One Hundredth Anniversary of the Brownsville Clinic—A Media Opportunity

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Brownsville clinic, Ethel Byrnes, Fania Mindell

On October 16, 1916, Margaret Sanger opened the first birth control clinic in the United

Sanger in 1917 (courtesy of the Library of Congress.

States. The Brownsville clinic violated Section 1142 of the New York State Penal Code. This state law, similar to the federal Comstock Law, criminalized the distribution of materials on contraception due to their obscene nature. But Sanger’s violation of the state’s anti-obscenity statute was no mistake; it was a deliberate decision meant to capture the media’s attention and push the obscure topic of birth control into public debate.

At 46 Amboy Street, Sanger’s clinic was located in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn—a densely populated, impoverished area. The men and women who lived in Brownsville were primarily working class immigrants, a socioeconomic group that, in Sanger’s eyes, was most in need of access to birth control. To advertise the clinic’s services, Sanger produced trilingual leaflets written in English, Yiddish, and Italian. They read: “Mothers! Can you afford to have a large family? Do you want any more children? If not, why do you have them? Do not kill, Do not take life, but Prevent. Safe, Harmless Information can be obtained of trained Nurses at 46 Amboy Street…All Moth
ers Welcome” (“Flyer for 46 Amboy Street Birth Control Clinic,” Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, N.Y., n.d.)

Fania Mindell (right) and Sanger at Clinic, October 1916

 

Her efforts were successful. On its opening day, 140 women visited the clinic. For the nine days it remained open, the clinic had a total of 450 visitors, and many of the women seen offered testimonials. One mother shared, “This is the kind of place we have been wanting all the time. I have had seven children, two are dead, and my husband is a sick man. Do you know how I got bread for them? By getting down on my knees and scrubbing floors for the baker; that’s what I did when we couldn’t pay the bill. Seven children…that’s enough for any woman.” Another simply commented, “It is so much easier to talk to a woman than a man” (Sanger, “A Day with Margaret Sanger in her Birth Control Clinic,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 24 October 1916, 4).

The popularity of the Brownsville clinic came despite Sanger’s inability to secure a doctor. With no physician willing to provide contraceptive services, the social activist operated the clinic with her sister Ethel Byrne, a registered nurse, and the help of Fania Mindell, a friend and translator. Traffic and testimonials were not enough to keep the doors of the Brownsville clinic open though. On October 26, 1916 New York police shut down the country’s first birth control clinic before it had even been open for two weeks.

During the arrest of Sanger, Byrne, and Mindell, the three women resisted, creating a scene to publicly expose their violation of the law. In the trials that followed, Sanger obtained the platform she had been seeking. Her sister Ethel Byrne, convicted and sentenced to thirty days imprisonment in January 1917, immediately began a hunger strike—the dramatic protest attracting crowds of reporters. Sanger, commenting on her sister’s behavior, explained, “These unfortunate women go to their graves unnoticed and their agonies and deaths unknown. Mrs. Byrne feels that one more death laid at the door of the government of this state is of little consequence.” Byrne lasted five days before prison staff force-fed her through a tube, but the media her protest attracted was invaluable to their cause (Sanger, “Stirring Appeal Written by Birth Control Advocates,” Wilkes Barre Times-Leader, 27 January 1917, 13).

Following Byrne’s hunger strike, Sanger employed her trial as another media opportunity. During her hearing, she attempted to break the link many people saw between birth control and morality. As an alternative, Sanger advocated for the association between birth control and socioeconomic and medical issues. She called upon twenty-five Brownsville women as witnesses to garner support for her convictions. Her former patients elicited sympathy as they shared tragic accounts of failed abortions, miscarriages, and an endless series of childbirths.

Movie recreation of Sanger’s arrest at Brownsville Clinic (Courtesy of Library of Congress)

On February 2, 1917, Sanger was offered a suspended sentence if she would promise to abide by the law. The activist declined, proclaiming, “With me it is not a question of personal imprisonment or personal disadvantage. I am today and have always been more concerned with changing the law and the sweeping away of the law, regardless of what I have to undergo to have it done,” later reiterating to the court, “I cannot respect the law as it exists today.” As a result, Sanger was convicted and sentenced to thirty days of imprisonment at the Queens County Penitentiary—yet another media boon (Sanger qtd. in “Sanger on Trial: The Brownsville Clinic Testimony,” Margaret Sanger Papers Project, Newsletter, Fall 2000 and Sanger, “Liberty Scorned by Mrs. Sanger,” New York Tribune, 6 February 1917, 9).

