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Letters on the Equality of the Sexes, and the Condition of Woman
Sarah Moore Grimké and her sister Angelina were formidable and vocal anti-slavery activists and agitators for the rights of women. Growing up on a large plantation in South Carolina, Grimké disregarded the law forbidding teaching slaves to read. The sisters moved to Philadelphia, becoming Quakers, though both abandoned Quakerism over its racism and sexism. The Grimké sisters were delegates to the Women’s Anti-Slavery Convention held in New York in 1837 and, with Grace Bustill Douglass, co-founded the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society. These Letters were addressed to Mary Parker, president of the 1837 convention. -
Lucifer: The Light-Bearer
Moses Harman was active in the abolition movement in Missouri before and during the Civil War. He moved to Valley Falls, Kansas, in 1879, and became the editor of The Kansas Liberal, later renamed Lucifer, the Light Bearer. Anti-government and a supporter of eugenics, he published on issues such as women’s rights and birth control and, like Goldman and Margaret Sanger, was targeted by Comstock for distributing obscene literature. He moved the location of Lucifer several times, including to Chicago in 1896. On a lecture tour stop in Chicago in 1897, Goldman made a point of visiting Harman at the Lucifer offices. -
Madame Restell!: her secret life-history from her birth to her suicide: full details: showing how she became rich: who her victims were, and how she held them in her power: her tricks and devices: what she did and how she did: all about her: "the most terrible being ever born"
English immigrant Anna Trow Lohman, known as Madame Restell, became notorious and financially successful by performing abortions. New York had outlawed abortion unless necessary to save the mother’s life, but abortion practitioners continued to work in the state. Restell was entrepreneurial. She sold patent medicines for birth control and abortion, provided housing for pregnant women, and facilitated adoptions. In 1847, her husband, the radical printer Charles M. Lohman, published a medical companion under the name A. M. Mauriceau. It went through at least nine editions. The book advertised Restell’s patent medicines, as well as condoms. Their business flourished, with branches opening in Philadelphia and Boston. In 1873, the Comstock Law to suppress the circulation of obscene materials was enacted, and in 1878 Restell was personally arrested by Anthony Comstock. Anna Restell committed suicide the morning she was to face charges in court. -
Madame Restell’s Mansion on Fifth Avenue [stereoview]
English immigrant Anna Trow Lohman, known as Madame Restell, became notorious and financially successful by performing abortions. New York had outlawed abortion unless necessary to save the mother’s life, but abortion practitioners continued to work in the state. Restell was entrepreneurial. She sold patent medicines for birth control and abortion, provided housing for pregnant women, and facilitated adoptions. In 1847, her husband, the radical printer Charles M. Lohman, published a medical companion under the name A. M. Mauriceau. It went through at least nine editions. The book advertised Restell’s patent medicines, as well as condoms. Their business flourished, with branches opening in Philadelphia and Boston, they and were able to purchase a mansion on Fifth Avenue. In 1873, the Comstock Law to suppress the circulation of obscene materials was enacted, and in 1878 Restell was personally arrested by Anthony Comstock. Anna Restell committed suicide the morning she was to face charges in court. -
Manuscript blurb for Sojourner Truth’s Narrative
Harriet Beecher Stowe rocketed to celebrity with the publication of Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852), selling 300,000 copies during its first year in print. Abolititionist and feminist Sojourner Truth saw an opportunity. Truth asked Stowe to write a promotional statement that would bring notice to her autobiographical Narrative. She and Stowe met for the first and only time in 1853. This signed statement appears as an introduction in some copies of the 1853 edition of the Narrative. -
Manuscript medical certificate
In this fragment of a certificate, Dr. J. H. Fairfax notes that he has examined an enslaved woman named “Alsy, belonging to the estate of R[. . . ?] in the employment of Mr. Charles Mothershead and find her to be labouring under a ‘procidentia uteri, or falling down of the womb,’” a prolapsed uterus. This condition sometimes occurs after childbirth and can be caused by severe beatings. Fairfax determined that Alsy “may be made usefull by the application of an instrument properly adjusted, to keep the part from coming down.” -
Manuscript receipt for “printing certificates of spirits, wines & teas imported in the first quarter of 1823”
