Woman of Valor (78 page)

2.
I have taken my narrative of the clinic's operation and the events surrounding Margaret's arrest from contemporary newspaper accounts and from the transcript,
The People of the State of New York, Plaintiff Against Margaret H. Sanger, Defendant
, Court of Special Sessions of the City of New York, Part Two. Brooklyn, N.Y., January 29 and Feb. 2, 1917, copy in the National Archives, Record Group 267, Box 7093, File 26412, hereinafter, NA-SC (for Supreme Court). These records were kept as a result of Goldstein's subsequent appeal to the Unites States Supreme Court. Many thanks to David Garrow for helping me to uncover this document. Transcripts of state court proceedings were not generally kept at this time, but in this instance apparently enough interest was anticipated, so that one was kept. Briefs from the first appeal in the Supreme Court of New York, Appellate Division, 2d Dept., are in MS-SS. Also see People of N.Y. v. Margaret H. Sanger, Defendant-Appellant New York Court of Appeals, 222 NY 192 699, Vol. 172 (1917). Finally, see C. Thomas Dienes,
Law, Politics and Birth Control
(Chicago: 1972), pp. 85-87.
Sanger gives her own version in
Autobiography
, pp. 210-37, and I have tried to correct significant discrepancies. Mary Halton, M.D., a tuberculosis specialist at Grosvenor Hospital on Manhattan's Lower East Side, was a supporter of Sanger through the National Birth Control League. She had once been reprimanded (Sanger says she was asked to resign) from the staff for prescribing birth control to a patient. She may have been a candidate to work in the clinic, but there is no confirmation of that fact. Also see Elizabeth Stuyvesant, “The Brownsville Birth Control Clinic,”
Birth Control Review
1:2, Feb. 1917, pp. 6-8. The article featured illustrations by William Sanger.
Excellent use of some of these sources was made by Marybeth Albanese Petschek in “The Brownsville Clinic Trial: 1916-1919,” a paper prepared for Prof. Stephen Isaacs's master's seminar at the Columbia University School of Public Health, Dec. 1981. Although our accounts and our interpretations vary, I am grateful to Ms. Petschek for sharing her paper and some of these citations with me.

3.
Autobiography
, p. 112. “Sanger et al. arrested at Clinic in Brownsville,”
The New York Times
, Oct. 28, 1916, 8:4.
The single column story also mentioned Emma Goldman's arrest for literature circulation at a Union Square rally. Two days later (Oct. 30, 9:2) the paper gave comparable coverage to an announcement by faculty at Fordham University that they would fight the birth control movement, and the following day (Oct. 31, 9:5), to Jessie Ashley's having been found guilty and fined for distributing birth control literature.

4.
“Mrs. Sanger fights as Police Seize Her in Raid on Clinic,”
Brooklyn Daily Eagle
, Jan. 26, 1916, 1:3, cited in Petschek, “Brownsville Clinic,” p. 17; “Mrs. Sanger, Mrs. Byrne and Miss F. Mindell in Court and Held for Trial,”
The New York Times
, Nov. 7, 1916, 8:4; “Mrs. Sanger Released on Bail to Await Trial; Reopens Clinic in Brownsville Under Observation of Police,”
NYT
, Nov. 14, 1916, 4:2; “Mrs. Sanger Rearrested at Her Clinic on Charge of Maintaining a Public Nuisance,”
NYT
, Nov. 16, 1916, 17:1; “Seize Mrs. Sanger in Raid on Clinic for Birth Control,”
New York World
, Nov. 27, 1916, 7:1.

5.
The New York Times
, Nov. 27, 1916, 13:6; Nov. 28, 24:2; Dec. 5, 11:1; Dec. 12, 15:1; Dec. 13, 11:3; Dec. 23, 5:3. Jonah J. Goldstein, “The Birth Control Clinic Cases,”
Birth Control Review
1:1, Jan. 1916, p. 8, and Jonah Goldstein, Brief for the Defendant Appellant in People v. Sanger, Supreme Court Appellate Division, p. 3, MS-SS. Also see “Jonah J. Goldstein,”
The National Cyclopedia of American Biography
, p. 256.

6.
The New York Times
, Jan. 5, 1917, 4:2; Jan. 9, 11:1-2; Jan. 23, 20:3; Jan 24, 20:2. Goldstein, “Birth Control Case”; Goldstein,
People of the State of New York ex rel. Margaret H. Sanger, Ethel Byrne and Fannie Mindell. Appellants' Brief in Support of Motion for Stay of Proceedings
(New York: 1917), pp. 11-56. Copy in the New York Public Library.
People of the State of New York v. Margaret H. Sanger
, transcript, passim, NA-SC. Jonah J. Goldstein,
People of N.Y. v. Margaret H. Sanger, Defendent-Appellant
(New York: 1917). This was Goldstein's brief, published by the Hecla Press, obviously because of all the publicity and interest. The major precedent for ruling on other than legal precedent was the decision won by Louis Brandeis, then still a young lawyer from Boston, in Muller v. Oregon, 208 U.S. 412 (1908). Goldstein also cited several additional such rulings in the courts of New York State. My thanks to Sylvia Law for helping to clarify some of this legal strategy for me.

