The Evil of the Age |
| by Rebecca Lutzy, '04 |
|
August 26th, 1871, was a humid, busy Saturday at the Hudson River Depot in New York City. Sweat and fatigue had crept in by mid-afternoon, when a porter suddenly smelled the stench of decaying flesh. Along the wooden platform lay hundreds of trunks and bags, piled haphazardly, ready for loading onto a Chicago-bound train. During rough handling in the baggage room, the lid of an ordinary, 2'8" by 18" packing trunk had cracked open, releasing the foul stench. The porter immediately called Robert Vandeward, the baggage-master. Vandeward deliberated for a moment, then moved the trunk, bringing it out of the public eye and into a nearby, open railway building. He wrenched loose the thin rope and flimsy lock that secured the lid, popping it open. First he saw an ordinary quilt. He tossed it aside, and stared at a soiled, bloodstained army blanket. The growing crowd of railway attendants leaned in. As he pulled away the blanket, the attendants gasped and covered their mouths. Doubled up in fetus position was the naked corpse of a young woman, her thin shoulders draped with thick, golden curls. Her body had been crushed into the trunk, her head forced over her breasts and her limbs drawn in tightly. Her mouth hung open in awkward distortion and her bright blue eyes stared blankly from their pale, discolored sockets. The pelvic area was bloody and decomposed. In minutes, railroad officials rushed up and down the tracks in search of the trunk's owner. Police questioned onlookers. Voices rose across the station, as a frenzied chaos spread. Young Alexander Potts, known as "Paddy," spoke up. The twelve-year-old boy helped passengers with their bags, making a living scrambling for spare change. He had helped check the trunk just a half-hour before. According to his testimony, an 18- or 19-year-old woman arrived at the station at 2:30 p.m. in a one-horse coupé. She wore a common calico dress and a thin shawl. She beckoned Paddy, saying "Sonny, can you tell me where the ticket office is?" When a truck arrived with the trunk, she paid him to help lift it. She urged him to be careful - it contained glass. She would never be found. Earlier that day, she'd hired the truckman to transport the trunk. Paddy had young, keen eyes. He remembered the small inscription on the truck's cab - "Tripp" - which became, for a brief time, a holy grail of sorts. Policemen fanned out across Manhattan in search of the truckman, hoping he would lead them to the murderer. By afternoon, every paper in the area splashed the story across their front page, proclaiming it "The Great Trunk Mystery."
He raised the revolver to his head, felt the cold metal on his skin, and shot himself through his right temple. No one heard the shot. It was mid-day, dinnertime; he was alone in the mill. Alice Edge, a silk sorter, heard groans from the vault when she returned at a quarter to one. She found him lying face down, with blood and brains spilling from his left ear. Two silk finishers moved his body from the vault. Three local doctors rushed to his side. Within an hour, he was dead. By evening, local newspaper headlines screamed "The Sequel!" and "The Double Tragedy of the Trunk Murder."
The morning was hot and sticky, holding the promise of rain. Alice, who was 25, placed a white straw hat atop her long, golden curls. She wore a freshly pressed white lawn dress, tucked and ruffled, with a blue sash and ribbons around the waist. Underneath the dress she wore false bosom pads, as was the style, which she had sewn with extra dress material. She draped a light shawl over her shoulders, then grabbed a parasol and her black satchel, which contained 80 cents and a white handkerchief, with stenciling that read 'A.A. Bowlsby' in tiny, black letters. Before leaving, Alice thanked her Aunt for the 12-day visit. Then she sauntered out the front door, bidding her mother, who was staying on in Newark, goodbye with the wave of her handkerchief. As she stepped outside, she heard children arriving at pre-school, saw their fretting mothers release them for the morning. Church bells rang It was 9 o'clock as she made her way to the railroad station. Heading north through the city, she may have taken a horse-drawn trolley towards the Erie Railroad or Lackawanna Line into New York. As she approached the center of Newark, New Jersey's most prosperous and populous city, she would have been surrounded by Industry. Engines blasted steam into the morning air, their metal parts clanging, sounding progress. Horses, drawing black-frame coupés, clipped along cobblestone roads. At every corner stood a tannery or fur manufacturer. In store windows, Alice could catch glimpses of bright fabrics, solid gold jewelry, delicate watches, new home sewing and weaving machines. Her family expected her to change trains at the Hudson Railway Station and travel outbound to her Paterson home, 15 miles west of New York, along the winding Passaic River.
