Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society - Victorian Abortion & Birth Control

Episode Date: July 28, 2023

We’re connected to the past in more ways than you might think. For example, the 1861 Offences against the person Act is an abortion law that is still largely in place today. What does this Victorian law dictate? How does it still effect our lives today? And who were the brave pioneers who challenged it? Today we’re joined by historian Lesley Hall to find out more about what abortion meant in the 19th century, and learn more about the contraceptive options available, too. This episode was edited by Tom Delargy and produced by Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Charlotte Long. If you're enjoying Betwixt please vote for us at the British Podcast Awards here. It would mean the world to us!Discover the past on History Hit with ad-free original podcasts and documentaries released weekly presented by world renowned historians like Kate Lister, Dan Snow, Suzannah Lipscomb, Lucy Worsley, Mary Beard and more.Get 50% off your first 3 months with code BETWIXT. Download the app on your smart TV or in the app store or sign up at historyhit.com/subscribe. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Do you want even more shocking and scandalous history? Like why the ancient Greek statues had such small manhoods? Or what went on behind closed doors in the Georgian era? We'll sign up to History Hit, where you can see me discover the scandalous side of history, as well as hundreds of hours of original documentaries, plus new releases every week, covering everything from prehistoric Scotland to the Treaty of Versailles.

Sign up to join me in locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Hello, my lovely for Twixters. It's me, Kate Lister. I am here, actually, I am here with quite a serious fair-doos warning today. Actually, actually, we are dealing with quite a sensitive topic. We're talking about birth control and abortion in the 19th century. So this could be a spicy one.

This could be a sensitive one. So with all seriousness, here is your fair-doos warning. This is an adult podcast spoken by adults to other adults. about adulty things, and you should be an adult too. And now you know what the subject is about today, and you have been forewarned, then really you need to get out now while you still can if this one is going to be too much for you.

And for the rest of you, let's do this. Sex in the 19th century, it's quite a tricky affair, you know. Not the general ins and outs of it, but the paraphernalia surrounding it. You couldn't nip into the pharmacy to get a packet of condoms if you needed to, and you couldn't get the morning after pill.

This was a time of very primitive provolactics. The invention of vulcanised rubber had all the sensitivity of a Wellington boot, and these early condoms had a big thick seam running down one side. Hmm, hmm, sexy. And if you did wish to terminate a pregnancy back then, well, good luck to you. Aside from the fraudulent, quote-unquote, female remedies, your options were toxic to the point of being near. fatal. What were the social attitudes to birth control and abortion in the Victorian era?

What did the laws dictate? And as a result, what was the reality for women of different walks of life? Today, we are getting betwixt the sheets to find out. What do you look for a man? Oh, money, of course. You're supposed to rise when an adult speaks to you. I make perfect copies of whatever my boss needs by just turning a knob and pushing the button. Courtesy does make a difference. Goodness, my beautiful dam. Goodness has nothing to do with it, Terry. Oh, and welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets,

the history of sex scandal in society. With me, Kate Lister. In 1861, before modern medicine was even a thing, an abortion law was put into place that is still in effect today. Let that sink in. To say that the medical and moral landscape has changed in the last 150 years

is something of an understatement, is it not? But even back. then, in the Victorian period, people were campaigning around abortion rights. Just who were these brave pioneers? What happened to them? How did they campaign on this issue? And what was the reaction back then? Today, we are joined by historian Leslie Hall to learn more. But before we get into this episode, I have a little favour to ask you. If you are enjoying betwixt, we would just love it if you would take a couple of seconds to vote for us at the listeners' choice Award at the British Podcast Awards.

If you follow the link in the show notes, you could give us a quick click and honestly it would make us so happy. We were shortlisted last year and we just missed out and I think with your help this year, Betwixters, we can clinch it. Okay, Betwixters, back to the show. Hello and welcome to Betwixtas Sheets.

I'm only talking to Leslie Hall. How are you doing? Well, you know, it's been an odd few years. Has it? Is that just in general, just gesturing to everything? Yes, everything, you know. First I retired and then I had this kind of research program laid out, which involves research trips, which got kibushed. Oh, is it getting back on track now? Getting a bit back on track, yeah.