Sanger went on to appeal the court’s decision, defending her violation of the law by pointing out its humanitarian purpose. While Sanger’s conviction was upheld, the Brownsville clinic trials led the court to “sufficiently broaden its interpretation of the law to enable physicians to prescribe birth control to women when medically indicated.” This legal shift was the first in a series of changes that would foreshadow systematized, physician-staffed birth control clinics in the U.S. (“Seventy-Fifth Anniversary of the Brownsville Clinic,” Margaret Sanger Papers Project, Newsletter, Winter 1991).

Following the 1916 Brownsville clinic and the legal wake it produced, Sanger went on to establish the American Birth Control League in 1921 and the Birth Control Clinical Research Bureau (BCCRB) in 1923. The BCCRB, like the Brownsville clinic, was another first for the United States; it was the country’s first legal birth control service provider. One year after opening its doors, the BCCRB was one of the most popular birth control clinics in the country. Fifteen years later, the BCCRB merged with the American Birth Control League. The resultant group was known as the Birth Control Federation of America. In 1942, the Federation changed its name and became known as Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

Today, the country’s relationship with birth control—one in which we are just as likely to see a television commercial for birth control pills, vaginal rings, or condoms air as we are for the local car dealership—is dramatically improved. No longer a taboo topic hiding in the shadows, birth control is a part of the public conversation and widely accessible to women of different socioeconomic backgrounds. In 1916, Sanger, Byrne, and Mindell began a century-long process; their actions ignited a series of changes in how the public would regard contraceptives and how the law would increasingly allow for birth control services. One hundred years later, we have these three strong women to thank for the advancement of our country’s relationship with birth control services.

In Honor of Women’s History Month, We Remember Hannah Stone

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birth control, birth control methods, history, margaret sanger, reproductive rights, women

When we remember the birth control movement, we must commemorate the extraordinary women who willingly risked so much for the advancement of such a controversial movement. For these activists, giving all women new access and opportunities to contraceptives meant more than their own potential individual  advancements. Dr. Hannah Mayer Stone embodied this type of dedication. Chosen by Margaret Sanger in 1925 to be the head physician of the Clinical Research Bureau, Dr. Hannah Stone would prove to be dedicated not just to the cause, but also to the over 100,000 patients she saw during her time at the clinic.

Hannah M. Stone

While she defied the norm with her passionate involvement with the movement, Dr. Hannah Stone surpassed traditional 20th century women’s roles all her life. Born in New York City in 1893 as the daughter of a pharmacist, she went on to receive a degree in pharmacy from Brooklyn College in 1912. Following this, she attended New York Medical school, receiving her MD in 1920. In 1921, she attended the first American Birth Control Conference, where she met Margaret Sanger. Sanger opened the Clinical Research Bureau in 1923, and two years later she needed a new physician.Dr. Stone was already a member of the medical advisory board for the Clinical Research Bureau when Margaret Sanger offered her the position of physician. As she had this prior involvement, her interest in the birth control movement was known. Dr. Hannah Stone would work at the Clinical Research Bureau, which was later renamed Birth Control Clinical Research Bureau in 1928, for 16 years without receiving compensation.

The main purpose behind the establishment of the Clinical Research Bureau was to do more than just administer birth control to patients; it was to also prove the effectiveness of different types of contraceptives through detailed record keeping. Dr. Stone handled both tasks methodically. By the end of her time at the clinic in 1941, she had helped over 100,000 patients and she had maintained a record for each one. But aside from just being thorough, Dr. Stone was compassionate and understanding with her patients. Her demeanor led her become known as the “Madonna of the Clinic.” In her writing, Sanger expressed her adoration of Dr. Stone. She commented on her attributes, listing  “her infinite patience, her attention to details, her understanding of human frailties, her sympathy, her gentleness” as reasons that she was invaluable to the work of the clinic. Dr. Stone understood the value of her work at the clinic, not just in her interactions with patients, but also with her responsibility of compiling data about her patients. During her 16 years of service to the Birth Control Clinical Research Bureau, Dr. Hannah Stone was able to leave a profound impact. Her detailed records helped the movement discover that the most effective method of birth control was the diaphragm used with spermicide. She later published some of her findings in “Therapeutic Contraceptives.” This article was one of the first involving birth control to be published within a medical journal.