Sister of two printers and married to another, Lydia Bailey was an experienced printer when she inherited a struggling shop upon the death of her husband in 1808. Industrious and enterprising, she printed for the Presbyterian church and numerous charitable organizations, including the Female Tract Society. From 1813 she was Printer to the City of Philadelphia, and master printer at one of the busiest printing shops in the city, employing over forty workers. The business printed almanacs, annual reports, bookseller catalogues, broadsides, and chapbooks. She was a printer for fifty-three years. -
Medical morals, illustrated with plates and extracts from medical works: designed to show the pernicious social and moral influence of the present system of medical practice, and the importance of establishing female medical colleges, and educating and employing female physicians for their own sex
During the Victorian Era, many considered childbirth and midwifery to be unseemly and male midwifery indecent. George Gregory shared these views, and he championed the establishment of female medical colleges so that men would not be needed in “this disagreeable branch of medicine.” In Medical Morals he includes images and quotations from the English translation of J. P. Maygrier’s Nouvelles démonstrations d’accouchemens to illuminate his point. Dr. Maygrier’s comprehensive and beautifully illustrated work on obstetrics portrays the changes in a pregnant woman’s body, documenting labor and delivery. In some of the images, he intended to show a discreet examination of a woman. In Gregory’s later engravings, after Maygrier’s images, the examination takes on a sinister character. -
Memorial de l'art des accouchemens, ou, Principes fondés sur la pratique de l'Hospice de la maternité de Paris et sur celle des plus célèbres praticiens nationaux et étrangers : suivis, 1° des aphorismes de Mauriceau; 2° d'une série de 140 gravures représtant le mécanisme de toutes les espèces d'accouchemens : ouvrage placé, par décision ministérielle, au rang des livres classiques à l'usage des élèves de l'Ecole d'accouchemens de Paris...
French midwife Marie Boivin is considered one of the first great modern practitioners of obstetrics and gynecology. Boivin began her studies at a nunnery in Étampes and later worked under accomplished midwife Marie-Louise Lachapelle. She invented a new speculum and wrote numerous treatises, including Memorial de l’art des accouchemens, first published in 1812. This manual was published in many editions and translated into several European languages. Boivin also translated medical works from English and directed numerous hospitals throughout her career. -
Murder: Whereas Robert Smith, Late of Deptford, Shoe-maker, Stands Charged with the Murder of his Uncle, Mr. James Smith, of Lewisham [. . .]
Elizabeth Delahoy was a printer, binder, and stationer in Greenwich. Sadly, in 1808, a fire destroyed the shop she owned with her husband, taking his life. She carried on their business at least through 1824, while simultaneously running a boarding house and raising children. She printed typographically complex books alongside bread-and-butter job printing, such as this broadside. Delahoy advertises the speed with which she can print notices regarding crime or loss at her press. -
Narrative of Sojourner Truth: A Northern Slave, Emancipated from Bodily Servitude by the State of New York, in 1828
Feminist and abolitionist Sojourner Truth was one of the towering figures of nineteenth-century America. She was born into slavery in 1797 on a rural farm in Ulster County, New York. At age thirty, she drew strength from her Christian faith and found the courage to escape with her infant daughter. A spiritualist, in 1843 she had a vision and changed her name from Isabella Baumfree to Sojourner Truth. She became a preacher, earning her living as she moved through Long Island and Connecticut, eventually joining a Garrisonian, abolitionist, utopian community, the Northampton Association of Education and Industry in Massachusetts. In 1850, noting the success of Frederick Douglass’ autobiography, Truth dictated her life story to her friend Olive Gilbert, who was a fellow member of the Northampton Association. Truth wrote, published, and distributed the book herself. She used the proceeds to support herself and to buy a house of her own in Northampton. -
On the Connexion of the Physical Sciences
Mary Somerville was one of the foremost British scientists of the nineteenth century. Though forbidden by her father to study mathematics, she taught herself geometry and algebra in secret, pursuing her interests during a time when scientific education was not yet formalized and scientific pursuits were considered beyond women’s abilities. In 1835 Somerville and Caroline Herschel were the first women elected as honorary members of the Royal Astronomical Society. On the Connexion comprehensively summarizes contemporary knowledge in all areas of the physical sciences. It was publisher John Murray’s best-selling science title to date, was published in ten editions in Britain, and translated widely. -
On the Plains, and Among the Peaks, or, How Mrs. Maxwell Made her Natural History Collection
