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?

January 2, 1923 First Legal Birth Control Clinic Opens in the U.S.

17 West 16th Street

On January 2, 1923, Margaret Sanger opened the first legal birth control clinic in America, The Birth Control Clinical Research Bureau (BCCRB). In 1916, Sanger opened a trial clinic in Brooklyn to challenge New York State law. She was arrested and served a term of 30 days. The case was appealed and in 1918, the Court of Appeals ruled that a licensed physician could provide “information for the cure or prevention of disease.” This decision provided a precedent for physicians in New York State. In accordance with this decision, in 1923, Margaret Sanger financed and organized the BCCRB under the medical direction of a female physician to advise and instruct patients. By the 1930s, the BCCRB served well over 10,000 patients each year and trained thousands of doctors and nurses. In “The Practice of Contraception”(Sanger, M. and Hannah Stone, 1931), Dr. Hannah Stone defined the functions of the BCCRB as,

(1)To advise and instruct women and properly equip them in contraceptive knowledge; (2) To evaluate the worth of various contraceptive methods; (3) To carry on clinical research in contraceptive methods and technique; (4) To instruct physicians who may desire to observe and learn the methods and technique of contraception; (5) To collect and correlate the many data concerning the social, economic, medical and sexual lives of our patients.” (200)

In the 1930s the BCCRB was the most important birth control organization for clinic activists. The first priority of the BCCRB was to treat patients but it also tested and reported effectiveness of contraceptives, analyzed and reported on patients’ experiences, created instructional literature, and provided training for doctors and nurses. The BCCRB also established a nationwide network of affiliated clinics and supervised numerous field projects in the rural south. Clinic staff worked in close association with Sanger’s National Committee for Federal Legislation for Birth Control (NCFLBC), and promoted the inclusion of contraceptive instruction in public health programs throughout the country. The clinic’s detailed follow-up work with patients and careful record-keeping enabled medical researchers, contraceptive manufacturers, and associated clinics to study the effectiveness and safety of particular forms of birth control, including the diaphragm and jelly, condom, and the rhythm method.

Birth Control Clinical Research Bureau in New York

The BCCRB sought to operate within the constraints of New York State law, which stated that doctors could prescribe contraceptives only for the prevention or cure of a disease, including tuberculosis, syphilis, and various types of psychoses. The BCCRB broadly interpreted the law to allow parents interested in spacing their children to be eligible for contraceptive information, while treating countless other patients under a catchall of medical indications, such as general debility. The Bureau was challenged on several occasions for illegally dispensing birth control devices and information, most notably in April of 1929 when police raided the clinic, seized records and equipment, and arrested Medical Director Dr. Hannah Stone, along with four other staff members. A judge later dismissed the charges citing insufficient evidence. The raid generated significant publicity for the clinic and helped secure long-sought support from New York’s medical establishment, which emphatically condemned the police action, called for a return of all patient records, and lent credibility to the work of the clinic.

In 1933 the BCCRB participated in a test case to challenge federal obscenity laws. Sanger arranged for a package of pessaries to be sent from Japan to the Bureau’s medical director, Dr. Hannah Stone. The package was seized by customs officials. After an extended trial (U.S. v. One Package) and appeal process, the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the 2nd District ruled in favor of releasing the package in 1936, stating that physicians could circulate and prescribe contraceptives and contraceptive information in the interests of the health and general well-being of their patients. As founder and director, Sanger managed the internal operations of the BCCRB as well as fund-raising, public relations and the pursuit of new research and testing. She was more intimately involved with the administration of the BCCRB than with any of the other organizations she established or directed during her long career. By the early 1930s, however, she left the daily management of the Bureau largely in the hands of its medical director, Dr. Hannah Stone, while concentrating her efforts on fund-raising activities and her campaign for federal birth control legislation.