7.
The New York Times
, Jan. 25, 1917, 20:2; Jan. 26, 1:2, Jan. 27, 1:4, Jan. 28, 1:3, Jan. 29, 1:4, Jan. 30, 4:2. David Kennedy,
Birth Control in America: The Career of Margaret Sanger
(New Haven: 1970), p. 87, says that the corrections commissioner was the same Katherine Bement Davis whom Margaret excoriated in
The Woman Rebel
for her treatment of Becky Edelsohn's hunger strike, but who would later became an ally. Actually Davis was still a prison official but no longer commissioner. The commissioner responsible was a man by the name of Burdette S. Lewis. Though Margaret would thereafter cite the precedent of British suffragists, Becky Edelsohn's example in 1914 was better known to her. See Maraget Sanger, “The History of the Hunger Strike,”
The Woman Rebel
1:6 (Aug. 1914), p. 47, and “The Old and the New,” a comparison of Davis and Edelsohn, on p. 48.

8.
Minutes of what appears to be the first meeting of the Committee of 100 are in RPS-Yale. A Planned Parenthood Federation of America reprint of the original manifesto written by Rublee is in MS-SS.

9.
The New York Times
, Jan. 9, 1917, 4:2, also cited in Lawrence Lader,
The Margaret Sanger Story
(New York: 1955), p. 124.

10.
“Mrs. Byrne Pardoned,”
The New York Times
, Feb. 2, 1917, 11:5; Feb. 3, 8:2-3; Lader,
Sanger Story
, p. 125-26.

11.
Ethel Byrne to M.S., n.d. (Feb. 1917), MS-SS; M.S. to Byrne, Feb. 14, 1917, MS-LC. The sisters had to communicate by letter, because Margaret by then was in jail. Quotes are from author's interview with Olive Byrne Richard, Mar. 28, 1985, and Richard interview with Jacqueline Van Voris, Nov. 25, 1977, p. 2. Also see p. 5. For the public tribute to Ethel, see Margaret Sanger,
Woman and the New Race
(New York: 1920), p. 217.

12.
The New York Times
, Feb. 3, 1917, 8:2,
The Call
, Feb. 3, 1917, 2-3; and especially, the
New York Herald
account cited in Lader,
Sanger Story
, p.127

13.
Margaret Sanger, “A Victory, a New Year and a New Day,”
Birth Control Review
3:2 (Feb., 1919), p. 3.

14.
The New York Times
, Nov. 14, 1916: 4:2, Nov. 16, 1916: 17:1.
People of N.Y. v. Margaret H. Sanger
, NA-SS, pp. 22-73.

15.
People of N.Y. v. Margaret H. Sanger
, NA-SC;
The New York Times
, Feb. 3, 1917, 8:2;
The Call
, Feb. 3, 1917, 1:2-3, Lader,
Sanger Story
, p. 131.

16.
Excerpt from prison letter of Feb. 9, 1917, in
Birth Control Review
1:2 (Feb. 1917), p. 3. Sanger Diary entry from prison, Feb. 8, 1917, MS-LC, tells of supper of bread, molasses, and tea; oatmeal and salt for breakfast; and dinner of stew. Also see M.S. to Ethel Byrne, Feb. 21, 1917; MS-LC;
The New York Times
, Feb. 6, 1917, 20:5, and Feb. 9, 1917, 13:5. Letters on prison reform include the following: Mrs. Powell, President of the Woman's Prison Assn., to M.S., Mar. 8, 1917, and Virginia Young to M.S., May 13, 1918, MS-LC. When Margaret on leaving prison made public statements condemning corrections official Katherine Bement Davis, she received letters from women prisoners. See Golden Rule League, Blackwell's Island, to M.S., Mar. 9, 1917, and Branch Pen, Harts Island, to M.S.“on behalf of hundreds serving indefinite sentences” n.d. (1917). In M.S. to Winthrop Cane, Mar. 17, 1942, she says that “the only great cause after birth control is won will be the investigation of the treatment of prisoners. If I can't do it now, I'll book it for the next trip.” He'd apparently written her, having just read the prison reminiscences in her
Autobiography
.

17.
Autobiography
p. 243. Anonymous letters of support from the women inmates to Sanger are in MS-LC. Theodore Debs to “My Dear Comrade Sanger,” Feb. 25, 1917, MS-LC. Also see Eugene V. Debs to M.S., Feb. 14, 1917, MS-LC.