Oh, well, that's good. It was weird to live through that, wasn't it? Yeah, it was weird, but I mean, it's great that so much is digitized now. I mean, the British newspaper archive is just like I could just spend days just heading down that, you know, like a rabbit hole. And your website, while we're talking about digital archives and information, your website is amazing and I love it for all things related to history of sex and bodies and sexuality and all kinds of stuff. Thank you. I mean, I started that like back in Paleolithic era of the internet, you know. Honestly, I love it. I was delving in and out of it for all of my books. It was absolutely brilliant. It was a proper treasure trove. Oh, thank you.

But you are here today to talk about, it's a rather gruesome subject, but it's an important one, nonetheless, isn't it? I think it's important. It's also, I think it's become contemporarily relevant. Right. I know. Like the history of abortion, particularly we're looking at abortion in the 19th century, but like speaking of everything, having gone a bit mad for the past couple of years, I wouldn't have. I've seen America overturning Roe v. Wade. I didn't see that coming, did you? I didn't see it exactly coming as being overturned, but it had been compressed very much. A few years ago, I reviewed a couple of books on abortion in the state since Roe.

And it was really very depressing because although there was this right to abortion, It was very difficult to access. The Hyde Amendment meant it was not eligible for Medicare. So, you know, given the US system, you had to pay for it. And there was the whole campaigning against it, the picketing of clinics, the kind of limitations at the level of states, etc., etc. The difficulties just of access before it was actually overturned. So the situation was not at all wonderful before that,

but this really kicks it up to a whole new level. It takes the right away because that is at least a symbolic thing that exists. I think what frightened me about that was like not only of just all the people in America that are now going to have to try and cope with what's happened, but like where America leads, we tend to follow. And it sort of made me like a bit worried about, well, what's going to happen here because it's clearly emboldened the people campaigning against abortion. It makes me look like, well, what is our current state of play?

And how different is it from the past, from history? How far have we come as a nation in regards to this particular procedure? That is a difficult one. I think we have a very different history here. And we do not have that evangelical radical right position here. But this kind of position where we're still kind of got the 80-61 offenses against a person act with kind of moderation. It's weird. It is strange. And why it has not been changed. But there was this very odd situation. 1967 the Abortion Act passes.

And that's a struggle. The thing is that there is no real kind of anti-abortion movement until it looks so that's going to actually pass. And they start... The whole kind of right-to-life thing only gets off the ground once it looks as though we're actually going to get abortion or reform. This doesn't happen before that, really. Wow. So take me back to the 19th century, because that's what we're looking here, and you mentioned the...

Yeah, that's what we're actually looking at the 19th century. Yeah. I can bore for Europe on the history of reproductive rights in this country. Please do. We're looking at the 19th century. I mean, I wrote a biography of the pioneer of abortion law reform in Britain, Stella Brown, so you know... Oh, wow, that's incredible. So the first laws that come in around abortion, because this is sort of really interesting as well as what people were doing up until this point. And am I right in thinking that the first laws were in, was it 1803?

And it was part of the Lord Ellensborough's act. And it was malicious harm to someone or something, wasn't it? What was that? Mission harms and woundings. That's the one. Yeah. What was that act? What did that say?

That just says to try and do anything to prevent after quickening to try and to interfere with a woman's pregnancy after quickening, which is actually quite late on. It doesn't do anything before, doesn't have anything to do with what happens before that. So in the Edinburgh Act, there have been a number of cases where men had tried

to give their lovers poison because the lovers were pregnant and they didn't want to kind of have to contribute to the upkeep of the child if it was born. So, you know, it was like that. What is the quickening? Just because a lot of laws and things that come in around this all mention this is the quickening.

Can I just ask for anyone that's not aware of this? What is that the quickening? That is when the woman feels the child start to move. Oh, right, okay. Partway through the pregnancy, I think it's about three, four months. Why did they think that was so significant? Was the idea, like, if anything happened before that? That was when she actually told she was pregnant,

because before that it was made the, maybe no. It was very difficult to determine pregnancy before that. That was when you could really be certain. Well, into the 20th century. Well, I suppose, yeah, we live in a world of pregnancy tests where they're so quick that, you know, you can just roll over and have a cigarette afterwards on the pregnancy test and find out if you're pregnant. But if you don't have a test, like, if you don't have a test, you know, and women would know, they would stop menstruating, they would feel queasy, you know, their breasts would be. be sore. You know, there were these various signs that would indicate, yes, she probably was.