Her passion for helping women extended past the realm of birth control. Dr. Stone and her husband, Dr. Abraham Stone counseled couples with relationship and sexual problems from within the clinic as well. This began casually, but it developed into the more formal Marriage Consultation Center which was ran out of the clinic and a community church. Through this work Dr. Stone again acted as a trailblazer, as these marriage counseling sessions had not been done in this manner before. In 1935, Dr. Stone and her husband were able to publish their counseling techniques in a book entitled A Marriage Manual.

From left: Sigrid Brestwell, Antoinette Field, Elizabeth Pissort, Margaret Sanger, Hannah Mayer Stone, and Marcella Sideri

Dr. Stone’s association with birth   control often caused her to put the movement’s progression ahead of her own career, as her work at the clinic cost her many opportunities. She had been working at the Women’s Lying-In Hospital when she first started to work for Margaret Sanger at the Research Bureau Clinic. Her new work at the clinic caused a conflict with her the Women’s Hospital and they asked her to give up her newly acquired position. She refused this request, and as a result she was asked to resign from the Women’s Lying-In Hospital. This would only be the first of many times where her work at the clinic would prove to be a detriment to her career. Later, in 1929, Dr. Stone was arrested with four others when the Research Bureau Clinic was raided. Although the charges that were brought against her were later dismissed, the picture that was taken of her in handcuffs permanently damaged her record. Dr. Stone felt the full impact of this when she applied to admission to the New York Medical Society in 1932, and her application was tabled. She continued to take risks for the movement, including her involvement with the test case US v. One Package, when a package of Japanese pessaries were shipped to her and later seized. This case ended up being monumental, as it was the first step in legalized birth control. Despite her involvement with the birth control movement, and the clinic itself proving to be a detriment to the furthering of her medical career, Dr. Stone’s dedication to the cause never faltered.

Dr. Hannah Stone died suddenly of a heart attack in 1942 at the age of 48. Her loss was deeply felt at the clinic, as she had dedicated so much of her time to assisting the patients. She was replaced by her husband, who carried on her legacy and dedication to the cause. Dr. Stone is remembered for her kindness, and her groundbreaking work. She was well respected for her tremendous knowledge on administering effective contraceptives. Thousands of medical students and doctors alike came to the Research Bureau Clinic to learn her methods. Even though Dr. Stone was recognized for her greatness, Margaret Sanger wrote extensively on her humility. She did not crave attention or recognition, and often others took responsibility for her advancements.

As a doctor, Hannah Stone was a trailblazer. As a woman, she exceeded the expectations society had for her at the time. But it is her selflessness that is most inspiring. Dr. Hannah Stone dedicated nearly her entire career to serving women and the birth control movement, and despite her vast achievements she never sought recognition for them.

Brownsville Clinic Open 99 Years Ago

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anniversaries, Brooklyn, Brownsville clinic, Censorship

Today is the 99th anniversary of the day Margaret Sanger opened this nation’s first birth control clinic in Brownsville, Brooklyn. We thought this was a good opportunity to revisit that event from Sanger’s own reminiscences. In an article entitled, “Why I Went to Jail,” published in February 1960, she recalled,

Clinic exterior at 46 Amboy Street

Sanger, her sister Ethel Byrne and Yiddish interpreter Fania Mindell counseling clients.

“It was a crisp, bright morning on October 16, 1916, in Brooklyn, N.Y., that I opened the doors of the first birth-control clinic in the United States. I believed then, and do today, that this was an event of social significance in the lives of American womanhood. ” She wrote. “Three years before, as a professional nurse, I had gone with a doctor on a call in New York’s lower East Side. I had watched a frail mother die from a self-induced abortion. The doctor previously had refused to give her contraceptive information. The mother was one of a thousand such cases; in New   York alone there were over 100,000 abortions a year. That night I knew I could not go on merely nursing, allowing mothers to suffer and die. . . . It was the beginning of my birth-control crusade.”
Sanger’s biggest concern was whether the women would come to clinic. She need not have worried. As she described it,

Sanger and Fania Mindell

“Halfway to the corner they stood in line, shawled, hatless, their red hands          clasping the chapped smaller ones of their children. All day long and far into the evening, in ever-increasing numbers they came, over 100 the opening day. Jews and Christians, Protestants and Roman Catholics alike made their confessions to us. . . .Every day the little waiting room was crowded. The women came in pairs, with friends, married daughters, some with nursing babies clasped in their arms. Women from the far end of Long Island, the press having spread the word, from Connecticut, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, New Jersey. They came to learn the ‘secret’ which was possessed by the rich and denied the poor.”
She continued, “My sister and I lectured to eight women at a time on the basic techniques of contraception, referring them to a druggist to purchase the necessary equipment. Records were meticulously kept. It was vital to have complete case histories if our work was to have scientific value. We also gave many of the women copies of What Every Girl Should Know, a brief booklet I had written earlier.”

