inferior role and who want to put minorities in an inferior role are people who feel very insecure about themselves. I think they are not, generally speaking, they are not the men in Anthony Comstock's unit during the Civil War who were having a last of scotch with their friends and just writing their wives horny letters about how excited they were to come home. They are men who feel very insecure about their position in society. They feel very insecure whether or not they're being respected. They may feel like they're outsiders or they're weird, and they want people to respect them and look up to them. And I think you see a lot of fanning Trump, too. You see a lot of a man who is very desperate for people to kowtow, to count out to him in a way that I don't think Barack Obama ever was. Frankly, I look at presidents that maybe I have a personal bias towards, but they don't seem to feel as much insecurity as Donald Trump openly feels.
Andrea Chalupa (00:51:04):
Wow. That is incredible. Jennifer. This conversation could keep going. So you have to come back. I'm obsessed with everything. Your whole brain of knowledge and everything, all the primary sources you must have read, and
Jennifer Wright (00:51:17):
It's so much fun. It's the most fun part of the process for me. I know so many people have research assistants. I'm obsessed with reading newspapers for this period. I love them.
Andrea Chalupa (00:51:25):
Me too. I can't imagine not doing my own research because I mean, obviously I've had a research assistant on the time I really needed one. But it's the discovery, the journey, the stuff you stumble upon. And there's nothing like reading primary sources to put back into that mindset. We learned such a watered down version of history.
Jennifer Wright (00:51:46):
Oh, so much so. Yes. It's so much weirder than you ever think. And it's also so much more human thing. You ever think it is So based around people's own personable foibles and the fact that Anthony Comstock just feels really bad when he masturbates and he wishes there would not be things that would make him want to do that.
Andrea Chalupa (00:52:08):
He's such an amazing villain. He's got all this pathetic depth to him. An actor would love to play such a loser. It'd be just a juicy role.
Jennifer Wright (00:52:17):
Yes. Yes. And he is the one who eventually arrest Manam Restell at the end of her life. He goes to her in disguise. He says that he has a lady friend who is in trouble, and Manam Restell gives him the turpentine and tanzi oil thing that she gives everyone. And she says, okay, this is $2. Have her take this. If it doesn't work by Thursday, you both need to come back. You need to send her back to me and I will perform an abortion.
(00:52:47):
And then he does come back on Thursday, but he comes back with the entire police. Of course he does. Yeah. Madam Restell is thought to have faked her death after this to escape sentencing and flee to France. We don't know. She either committed suicide or she faked her death. I personally like to believe that she faked her death.
Andrea Chalupa (00:53:08):
Oh, that bad bitch faked her death. I think. Okay. How did she die officially?
Jennifer Wright (00:53:13):
Officially. She committed suicide. She also, okay. Supposedly she slit her wrists in the bathtub. She sent all her servants home. A body was found in the bathtub the next day. The body was buried immediately. Her granddaughter, by this time, Madam Restell, had trained her as her apprentice. She was incredibly close to her granddaughter and grandson. So Madam Restell, before faking her death behaved in a way that is Madam Restell is cool as a cucumber through every event in her life.
(00:53:48):
And then very surprisingly, she started running around to everyone she knew, saying, I'm feeling suicidal. Just so you know, I'm suicidal now, in case you were wondering if anything was going to happen to me, it probably will on account of all the suicidal feelings I'm having. She's never done anything like that, which people do feel suicidal. This is indeed. Things are going badly in America. She might have been suicidal, but she did also talk to her lawyer about how if a body was buried outside of New York City, it couldn't be dug up and autopsied. Right. And her lawyer's like, yes, that's correct. He's wrong. He's wrong. But there were a lot of cadavers that were available to medical professionals during this time. So the theory on her faking her desk is that because her son-in-law also told the papers that this had always been the plan.
(00:54:47):
The plan was always like, throw a body somewhere. Say it's her, put her jewelry on it, and then she gets the fuck out of town on the next boat. So a body was found at the bath wearing Madam Restell'sjewelry and rings. It was later dug up. People who saw it said it didn't look a lot like her, but also there was rot and it had been buried very quickly. But we do know that all of her jewelry was gone from the house mysteriously. And all of her money was gone. And when her two grandchildren, who she was insanely close to, showed up for the reading of the will, they did not show up in mourning attire the way people thought they would. They seemed in pretty good humor. And for the next 10 years, they took a three month trip to France every year.
Andrea Chalupa (00:55:37):
Mhh hmm.
Jennifer Wright (00:55:39):
And she picked her death. She picked her death, and she died drinking champagne in Paris. A hundred percent. A hundred percent. I hope so. I hope so.