You couldn't be certain until she felt child kicking the womb. Right. Okay. So the first laws that come in that say anything that is done to interfere with the pregnancy after the quickening is illegal. Yeah. And then in 1837, it's actually changed to say at any time during pregnancy. And then in 1861, there's this massive consolidation of fences against the person, which covers a whole swath of very miscellaneous offences, some of them which actually seem quite strange to us now as to be consolidated under that heading. But anyway...

Go on, give me one of the strange ones. What else were they putting in there? Well, they took an abduction of an arrest, for example. Okay, yeah, that is pretty strange. So it's included under that, you know, anyone who should give a woman, you know, a toxic substance or instrumental interference from when she is with child. By implication, a woman doing this to herself as well as somebody doing it to her. Although in practice, as far as we can tell from looking at the cases that came to court, very seldom was this applied to the woman herself as opposed to somebody. doing it to her and the woman died, certainly looking at the newspaper reports,

which, you know, obviously there are a vast number of these. And again, you know, British newspaper archive, wonderful, I mean, before this was digitised, you could not have done this. I mean, you could not have gone to Collindale when British newspapers were kept. And you could not have trawled through, you know, reels and reels of microfilm, because some of these teeny-weeney paragraphs in local newspapers and you have to pick up, you know, procuring miscarriage, illegal operation, unlawful operation.

The other thing is what you've got, if you're going to search in these records, and the British newspaper archive is, it's incredible. Like, you can find out exactly what was going on in, like, tiny towns. But you've got to find the right language. You've got to find the words of being used. Right? Yeah.

What was the language being used around these? crimes? Well, it's procuring miscarriage, it's unlawful operation, it's illegal operation. It's very seldom the word abortion is actually used. I mean, you do find the word abortion, but you get sort of false positives because you get it for you like cattle plague, contagious abortion of cattle. And you get it being used metaphorically. This abortion of a parliamentary bill, you know? Yes. So when you're actually talking termination of pregnancy,

you are having things like procuring miscarriage, this sort of thing, an unlawful operation. And there are masses, you know, over from 18, well, before 1861, in fact, over the century. I was just about to ask you that, because the laws are changing in the mid-19th century, but presumably people have been seeking ways to end pregnancy, long before that.

Oh, long before that, yes. And there were cases of obviously being reported before that. I think it probably increases after that, possibly simply because the medical system of inquest was improving. So to get to the really gruesome stuff is like what are we talking about here? If you were somebody who, well, I'll go to the 19th century, but I can't imagine that these methods have changed all that much. At 19th century earlier, if you were someone that was looking to procure a miscarriage, end a pregnancy, how would someone go about that?

You mentioned poisons, but are there pills? How do you do that? There were various herbal substances that people used. There were saven, which comes from juniper. There was Penny Royal. There was apiol, which is oil of parsley. There was ergot, which is rye fungus. There were all these various substances which can be used, which will procure an abortion, but they will also possibly kill the woman. You have to judge the dose very carefully and the woman will be very ill even if she doesn't die.

So this is mostly what these early cases are, is people taking things like savin and penny royal. Mostly poison, yes. you do get cases of instrumental interference. The other thing is slippery elm. Oh, I've never heard of that. Oh, yeah. This goes on well into the 20th century, slippery elm bark, which is bark of the elm tree,

and it's inserted into the cervix. Oh. And it, yeah, sorry, this is a bit gruesome. Do it, go on. Yeah, it's what we're here for, Leslie. And it swells, and it opens up, and so that induces a miscarriage. Yeah, that can obviously bring about all sorts of septic problems.

So I read about, was it in Sheffield in the 1890s, that there was a case of... Lead poisoning. Yeah, what happened there, lead poisoning in Sheffield? Lead got into the water supply and women started having miscarriages and they made the connection. So they thought, wow, this is something that works. So they started taking diacolon pills, which they could get from the chemist, which were available for other purposes. And this spread as a kind of word of mouth thing among a kind of women's local network.

It's so dangerous. But women were desperate. And when you look at the figures of mortality in childbirth at that time, childbirth was not a safe thing either. It wasn't safe. And the laws had been changed, haven't they, around women, being able to seek financial support from fathers in the 19th century, hadn't it? Oh, yeah. Under the poor law, they could not seek financial support from fathers.