The BCCRB was first located at 104 Fifth Avenue (across the hall from the American Birth Control League). In 1926 the clinic moved to 46 West 15th Street. In 1930, the clinic moved to 17 W 16th Street, which is now a  National Historic Landmark. In 1940 the BCCRB became the Margaret Sanger Research Bureau, and in 1973 took the name Planned Parenthood of New York City.  In 1991, PPNYC moved to 26 Bleecker Street and in 1997 PPNYC’s Margaret Sanger Center was relocated clinical facilities to 26 Bleecker Street.

For more information see:

The Selected Papers of Margaret Sanger Volume 2.

http://www.nyu.edu/projects/sanger/secure/aboutms/organization_bccrb.html

Birth Control on Main Street, Cathy Moran Hajo

Address at the Hotel Brevoort, January 17, 1916

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1916, birth control, brevoort hotel, Brooklyn, Brownsville clinic, margaret sanger, reproductive rights, speeches, Woman Rebel

There is never an easy path to becoming a national icon, and Margaret Sanger’s was no different.  While many would say that “no press is bad press,” it was probably not in Sanger’s best interests to be jailed just as her birth control movement was taking shape.  While her famous monthly, Woman Rebel, was first published in March of 1914 and was then banned from public mailing, her trial concerning the publication was continuously postponed until January of 1916.  The day before her trial, a large crowd of people was privileged enough to hear Sanger deliver a short but powerful speech at the Hotel Brevoort.

A 1954 photo of the Brevoort Hotel shortly before its demolition.

Once a farm property, the Hotel Brevoort was erected in 1845 across from the Brevoort family mansion.  In business for over 100 years, the hotel was home to many colorful people, including “Congressmen, Senators, Mexican and Turkish heads of state, past U.S. presidents, army generals, and even Prince Arthur”.  Even Mark Twain, who lived nearby the hotel, frequented its barber shop run by long-time barber Henri Grechen.

Sanger gave her speech at a dinner held in her support.  Although the speech was short, it had a powerful impact on the hundreds of people, men and women, who came to show their support for the original Woman Rebel.  It had the air of a proud woman, ready to become a martyr for her cause as a way of extending her voice to those she had not yet reached in her travels.  She praises her supporters, saying that “all our great and modern thinkers have advocated it!  It is an idea that must appeal to any mature intelligence”², placing them on a pedestal of higher society.  Sanger understood that some of her audience members did not fully agree with the method she was using to spread the information of safe birth control, and addressed this in her address:

I know that physicians and scientists have a great technical fund of information–greater than I had on the subject of family limitation – Margaret Sanger, Hotel Brevoort Speech

and goes on to ask her audience members to carry on her work in the way they saw fit.  Not because, I believe, she anticipated never returning from prison or exile, but because she wished, upon her eminent return, that there would still be a movement in the United States fighting for the freedom and safety of women’s bodies.

In the end, the government dropped the charges against Sanger.  The death of her daughter, Peggy, just a few weeks before her trial date led prosecutors to believe that jailing Sanger would brand her as martyr, and decided to avoid the bad press that came with prosecuting a grieving mother.  By not being jailed, Sanger was able to start a birth control clinic in October of 1916 in Brooklyn, the first of its kind in the United States.  Sanger was jailed for 30 days for opening the clinic, but her jailing led to a court ruling in the reformation of the law that prohibited the dispensing of contraceptive information, and restricted it to allow professional doctors to become legal distributers.  This culminated in Sanger opening the first legal birth control clinic in 1923 at 104, 5^th Avenue, and the beginning of mass distribution of information to women in need of a family planning strategy.

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The complete Hotel Brevoort Speech:

http://www.nyu.edu/projects/sanger/webedition/app/documents/show.php?sangerDoc=128167.xml

New York Times on the Hotel Brevoort Speech:

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=F50D10FD3B5B17738DDDA10994D9405B868DF1D3

History of the Hotel Brevoort:

http://westviewnews.org/2012/07/brevoort-in-the-village/