The stories of the women were indeed tragic. “One woman told of her 15 children. Six were living. ‘I’m 37 years old. Look at me! I might be 50!’ Then there was a reluctantly pregnant Jewish woman who, after bringing eight children to birth, had two abortions and heaven knows how many miscarriages. Worn out, not only from housework but from making hats in a sweatshop, nervous beyond words, she cried morbidly, ‘If you don’t help me, I’m going to chop up a glass and swallow it.’ I comforted her the best I could, but there was nothing I would do to interrupt her pregnancy. We believed in birth control, not abortion.”

But the clinic was not always a tragic scene. Sanger recalled how they were cheered by neighbors. “The grocer’s wife on the corner dropped in to wish us luck, and the jolly old German baker whose wife gave out handbills to everybody passing the door sent us doughnuts. Then Mrs. Rabinowitz would call to us, ‘If I bring some hot tea now, will you stop the people coming?’ The postman delivering his 50 to 100 letters daily had his little pleasantry, ‘Farewell ladies; hope I find you here tomorrow.’”
He was right—their time was growing short. Sanger wrote, “On the ninth day, a well-dressed, hard-faced woman pushed her way past the humble applicants, gave her name, flaunted a $2 bill, payment for What Every Girl Should Know, and demanded immediate attention. My colleague had a hunch she might be a detective, and pinned the bill on the wall and wrote: ‘Received from Mrs. ——— of the Police Department, as her contribution.’” The following afternoon, according to Sanger, on Oct. 26, “the policewoman again pushed her way through the group of patiently waiting women and, striding into my room, snapped peremptorily, ‘You, Margaret Sanger, are under arrest.’”

Sanger was arrested, tried, convicted and spent 30 days in the queens County Penitentiary. But she went on to lead a crusade to make birth control legal, safe, effective, inexpensive and available to all women regardless of race, religion or ethnicity. Can we still be struggling to ensure women’s reproductive rights 99 years later?

More Mapping Margaret Sanger

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Maps, speeches

Sanger traveled by train on her 1916 national tour. (Library of Congress)

We always knew that Margaret Sanger was a busy woman, but now we are beginning to see just how active she was.  We had first started thinking about the idea in 2012, when we started the “Margaret Sanger Slept Here” series of blog posts, which aimed to show the breadth of her travels and highlight some of the more interesting places where she stayed.  Robin Pokorski blogged about a map she created of Margaret Sanger’s New York that highlighted the places she lived, spoke, and worked.

With the help of interns Yvonne Garrett and Tori Sciancalepore, who helped design the project, and Jackie Collens, Kaitlin Hackbarth, Madeline Moran, Allie Strickland, Vidhi Vakharia, and Laura Filion, who continued inputting data, we used Google Fusion tables to create a geographic representations of Sanger’s public appearances. We began by using an existing Microsoft Access database used to track documents in the digital edition. We excluded articles, which had no place associated with them, and focused on speeches, press statements, and interviews. We exported relevant records into a spreadsheet and imported that into a Google Fusion Table.  We added a field for Location, and a URL. Yvonne and Tori went through the speeches and other public statements, adding places to the table when possible. We tried to get specific addresses when possible, but in some cases had to just input a city name. The URL entered matched the item in the Fusion Table to that speech in the digital edition.

A sample of the spreadsheet that underlies the map.

Once all the documents were added, we decided to go back and enter all the events that we knew of, whether or not we had a copy of the speech that was given. We keep an extensive Chronology, also in Microsoft Access, which has almost 5,000 entries, culled from clippings, correspondence and other research. We did not want to dump this database into the Fusion table because it would duplicate the records we already had in the Fusion table, an it has many entries that don’t have a location associated with them. Also, many of our chronology entries just indicate what Sanger was in, but have no other details. So we began entering only those entries that discussed specific events. These come from correspondence and diary entries, as well as discussions of Sanger’s doings in the press, the Birth Control Review, and other journals, and from scrapbooks. This work is still continuing but we are starting to see the results.