Naturalist Martha Maxwell brought Western fauna into public view through her skills at taxidermy. She defined the art of creating natural history dioramas with animals displayed in their natural habitats. Maxwell’s half-sister wrote a biography recounting her contributions as a scientist and documenting her correspondence with Spencer Fullerton Baird, the second Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. Despite the quality of her work, Martha Maxwell struggled to make a living and died destitute. A few of Maxwell’s original specimens survive and are in the collections of the Smithsonian Institution. -
Our Nig; or, Sketches from the life of a free Black: in a two-story white house, North, showing that slavery's shadows fall even there
Our Nig is the first novel written by an African American and published in the United States. Wilson wrote it to raise funds to care for her sick son George and published it anonymously. The story recounts the oppression of free blacks as indentured servants in the north. Wilson herself had been indentured until the age of eighteen as a house servant. Our Nig was the only novel she wrote. Later in life, she was active in the spiritualist community as a medium.Tags 1800s -
Pioneer Work in Opening the Medical Profession to Women
Elizabeth Blackwell was the first woman to graduate from medical school in the United States. She immigrated with her family to the United States from England in 1831. Around 1844, she set her sights on becoming a physician, and endured years of rejections from medical schools until 1847 when a school in Geneva, New York, accepted her—in part as a joke. Blackwell, however, graduated first in her class. In 1853, she established a dispensary for the poor, the New York Infirmary for Women, which also became a training hospital for women. -
Plas Newydd: Near Llangollen
In the late eighteenth century, aristocrat Eleanor Butler and Sarah Ponsonby, the young orphaned daughter of Chambre Brabazon Ponsonby, abandoned their lives in Ireland and made a home for themselves in Llangollen, Wales, to the disapproval of both their families. Known as the Ladies of Llangollen, they appeared to have understood their relationship as a marriage. They were part of an emerging culture of relationships between same-sex couples. While they lived a life of rural retreat, the Ladies’ celebrity and social status meant that their home Plas Newydd became a salon. They built an extensive library, and there they hosted many of the intelligentsia of the day, including writers such as Wordsworth, Byron, Lady Caroline Lamb, and Anna Seward; physician Erasmus Darwin; potter Josiah Wedgwood; and the reigning Queen Charlotte. -
Plates Illustrating the Geology & Scenery of Massachusetts
Orra White Hitchcock’s geological and botanical illustrations were published to accompany her husband Edward Hitchcock’s Report on the Geology, Mineralogy, Botany, and Zoology of Massachusetts, the first state geology published. She began her career teaching young women at Deerfield Academy, where she met Edward, who became a leading geologist and president of Amherst College. Orra’s work was integral to that of her husband, who atypically always gave her credit for her work. As a scientist herself, she observed and drew hundreds of specimens of native plants, mushrooms, and lichen. She was one of the most important American scientific illustrators of the time. -
Progress of Female Virtue: Engraved by A. Cardon from the Original Drawings by Mrs. Cosway
Maria Hadfield grew up in Florence, where she studied art, copying paintings at the Uffizi under Johan Zoffany. She was elected to the Florentine Accademia delle Arti del Disegno at eighteen. Influenced by Henry Fuseli and Angelica Kauffman, Cosway continued to paint after her marriage, but her husband, the miniaturist Richard Cosway, would not permit her to sell her work. A pioneer in liberal education, she established a number of girls schools in Italy. The aquatints in Progress of Female Virtue are from her drawings. -
Rights of Women under the Late Constitutional Amendments
Judge Henry R. Selden advised Susan B. Anthony that she had the right to vote. When she was subsequently arrested for voting, he represented her in court. He later published the text of his argument. This is Judge Selden’s personal copy. -
Sabbath lessons, or, An abstract of sacred history: to which is annexed, a geographical sketch of the principal places mentioned in sacred history
Eliza Palmer Peabody was a writer and educator. After her marriage, she started a household school that abandoned the rote recitation used in boys’ schools and instead encouraged a conversational model. She instilled in her pupils a belief in women and men’s equal capability as learners and in “the paramount importance of women to American civilization.” The class materials she developed were subsequently published. Her three daughters—Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, Sophia Hawthorne, and Mary Peabody Mann—were each notable in their own right.
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