Alice and Walter met soon after Alice's family moved to Paterson in 1860. Her father, once a thriving mechanic, had taken to drink, and remained behind in Newark. Mrs. Bowlsby rented a small house and taught her daughters to sew and help with dressmaking when they were still children. As young women, all three "were of the highest respectability," wrote the Paterson Daily Monitor. Alice, the oldest, "carried on conversation with that animation and vivacity that is only Nature's gift," was "a favorite everywhere…of an affectionate, confiding disposition." Walter's family lived a mere four blocks from the Bowlsby's, but across the thirty-foot wide Passaic River, in a more exclusively residential section. His father ran a large grocery. As silk manufacturing reached its height, he expanded his interests, buying part of the Dale Mill. By 1871, he'd become 'Alderman' Conklin, member of an elite board of decision-makers for Paterson. Walter left the booming city of 35,000 at 19, ready to see the world. For five years he clerked on a railroad in Russia, traveling back and forth from Moscow to St. Petersburg. He came home in 1870. Unemployed, he squandered hours plotting his return to Russia, where he'd left a girlfriend behind, whose portrait he carried with him in a locket. His 'wife,' he joked to friends. Six months later, he'd begun working at the mill and dating local women. In August 1871, he'd been Alice's steady for six months, but flirted and courted other women, showing up at every picnic or party with a different girl on his arm. When Walter strolled across the river to call on Alice, other men were sometimes there, vying for her attention. Alice, considered "pure and modest," was also one of the most beautiful women in Paterson. To her family, it was clear Walter was the one - as she sewed, she dreamt aloud that they'd be engaged soon. At night in bed, as she listened to the river and the crickets outside her window, she thought of him. Unlike her family, Walter knew Alice wasn't heading straight home on August 23rd. The Sunday before, he'd visited her in Newark. After a long conversation, he left for New York. He'd given her a hug and wished her well. The next day, she received a letter from him, which probably included money, with instructions to the house of Dr. Jacob Rosenzweig.
Upon arriving at the Hudson River Railroad Depot in New York on the 23rd, Alice did not re-board for Paterson, but headed downtown to 687 Second Avenue to meet Dr. Rosenzweig, a 39-year old Jewish doctor from Warsaw, Poland. Alice may not have met Dr. Rosenzweig, alias Dr. Ascher, before August 23rd. She had undoubtedly seen his ads, though, printed in several newspapers, including The New York Herald. It read: "Ladies in trouble guaranteed immediate relief, sure and safe; no fees required until perfectly satisfied; elegant rooms and nursing provided." Dr. Ascher, Amity Place. Advertisements for abortion services were printed openly from the 1840s onward. By the mid-nineteenth century, abortion was a booming business in New York, despite increasing regulations. Rosenzweig was one of hundreds of untrained "abortionists" who made their living on this early medical specialization. As the New York Times put it: "There is a systematic business in wholesale murder conducted by men and women in this City, that is rarely interfered with, and scarcely ever punished by law." The exact day Alice visited him, The Times ran an exposé on "The Evil of the Day" and described Rosenzweig as "a fat, coarse, and sensual-looking fellow, without any traces of refinement, [who] does not bear the faintest appearance of the educated physician." After visiting his office, they claimed that "the corpse-like faces to be seen through the peering blinds are enough to horrify the stoutest-hearted passers by." Beginning in 1869, the Times editors threw their full weight behind the increasingly popular anti-abortion crusade. They wrote forceful editorials and dug for lurid facts. Alice met the doctor at his home. She climbed the white marble stoop of his narrow, three-story brick house and entered through the front parlor door. Rosenzweig greeted her at the door and led her to a private room. Alice's eyes swept the rooms as they climbed the stairs. Handsome wooden furniture and costly rugs and pictures adorned his well-kept rooms. He had a full set of tools in the upstairs room, including forceps, which were likely used to induce the abortion. He inserted thinner metal tools, including a loop-shaped knife, to scrape out the fetus and major portions of the placenta. He may have wet a mask or rag with ether or chloroform to dull her pain. While he worked, his wife brewed a draught of tea for Alice in their kitchen. His fourteen-year old daughter, Rosa, stood by his side, assisting him. Rain pounded down on the roof, growing stronger as night set in. By the time he finished, fluid began pooling in Alice's abdominal cavity. Her lower body swelled with inflammation. The coroner would later diagnose her with "metro-peritonitis" - acute, localized inflammation of the sticky, thin pink membranes that cradle the uterus and lower pelvic organs. Typically, a suffering