We wanted users to be able to distinguish between the speeches that they could read–in the Speeches and Articles Digital Edition–and those that were just map points. We added the field “Pin Color” to the spreadsheet, selecting the ever imaginative green dots for speeches that we have, and red ones for those that we do not.

When a reader clicks on a dot, it opens up a label which provides the title of the speech, the date, the location, and our notes. If we have the speech you can click through to see it.

As it is filling in, the map provides a interesting sense of the range of Sanger’s travels. You can see that her northern-most speech was in Stockholm, while the most southerly was in Singapore.  As you might expect, the United States is liberally dotted with entries, with emphasis on the Northeast and Midwest, where birth control organizing was most advanced. We can see her three-month tour or India, and her groundbreaking tour of Japan, Korea, and China in 1922. We can also see that she never spoke in the Southern Hemisphere.

The breadth of Sanger’s travels. (Click on image to go to the Fusion Map)

What also makes this map special is that it is interactive.  You can zoom in and out, and by using filters, you can determine which entries are mapped.  By focusing in on Manhattan, for example, we see exactly where Sanger spoke in the city.

Here are Sanger’s Manhattan speeches (Click on the image to get to the Fusion Map)

By limiting the map to the dates April through August 1916, we can see her first national speaking tour taking shape.

Sanger traveled to the West Coast and back in 1916. (Click on the image to get to the Fusion Map)

Sanger disembarking in California in 1937. (American Airlines)

As we continue to vicariously travel the globe, adding Margaret Sanger’s travels to the map, we hope that you will find it a useful resource.

If you know of any Sanger speeches in your neighborhood, and they are not on the map– please let us know by sending a clipping or other report to the Project.

Go to the MAP!

 

 

Sanger Slept Here: The Grace Dodge Hotel, Washington DC

The Grace Dodge Hotel in Washington DC was created to become a haven for women workers during World War I. Although the construction of the seven story building was not completed until after the war, in 1921, the hotel was a strongly woman-only space, even if for only a brief part of its history. Nevertheless, it is no surprise that Margaret Sanger chose to stay here overnight on January 3, 1926.

The Grace Dodge Hotel has an interesting and unique history rooted deeply in women and politics. The owner of the hotel, Grace Hoadley Dodge, was a wealthy philanthropist and president of the YWCA.

Grace Hoadley Dodge

In fact, the hotel was run by the YWCA for many years. Dodge committed much of her time and money toward helping employed women. It follows that the hotel, located at North Capitol and E Streets, NW, was targeted toward business women, workers, and tourists. It also accommodated mothers traveling with their young children, offering suites with cribs and “sanitary appliances for heating the milk bottle in a hurry”.

In honor of the grand opening of the hotel, Grace Coolidge, wife of president Calvin Coolidge, visited the Grace Dodge Hotel in October 1921. While there, she remarked on its special ability for holding women’s conventions and its homey atmosphere. The Washington Post commented further that even the layout of the hotel supported strong female discourse,“There’s a parlor on every bedroom floor, where women may hold conclaves undisturbed by any blundering male, for men are absolutely taboo above the street floor”.

The price to stay at the Grace Dodge Hotel ranged from $1.50 to $4.00 per night in 1921, which with inflation is about $20 to $53 today. The Grace Dodge held some historically unusual and progressive rules. The staff was originally exclusively women. Tips were strictly against the hotel’s policies since the staff was paid a fair wage and did not board or take free meals. There was also a ban on the sale of tobacco products in the hotel.

By the time Margaret Sanger stayed here, the Grace Dodge had already been accepting male guests for nearly two years. While she was in DC, Sanger gave a speech at the Baltimore Open Forum, a weekly open forum on topics related to politics, art, and current issues that boasted many other prominent speakers, including W.E.B. Du Bois.

Baltimore Open Forum schedule, 1936

During her speech, Sanger argued that birth control could be a means to avert infantile deaths, and that “Birth Control does not mean no children. It means bringing into the world only such children as are wanted by healthy parents”.

Although the uniquely progressive aspects of the hotel diminished with time, The Grace Dodge Hotel, later shortened to The Dodge Hotel, remained open until its demolition in 1972.

For more information on the Grace Dodge Hotel, visit:

http://www.streetsofwashington.com/2011/04/dcs-progressive-past-grace-dodge-hotel.htm

To read Sanger’s full speech at the Baltimore Open Forum, click here.

Click here for our map of Sanger’s travels.