And there was actually two cohorts of women seeking abortions. One is married women who cannot afford any more children either physically or financially. That has always been a thing, the kind of family issue of how many children can we afford to feed. People who are thinking about the decline in family size towards the end of the 19th century, you know, people talk about was it birth control, was it abstinence, was it the fact that men had a vast amount of venereal disease and this was causing sterility, which there's been a recent argument about. But I mean, I think we have to factor in abortion, that women were taking charge of this. and you know, this was part of the picture.

And I suppose the other group there, so if you've got married women seeking abortions. And then you've got unmarried women, and that is significantly a greater part of the issue after 1834, where if a woman became pregnant out of wedlock, she could no longer sue the father for maintenance of the child. She either had to go to the workhouse or she would have to live in it. in destitution, which basically meant she had to become a prostitute. Or maybe she could find someone to look after the child, which, you know, the child would probably die anyway. I think it's grim, isn't it?

Yeah, it's grim, you know. It was a desperate situation. I mean, it was a desperate situation which was acknowledged in the way cases of infanticide were dealt within the courts. Join me, Dallas Campbell, on Patented, a podcast by History Hit, we bring you the fascinating histories of the world's most impactful inventions. We uncover the exceptional stories behind everyday objects. Snakes and Ladders is really a game about a karmic journey through stages of existence towards liberation.

Look back in time to understand technologies of the future. One of the really interesting things about it is that it showed just how hard AI in the real world really is. And we examine unexpected world. origins. Who or what invented sex? Yeah, fish. Fish for the ones that invented copulation and made sex intimate for the first time. For the answer to those questions and a whole lot more, subscribe to patented on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcast. Join me for new episodes every Wednesday and Sunday. Let's say that I was a servant girl in the mid-19th century and I found out that I was pregnant, what would be my options? You wouldn't be able to keep the job,

presumably. You would pretend you would not pregnant. You would conceal your pregnancy. You would carry on with the job. Maybe you wouldn't even tell your fellow servants, because they might rack you out. You would tighten your stays. You would not let anyone know you were pregnant. And a lot of these women gave birth on their own, in silence. and the baby died. And maybe they helped the baby into the next world. And maybe, given the fact they were giving birth all alone, without any assistance,

and they were in a pretty desperate state, there were all sorts of things that could go wrong. And when this came to court, although technically this was a capital crime, judges and jurors were really sympathetic. Really? That's interesting. Yeah, provided a child died fairly shortly after the woman given birth, they would consider this to probably an accident of the neonatal stage.

They would not fail to convict altogether. They would probably give a sentence of concealment of pregnancy, which was a much lower sentence. There was this idea, this was a woman who had been seduced, The man had got a waste, got free, she'd had this drenful experience. What could she do? She should go to the workhouse, otherwise she'd be a little destitute. She'd have no job.

There was a kind of compassionate feeling. It was not dealing with the whole systemic problems that there were about the situation of women in that state. But there was an idea that they were more to be pitied than blamed. that makes perfect sense. You would just conceal the pregnancy and kind of, I suppose, almost just hope it went away. But yeah, you might even bind denial. Yeah, yeah, I think you probably would, wouldn't you? You'd just be sort of hoping that it just, oh, it's not going to happen. But if you had realised that you were pregnant and if you wanted to try and procure an abortion, pills, herbs, where would you get them from? Like, were people selling them? And how were they sold?

Every newspaper had advertisement for female pills. All through the century, relieve all obstructions, cure all irregularities. Do we know what was in them? Has any of them survived? Oh, chalk, aloes, possibly a little iron. In the 1890s, the Lancet undertakes a big survey of these as a quackery. This is following the crimes case. Do you know about the crimes case?

The Crines Brothers, C-H-R-I-M-E-S, but I mean, I think it is a very appropriate name, you know, I mean, nominative determinism. They were selling quack abortion pills, which did absolutely nothing. They were just, you know, sugar water and bitters. And they were making a fortune by selling these things. But then they decided, oh, we'll make even more out of this. we will blackmail the women, we are selling them to. We will send them letters saying, pretending to be from a legal government official, saying you realize you were doing it something really illegal by these pills.

But pay this fine and we will say no more. Bastards. Yeah. I mean, this is really kind of taking it to another level, isn't it? That's awful. It's terrible. But the thing is, what happens? And this is kind of where Victorian patriarchy actually pays off.

A husband opened a letter to his wife, which said this, and took it to the police. And the jink was up for the crimes brothers. But what came out was how many women were writing off for these pils. And this kind of blew up because nobody had realized that this was such a thing, even though every newspaper in the land had small ads. I wouldn't say it was an industry, but it was a flourishing trade in female pills. So you'd just write off and they'd send you these just nonsense pills?