woman survived one to four days, according to an American Medical Association (AMA) report in 1868. As Alice lay on Rosenzweig's table, the deep red puddle between her open legs spread out beneath her, soaking through the rags he applied. Fever racked her body. She may have bit down on her lips or squeezed Rosa's hand tightly. Statistics on abortions from the time are uncertain at best, fabricated at worst. Most men and women performing abortions by 1870 were often "imposters" or "irregulars," and used aliases instead of real names. They followed a century-long tradition of lassiez-faire medicine in the U.S. But an increasingly powerful, conservative alliance of "regular" doctors, trained in medical schools, criticized abortion fiercely. Horatio Storer, M.D., champion of the AMA's crusade against abortion, reported, in 1868, that in thirty-four cases of criminal abortion, twenty-two women died. In fifteen cases induced by "true physicians," not one woman died. Storer was appalled by the plumeting birth-rate of married, Protestant, "Native" women. He asserted that: "forced abortion is, in reality, a crime against the infant, its mother, the family circle, and society, " and "It is attended with extreme danger to the mother's happiness, her health, and to her life." Yet his statistics show that a well-executed abortion wasn't life threatening. The well-known homeopath, Edwin Hale, considered abortions safe by 1860, writing: "my observation and experience in this matter…have led me to the conclusion that, if the operation is skillfully employed, the fatal results need not exceed one in a thousand." Jane Johnson, the Dr. Rosenzweig's young servant girl, never heard Alice leave the house. The next morning, she asked Rosa, who assured her: "Oh! Yes, she went away last night." Jane was amazed. "What, in all that rain? And when she was so very sick?" "Yes," replied Rosa, repeating what her parents had told her. "Her friends came with a coach, and, wrapping her up comfortably, took her away." Based on the coroner's estimates, Alice probably died that day. Afterwards, Rosenzweig visited undertakers in the area, inquiring about a burial for his "poor, dead servant girl." James F. Boyd, in business on 35th St., asked where the girl was from. "Not far away from here," Rosenzweig said. "She is very poor, and has only $10. Would that cover a hearse?" Probably not, Boyd replied. And first, Rosenzweig needed a certificate of death from an attending Doctor, a pre-requisite for a permit from the Board of Health. At this, Rosenzweig looked flustered, said that the doctor lived far downtown, and left. The doctor's desperation grew. Two years before, in 1869, under tremendous pressure from "regular" doctors, New York had made abortion illegal at all stages. The City began to hunt down abortionists, who, only years earlier, were immune from punishment, as long as the act took place before "quickening," noticeable movement by the fetus, at 4 to 5 months. On Saturday morning, Mrs. Rosenzweig told Jane, their servant, to "hurry up and do your work and take the children out for a walk." With the house empty, the doctor and his wife secured the trunk. Their helper, the mysterious woman they later sent to the Depot, hired a truckman, and sent him to fetch the trunk from the Rosenzweig's basement. This was their grave mistake. Within two days of the trunk's discovery, they were caught. Days later, after the truckman led the police to Rosenzweig, they ransacked the house from top to bottom. His personal desk contained blank death certificates and dozens of letters in Russian, German, Polish and Hebrew. Recipes for herbal medicines with suspected abortifacients, such as belladonna, calomel, nux vomica, and opium were scrawled on loose paper. The policemen also plucked a stenciled handkerchief from a stationary washtub and found Alice's blue sash buried deep in a bureau drawer. Her false bosoms pads lay crushed in a barrel of old clothing in the kitchen and a bloody chemise and skirt were found in the cellar, covered with dirt. Who was the murdered woman? Her identity stumped the police. Hourly, relatives and friends of missing women appeared at the Morgue, in fearful search for a sister, daughter, or wife. The warden grew skeptical, demanding detailed, accurate descriptions from the inquiring families. On Tuesday, August 29th, Dr. Kinne of Paterson traveled into the New York morgue, determined to overcome morbid suspicions that the girl might be Alice, one of his patients. "If I am correct," he told the warden, "and I most sure I am not, the deceased will have a mole on the left side of her neck, and a vaccination on her left arm just above the elbow." He immediately had the warden's full attention. The next day, Dr. Kinne returned with Alice's dentist, Dr. Parker. The warden pried open the wooden burial shell where Alice lay, her body in advanced stages of decomposition. He sprayed the corpse down with a water hose, then invited the horrified doctors to identify it. The mole and vaccination were exactly as Kinne described, and on the left side of her jaw was a scar from an ulcerated eyetooth, which Dr. Parker had treated only a month before.
