Life Story: Ann Trow Lohman, a.k.a. Madame Restell (1812 - 1878)

Ann Trow was born in the small town of Painswick, England, on May 6, 1812. Her parents, John and Mary Ann, worked in a mill. They had very little money, and it is unlikely that Ann received much education while she was growing up. When Ann was 15 years old, she took a job as a live-in maid. As an attractive, young, single girl living away from her family, Ann was very popular with young men. When she was only 16 she married Henry Summers, a tailor who was seven years older.

Ann and Henry struggled financially. When Ann gave birth to her daughter Caroline in 1830, it only highlighted their need for better opportunities. In 1831, Ann and Henry immigrated to New York City, hoping to make a fresh start. They settled into an apartment just a few blocks south of the infamous Five Points neighborhood. Unfortunately, Henry died of a fever just a few months after their arrival, leaving Ann a widow and single mother in an unfamiliar land.

Ann worked as a seamstress to support herself and Caroline, but the hours were long and the pay was low. Ann wanted a better life, and in 1836, she met and married a man with the same ambition. Ann’s second husband, Charles Lohman, was a Russian immigrant who worked as a printer for the New York Herald. Ann and Charles moved into an apartment on Chatham Street, where Ann made the acquaintance of Dr. William Evans. William was a quack, which means he had no formal medical training. He made pills, tonics, and powders based on old herbal remedies and sold them as cures for all manner of ills, from baldness to consumption. These medicines did not usually cause harm, but they were not much help either. William was quite successful, and Ann decided to try her hand at making and selling her own medicines. With Charles’ encouragement, she made pills to cure sickness of the liver, lungs, and stomach and was able to establish a small, steady business. Then, one of her customers asked for a medicine to end an unwanted pregnancy.

In the first half of the 1800s, family planning was considered the private business of women. Before “quickening,” or the moment when a woman first felt a fetus move, a woman could pretty easily obtain medicines to terminate an unwanted pregnancy. If these medicines did not work, midwives and doctors could perform a surgical abortion. In New York State, doctors who wanted to take control of women’s medicine had passed a law in 1827 that made providing an abortion a crime punishable by a year in jail and a $100 fine. But in order for someone to be prosecuted, they had to be reported to the authorities. Since most people did not care too much, the law was not widely upheld. When Ann made her first abortion medication, she likely just copied an old recipe, and joined a long tradition of female-led family planning.

Ann’s abortion treatment was extremely popular. She gave up working as a seamstress to focus full time on her medicines. Charles followed soon after, styling himself a doctor and providing care for women in need. They made enough money that Ann was able to take Caroline to visit their family in England in the fall of 1838. When she returned to the U.S., Ann and Charles concocted a scheme to elevate her business. They rented a respectable-looking office on a fashionable street. Ann started spreading a story that during her travels she learned the secrets of effective and safe medical abortions from a famous practitioner in Paris. She also adopted the name Madame Restell to sound more sophisticated. 

On March 18, 1839, the first ad for Madame Restell’s services ran in the New York Sun. Soon after, they launched a mail-order business by circulating a flyer around the country. The business was an instant success, and they established offices in Philadelphia and Boston. The only problem was that Madame Restell’s medicines were not terribly effective. Women who found themselves pregnant after using her birth control powder could spend more money to buy her abortion medicine. But what if the abortion medicine failed? For these unlucky women, Madame Restell offered one last, secret option. At a cost of $100 for rich women, and $20 for poor women, Madame Restell would perform a surgical abortion in the back room of her office. Three days after the procedure, the women could then go to their regular doctor and claim they had suffered a miscarriage. No one need ever know the truth, and everyone would be safe from the law.

Ann’s office, open daily from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m., was always full, and there was often a line of women waiting when she opened her doors each day. Some of the city’s wealthiest women sought her services, and Ann was not shy about charging them outrageous prices. Madame Restell was not the only person offering assistance to women with an unwanted pregnancy, but she was by far the most public. The success of her business  reveals how many women of all social classes needed the help she offered. 

Ann’s popularity drew dangerous negative attention. A loose alliance of doctors, religious leaders, and social reformers set out to end her practice. Ann’s opponents had a variety of motivations. Some resented that a woman was finding so much success by claiming to be a medical professional without any real education. Some worried that easily available family planning would cause a decline in female virtue. Some worried that if too many middle- and upper-class women limited the size of their families, the country would soon be overrun by immigrants. 

Ann’s first arrest occurred on August 17, 1839, just five months after her first ad was published in the newspapers. The charges were dropped, but this was only the beginning of decades of harassment. The men who wanted to stop Ann kept up a relentless barrage of attacks on her in the newspapers. She was called “the wickedest woman in New York.” She was accused of hurting and killing her patients, although no one was ever able to prove these accusations in court. In 1846, angry people who believed the bad press rioted outside of Ann’s offices. Still, women sought her services. They had to time their visits to avoid the police patrols set to prevent anyone from meeting with the notorious Madame Restell.

In 1847, Ann’s detractors finally succeeded in getting her convicted of performing an illegal abortion. Ann served a year in prison, and when she was released, she revised the business. She stopped offering surgical abortions and focused instead on her pills. With this change, the public furor over her business died down for a time. She still made a fortune every year. Her stature in the city was so great that the mayor officiated her daughter’s wedding in 1854. In 1862, Ann and Charles built a mansion in the most exclusive neighborhood in New York City. Ann had finally achieved her dreams of wealth and status, but she did not give up her work. In 1867, she opened an office right in her home, much to the horror of her ultra-wealthy neighbors.

Unfortunately for Ann, the antiabortion movement gained an enthusiastic new leader at the end of the Civil War. Anthony Comstock, U.S. Postal Inspector and head of the Society for the Suppression of Vice, finally brought Ann down. He sponsored the 1873 federal law that made it illegal to sell obscene material by mail. In 1878, he disguised himself as a man who was seeking Madame Restell’s services for a woman out of state. When Ann sent the woman the abortion medicine he asked for, he had her arrested. This last arrest proved too much for Ann. Her beloved and devoted husband had died the previous year, and no one came forward to support her during her indictment. Rather than face yet another trial that she was sure would end in conviction, Ann died by suicide on April 1, 1878, the day her trial was set to begin.

• abortion: The deliberate termination of a pregnancy.
• mill: Factory.
• New York Herald: Popular New York City newspaper.
• New York Sun: Popular New York City newspaper.