They'd send you these things. And if they didn't work, they would say, oh, if these don't work, we'll send you stronger ones. Right. It was a massive racket. And they would send testimonial, you know, which presumably somebody would say, sitting in the back room journeying out.

Okay, maybe. Somebody would say they worked, but that was because they were pregnant anyway. You know, they just got a delayed period or they had a miscarriage through the normal course of defence. So it was a nasty game. Nasty. And so then the Lancet gets on to that.

And then what did they discover in their research about these pills? Oh, they were doing analyses and they were trying to persuade the various newspapers to ban these. adversiments, which I don't think really got off the ground. But they were doing analyses and finding what was, you know, not in these pills. They did find out what things were being sold by chemists. If you went into a chemist and asked a back street chemist, you're not a proper reputable

high street, you know, there were some chemists who would be selling things which were like Savin or Apio or whatever, which were dangerous. But mostly these pills, which you could buy. by mail order, send off a post order, etc., etc. Absolutely harmless. Pointless. Was there any form of birth control in the 19th century? Yes, there were forms of birth control,

but it was actually considered quite immoral by most people. There was a whole kind of general sense that this was something we don't quite talk about. Things that starts off being promoted in the kind of radical secularist circles in the early 19th. century, which are also quite often talking about pre-love and anti-religion, etc., etc., which doesn't do it any help, you know, it doesn't give it any respectability. And, you know, it starts getting a little bit more respect. No, it doesn't really get more respectable. It's still quite tainted, even though it's very much saying it's not about abortion. It's trying to prevent abortion because A, that's illegal and B, it's dangerous to women and so on.

The methods that are available, there are condoms which up until the 1840s or 50s are made from animal gut. They are an artisanal product basically because they're very difficult to, I've got a thing on my website about how you make them. It's actually an intricate thing to make. I've read it and it's quite technical. They're quite expensive, but on the other hand, they are reusable. Yum. They'll dance just delicious. Yeah.

But also they have this thing that they were originally for the prevention of venereal diseases. That makes sense. Yeah. So they've got this whole association of libertineage, raffishness, male, you know, libertine, sexual, vice. So the idea that they could possibly be being used in marriage for proper kind of. Where would you even get them from if you were a wife and, Again, there's a certain kind of mail order thing going on, but there are these backstreet booksellers who are also selling kind of, you know, Dodge Works.

Yes, Dutch, Edge, Whing, Whing. Sponges. I know that they were using sponges in the late... Yes, there were sponges. They were also suggesting syringing either with water or... Dooche, yes. They loved a douche, didn't they? Yeah, and some of the substances they were suggesting you syringed up there. and not sounding terribly keen on that. No.

Disinfectant was one, wasn't it, as they get into the 20th century? Lysol disinfectant. Yeah, strong disinfectants, yeah. And cervical caps seem to have been quite popular with the likes of Marie Stopes and Margaret Sanger. Well, actually, women's cats for women start coming in from the 1840s, 50s, once you get the... That's early?

Yeah, once you get the vulcanisation of rubber. Wow. Rubber is the great thing, rubber goods. The advent of rubber is the big leap forward in the worlds of contraception. Wow. Then you get rubber condoms, which could be mass produced at a lower price. Which are the first ones are absolutely terribly crude and, you know, not terribly counterfeit. Thick as a welly boot, aren't they?

Only fun if you're a rubber fetishist. But they also start producing what they call womb veils for women. Sorry, Leslie, one more time. What was that? What did they call them? Boom veils. They didn't. That's ridiculous. Yeah. So they start producing those and you start getting people making these on a fairly industrial scale. But the thing is they're selling these, but they're also selling a Bortifacians. You look at their catalogs and they're basically covering all the options.

And the other thing that comes along about the 1880s, chemical pesseries. Okay, this doesn't sound great. You haven't even explained what's in them and they don't sound too friendly already. They are an advance. So I don't think a lot of historical work to be done on them. I think Claire Jones has maybe done some work on them. They're kind of greasy medium containing quinine, which is a mild spermicide. But the thing is the actual medium which contains.

retards burn motility. So, you know, they're not efficient contraceptive, but they're certainly better than nothing. And they're certainly recommended by people like Annie Besant and Henry Albert, who is one of the kind of major figures in the field, who gets struck off the medical registered by the General Medical Council for publishing the wife's handbook, recommending the use of birth control by married women at a price which puts it. within the reach of boys and girls, as opposed to, you know, as Guinea for doctors. Who else were prominent voices in this? So there were some doctors speaking about it, but at great risk.