Andrea Chalupa (00:55:45):
And Comstock lives on, he was an activist. This guy didn't have much political power other than being like a Leo. What's that guy that runs the Federalist Society? Leonard Leo type. He just had powerful, influential friends that he made.
Jennifer Wright (00:56:03):
He got laws past. He became the head of the US Post Office so he could examine anything sent through the mail.
Andrea Chalupa (00:56:09):
Yes.
Jennifer Wright (00:56:10):
And a thing that might be considered profane. And the person who ends up really stopping him is Margaret Sanger, who I know has become unpopular in recent years. I think her unpopularity is due to a quite large campaign by the right.
Andrea Chalupa (00:56:28):
Oh, that's interesting. I guess because women's suffragists weren't necessarily civil rights icons. They were like black women. We go first. Wait your turn, if ever. It's all about just, yeah.
Jennifer Wright (00:56:41):
Margaret Sanger isn't even really interested in the vote. Margaret Sanger is interested in allowing women to have information about reproduction. She certainly doesn't say that she wants to do this to limit the population of black people. That is an overblown rumor by the right. But Margaret Sanger wrote a column for an anarchist newspaper called What Every Girl Should Know. That was just about reproduction. She was originally a nurse in the inner city. She was assisting a doctor during a very difficult birth. And after the birth with Over, the doctor said to the woman, if you have any more babies, you will die. So no more babies. And the woman said, how do I not have children? Because my husband is going to keep sleeping with me. And the doctor, according to Margaret Sanger laughed and waggled his finger at her and left. And the next year, she attended another birth of that woman where that woman died.
(00:57:41):
So Margaret Singer started writing a column called What Every Girl Should Know for the Anarchist Newspaper with the motto, No Gods No Masters. And it gave information about how to not have children. If you didn't want to have children, it was cracked down on by Anthony Comstock. The next issue of that column reads What Every girl Should Know Nothing by order of the US Post Office. And Margaret Sanger is called into jail at this point and tells them that she can't prepare a defense because she's writing a book about reproduction, and she's going to distribute it to everybody. Margaret Sager keeps, she fights Anthony Comstock every step of the way. She sets up clinics. Anthony Comstock raids them immediately. She sets up another clinic Sometimes. I think these things only change when there is one person who is not afraid to go to jail at all when there is one person like Stella and Skarsgard on and or their mind is the subtlest place. They live only for this one specific cause.
Andrea Chalupa (00:58:46):
I was watching that this morning when I was doing my bike exercise, and Stellan Skarsgard just came on the scene in everyone's telling me to watch andor,
Jennifer Wright (00:58:56):
Oh my gosh, it's amazing. It's maybe the best show about fascism, and it's a Star Wars show. It's spectacular. So yeah, only Stellan Skarsgard vibes from Margaret Sanger. She cares nothing for any individual. She only cares about getting reproductive information out to women.
Andrea Chalupa (00:59:11):
And she's the founder of Planned Parenthood. She's the founder of Planned Parenthood. Yeah. None of our heroes are perfect. None of our heroes, noes are perfect. They're really human. Martin Luther King cheated on Coretta constantly, all. So this whole sort
Jennifer Wright (00:59:27):
Romanticism man still is so clear that she's doing this for the money. When people ask her, are you doing this because of a deep sense of sisterhood? She's like, no, I'm making so much money I'm making with no idea. I have so many Jewel. It's incredible.
Andrea Chalupa (00:59:39):
I mean she's good at it.
Jennifer Wright (00:59:42):
She great at it. She's great at it. It coincidentally worked out really well. I think if you had told her you could be a drug dealer and make even more money, she would be like, where do I sign up. I'm in.
Andrea Chalupa (00:59:53):
And Comstock went on to influence J Edgar Hoover, and it shows, Mr. Comstock, I want to read everyone's mail because I'm such a creep. And J Edgar Hoover's like, yes, sign me up. And then so a young J Edgar Hoover carries the torch
Jennifer Wright (01:00:08):
Also, when you read his personal information, so much of it is just like his personal diary of, I saw a woman in a low cut press, and I'm crying. She made me cry. I'm so upset now. I've been wrestling with God for the past 12 hours. Jesus Christ, calm down. Just jerk off. It's fine. It's fine. Not everybody can wear a burka to please Anthony Comstock.
Andrea Chalupa (01:00:33):
Yeah. I mean, American Taliban is right when you, but the culture wore hysteria that he really innovative passed down generation after generation, generation. Here we are.
Jennifer Wright (01:00:43):
Thank you so much.
Andrea Chalupa (01:00:45):
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