"Oh, no," Walter told her, outwardly calm. "It couldn't be Alice." After a sleepless night, Walter rose for work at the Dale Silk Mill. He was pale, nervous. The office slowly filled, his colleagues arriving with newspapers in hand, the name Alice Bowlsby on their lips. Around town, few of residents spoke of anything else. The murder of a local girl! Neighbors and strangers alike rushed to the Bowlsby home, and, finding it closed up, studied the bricks and shutters in curiosity, waiting for the house to tell her secrets. At the mill, Walter avoided conversation. Few knew of his involvement. His brother John, his closest confidant, stopped in to see him at 9 a.m. "I'm sorry you've been calling at the Bowlsby's," John said. "It's terrible, isn't it?" Walter nodded. He supposed he'd have to testify, as would other visitors of the Bowlsby house. It would be unpleasant, but he said he was "willing to face the music." At noon, Walter ventured to the front doorway of the mill and looked out across the broad plain of the city and the gentle, slopping hills that surrounded it. The mid-day sun shone brightly on the rocky slopes of Garrett Mountain, at the southwest tip of Paterson. Newly built, towering brick mill buildings rose around him on every side, spewing spirals of smoke from tall chimneys. Over the clang of the railway and mills, he listened for the familiar rush of water from the Passaic Falls. Then he ducked inside and walked to the back vault, revolver in hand. In his pocket was a note, written in a steady hand: I have long had a morbid idea of the worthlessness of life, and now to be obliged to testify in this affair and cause unpleasantness to my family is more than life is worth. Good-bye dear father, mother, brother, and sister. -WALT
Throughout the ordeal, Rosenzweig asserted that he was innocent and competent as a doctor, with years of training in Poland. Family friends of his, the Bowlsbys of Brooklyn, testified that the handkerchief was their daughter's, not Alice's. His lawyer argued that the body had not been properly identified, because no one from Alice's family had seen it. Coverage of the case was unbalanced. Arguments from the defense were dismissed rather than quoted, while pages were dedicated to the passionate closing remarks of the prosecutor, a District Attorney in favor of tougher abortion laws, who believed the case was one of vast importance to the public. "The temptations of young girls," he told the jurors, "who have an inheritance of beauty which is more dangerous to their peace of mind than anything else they might possess…they are importuned, caressed, and in a moment of thoughtfulness fall - their ruin is consummated." "[S]he goes to him [the abortionist] in a moment of desperation, and is lost! Her cold corpse is the result…O, what a fate is this! How many unfortunate, erring young women have died lingering agonizing deaths at the hands of these Dr. Aschers, who sticks a sign out in a Dark Alley, allures the miserable into his lair?" The jury deliberated for less then two hours. Dr. Jacob Rosenzweig was indicted and sentenced to seven years in state prison, with hard labor. In 1871, this was the maximum possible penalty, based on an 1869 law that punished abortion as second-degree manslaughter, whether the fetus, woman, or both died. During sentencing, Judge Gunning Bedford preached from his bench, telling his wide-audience that: "the sentence I would pronounce against Rosenzweig would be death." He would "make a recommendation to the Legislature that the law be changed, and this felonious and barbarous practice be ended." Only a year later, in 1872, New York did redraft its abortion laws, making the death of the woman or fetus a felony offense. The rest of the country followed suit. The laws drafted between 1870 and 1880 would stick with Americans, virtually unchanged, through the 1960s.
The morgue sent Alice's body to Potter's Field, a public graveyard on an island off Manhattan. "A pauper's burial!" exclaimed the Daily Monitor, in outrage. Wealthier community members offered money to the family, and a florist donated $50 worth of flowers for the coffin. Mrs. Bowlsby thanked them for their graciousness, but refused their gifts. After the summer heat broke, gravediggers unearthed Alice's remains and sent them home to 42 West St., where her family held a small, private memorial service. They buried her again at a family gravesite, in Parsippany, ten miles from Paterson. |