Were there women speaking about this in the 19th century? Oh, yes. There were women speaking about it, or at least intervening in the debate. Of course, Annie Besant was co-defendant with Charles Bradlaugh in the famous case about publishing Knowlton's fruits of philosophy. which got prosecuted for obscenity and was actually defended it herself in the courtroom. And as a result, had her child taken away by her separated husband. Unbelievable, isn't it, that? It's unbelievable.

But she also wrote a pamphlet herself called The Law of Population, which presented her own ideas on birth control, because I think she had some dissents with Nolton's ideas. And then there's Alice Vickory. And Alice Vickery is absolutely amazing character who is perhaps less well known than she might be. She married C.R. Driesdale, who was the brother of George Driesdale,

who wrote Elements of Social Science, which under that very bland title was a major work on birth control and contraception, which goes on being published throughout the later 19th century, and made a lot of cases, and is considered rather dangerous because he's almost suggesting that people should actually use contraception and possibly have premarital sex.

It's that delaying having sex is actually bad for people. It's quite interesting because one of the arguments is, masturbation is terribly bad. You know, there's kind of another Victorian ideas mixed up in it. So Alice Vickaric marries his brother. Or she doesn't marry his brother. She actually lives in a free union. with him. Alice Vickery. Well, I never. But they keep it very, very quiet because she wants to become

a doctor. It's really very, very difficult to train as a doctor. This is just before the London's medical school for women is set up. She trains at an early institution, which is just about trying to train women as better and more skilled professional midwives. Then she goes to Paris where they do let women train. And then she comes back where the London Medical School. for women has been set up. And by that time, the Malthusian League, which is promoting birth control, has been set up and she's involved with that. And so she goes to London Medical School for women and wants to register there. She's already registered there. And Elizabeth Gareth Anderson says to her, could we not associate ourselves with the Malthusian League

and birth control? We've got this really hard line to plow with women becoming doctors. Can we kind of not make it even more difficult. So she and a couple of other women who were also training, who were also involved with the mouthusally, say, okay, we'll keep this quiet until we're qualified. And then we will, you know. I love that. Yeah.

Wow. So there were people speaking up for this. Yeah. And she actually set up a rather informal birth control clinic in rather high in the early 20th century. I mean, this was kind of in somebody's sitting room. Was she a eugenicist? Because you find this a lot with the early birth control proponent.

She's like, yay! And then, oh, no. No, the horrible, horrible views. Well, I don't know. It's difficult to know with you. She was more about women's right to control their bodies. Oh, my God. I mean, it's difficult to know with these early ones because a lot of it was women need to control their bodies to have healthier babies.

Yeah. And also to be able to choose their husbands. So at that period, what people meant by eugenics is actually quite complicated to tease out. And a lot of it is also about syphilis. Yeah, so we almost forget about that today because it's the absolute havoc. Yeah, it's coming back. It is, isn't it? I've been reading about that.

Yeah, yeah. People not wrapping up, let alone using sponges and pesseries and like it's on the rise again. People just forget about that one, but it was rife in 19th, 30th, 20th century. It was a major problem. So we spoke a bit about what your options would be if you were a poor servant girl in a house who didn't have any access to these contraceptions and had fell pregnant. What if I was rich? What if I was like, you know, around in the mid-19th century and I was one of the aristocracy

and I found out that I was pregnant? I hadn't been using my sponge or my injection or whatever it is. Is it a different game then if you've got the money to get an abortion or not? This is an interesting one because doctors keep very strong about this. Because on one hand, they kind of say, the law says, the clause in the 1861 Act says, we are doctors. If we do this according to our clinical judgment to save a woman's life, or for the good of her health, this must be lawful.

We just don't fancy go to court, really. And in the 1890s, the Royal College of Physicians actually gets a legal judgment saying that they probably would have a reasonable case that they were lawful under that. They still kind of feel a bit iffy about it. And certainly, if doctors were called to a tender woman, who they suspected of having procured an abortion either by herself or having had it done by someone else, they should make sure that there were witnesses that had already happened before he turned up.

They were very sensitive. But on the other hand, there are also hints that there was already some kind of society abortionist racket going on. But, you know, obviously nobody mentions any names or so, no, no. Yeah, it would all be very, very quiet. It would all be very, very quiet. And, you know, it's obviously something that society ladies' word of mouth, one guesses. Yeah. That they would have known. Yeah. What penalties were people facing? By the time these laws start to come in in the mid-19th century, if you were convicted under one of them for either procuring an abortion or giving one to someone else, what are the sentences that we're talking about here? Well, technically, it was a capital crime. In some cases, it was commuted to try. transportation. I mean, its transportation goes on, I think, just about still in operation, transportation or imprisonment for life. But in a number of cases, I sort of did a very quick kind of

flip through a few cases. There are so many cases in the British newspaper archive. A number where Mercy was recommended by the jury, which is interesting. I would like to know a bit more about the context there. Was it seen that he was trying to help out some woman? Was it seen that this was just an unfortunate accident? Because after all, it's really kind of manslaughter. It's not murder. It's something that happens in the course of doing something else.

So, you know, it's what technically happened and what actually happened. What actually happened are different things. Yeah. Yeah, it would depend a lot on what the jury felt, what the individual judge felt. There was one where it was actually a doctor. He only got a few years in prison. So, you know, it possibly varied over time, about over different areas. You know, you just, I feel there's a whole lot of PhD thesis waiting to happen.

God, isn't there just, you just desperately want to know more about this. I could talk to you about this all day, Leslie, but I'm not allowed to. But my final question is like, you can talk about what was happening in the 19th century as far as abortion and contraception were concerned. And it's a pretty bleak picture. There's trailblazers trying to sort things out. But I suppose the question I've got to end on is, where are we up to today?

How much has actually changed and how far have we got left to go? Obviously, the situation has changed massively. On the other hand, I think some attitudes seem to have gone retrogressive. There was a kind of compassion for certain things in the 19th century. for women's predicaments that I think we somehow have possibly slightly lost. Well, it's only a couple of weeks ago, wasn't it, that a woman was jailed for, she took abortion pills after she was supposed to have during lockdown, didn't she? Yes, and I think that was not, I think, what happened in the 19th century,

given that she'd taken something, then she'd probably to survive. But, yeah, I think there's something very wrong with that. I think so, too. I think we're trying to litigate a kind of entirely different situation with laws that were made under a very different dispensation. And one of the things that that law was made under was before antiseptic surgery. And quite shortly after that, antiseptis came in. Anisea was just starting. And very shortly afterwards, abortion became, if done under proper surgical conditions,

a very safe operation. Yeah. It was one of the safest things. Certainly today it's safer than childbirth. And it was safer than childbirth in 1967. I remember seeing a clip from a documentary about the 67 reformers, and they realized that their opponents did not realize this.

Really? Yes, that childbirth is actually dangerous. And early abortion is actually safer. Leslie, you have been, absolutely spellbinding and fascinating to talk to. If people want to know more about your work, where can they find you? Well, they can find it on my website, obviously, and in my blog, in my books, which are listed on my website,

and on the history of abortion or reform, I do want to recommend, because I think she's amazing and she is still too little known. Stella Brown, who was the pioneer abortion or reformer, who I think possibly made the first argument in the UK that any programme of birth control reform also needs to legalise abortion. And she did this like in 1915, I think. Oh my God. Wow.

Yeah. And she was doing this all through in 1920s. And the rest of the birth control movement were telling her to shut up because they had enough of a problem getting birth control accepted. Do you know, Leslie, we might have to have you back on to talk about her. She sounds absolutely incredible. I'm always up to talk about Stella. I mean, it's gruesome, it's awful.

But I think there are also these kind of points of compassion that come out of the past, as well as the awfulness and the horror and the exploitation. And also the bravery. The bravery. Yeah, people like Besant and Vickery. Incredible people. Thank you so much for talking to me.

Thank you, Kate. That was amazing. Thank you for listening, everyone, and thank you so much to Leslie for joining me. And if you like what you heard, please don't forget to like, review and subscribe wherever it is that you get your podcasts. If you want us to explore a subject or if you just wanted to say hello, then please email us at betwixt at history hit.com. We have got episodes on the history of Lube and the history of Eleanor of Aquitaine, all coming your way. This podcast was edited by Tom Delagie and produced by Stuart Beckwith, the senior producer, was Charlotte Lum. This podcast contains music from Epidemic Sound.