18.
The New York Times
, Mar. 6, 1917, 11:4; Mar. 7, 1917, 20:5-6 and
New York Herald
, Mar. 7, 1917, emphasizing the fingerprinting squabble, clipping in MS-LC. A Sanger Diary entry for Feb. 8, 1917, records her first refusal to be fingerprinted, and a later undated entry says the warden was being very decent about it, but still kept asking, MS-LC. Harold Hersey, “Margaret Sanger: The Biography of the Birth Control Pioneer,” New York (1938), p. 243, identifies the welcoming committee, which also included a Columbia professor named Robert Lesher, whose presence is not explained. The Halpern story is from the author's interview with Paula Gould, Halpern's sixth and youngest child, on July 26, 1976, in New York City.

19.
Autobiography
, pp. 249-50.

20.
Decision in
People of N. Y. v. Margaret H. Sanger
, New York Court of Appeals, 222 NY 192 699, Vol. 172 (1918), reprinted in
Birth Control Review
4:6, (June 1920), p. 1. The Supreme Court actions are chronicle in NA-SC, which includes Goldstein's petition of Jan. 20, 1918; the docket of April 3, 1918; notification of the matter's being carried over to October, 1918; scheduling of an oral argument for May 2, 1919 and an April 20, 1919 telegram from Goldstein requesting a postponement; Goldstein's brief submitted on Aug. 19, 1919; and finally, notification of the dismissal, dated Nov. 17, 1919. Also see “Dismisses Birth Control Case,”
New York Times
, Nov. 18, 1919, 17:3. My thanks to Kevin Hahm for retrieving the file. Ethel Byrne to M.S., n.d. (Feb.1917), MS-SS. M.S. to Jonah Goldstein, judge of Court of General Sessions, n.d. (1931), MS-LC.
In a letter to the author on April 30, 1990, Prof. Sylvia Law underscored the significance of Goldstein's ingenuity, or perhaps his simple good fortune, in getting an appellate ruling on behalf of physicians when his client had no real standing to raise the question. Perhaps this is why the Supreme Court would not hear the matter. For more on the importance of the decision to the future course of the movement, see, especially, Chapter 13.

21.
David M. Kennedy,
Over Here: The First World War and American Society
(New York: 1980), pp. 26-27; Melvyn Dubofsky,
We Shall Be All: A History of the Industrial Workers of the World
(Chicago: 1969), pp. 389-425. Robert A. Rosenstone,
Romantic Revolutionary: A Biography of John Reed
(New York: 1975), pp. 320-37, discusses the impact of repression on the intellectuals and on John Reed, in particular. Randolph Boehm, ed.,
U.S. Military Intelligence Surveillance of Radicals in the United States 1917-41
, (Frederick, Md: University Publications of America, 1984), Reel 6, documents surveillance of Goldman, Berkman and other IWW activists, Ferrer Center anarchists, and Socialists in New York City in 1917 and 1918 (including the arrest of Tresca and Flynn). The microfilm is available in New York at Tamiment-NYU.

22.
Joan Jensen, “The Evolution of Margaret Sanger's
Family Limitation
Pamphlet,” 1914-1921,
Signs
6 (Spring 1981), pp. 548-67, analyzes the editing from this standpoint. Also see James W. Walker to M.S., Apr. 5, 1917, MS-LC, which regrets her excluding references to the “ennobling effects of sex gratification on women.” M.S. to “Friend” (on “163 Lexington Ave.” letterhead n.d., 1917-18), MS-SS, is an example of the covering letter Margaret sent out with pamphlets, acknowledging she was technically violating the Comstock Law, making a feminist argument for doing so, and requesting contributions. The clipping cited is from the
Herald
, Rochester, N.Y. n.d. (1917), in Scrapbooks, MS-LC.
According to Peter Engelman of the Margaret Sanger Papers Project, the Lusk Committee did nothing more than collect several of Margaret's pamphlets and notices of her speeches, which are in the committee's records in the New York State Archives in Albany, N.Y. But federal agents later became more diligent. See, U.S. Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation, file on Margaret Sanger, supplied on May 13, 1985, in response to the author's request under the Freedom of Information Act. Included are the following documents of interest: A memorandum titled “In Re: Margaret Sanger: Alleged Violation Section 211,” dated Jan. 19, 1920, New York City, but of unclear departmental origin; File “Re: Oswald Garrison Villard Radical Activities,” identifying Margaret as an associate, June 9, 1922; Edward Brennan to director, Bureau of Investigation, General Intelligence Division, Department of Justice, “In Re: The League for Amnesty of Political Prisoners,” Jan. 27, 1922; report of Special Agent Walter Foster on Sanger's speech in Philadelphia on Jan. 30, 1922; and, finally, Part 5, Vol. 3 of the Fish Committee Report of Hearings before a Special Committee of the House of Representatives to investigate Communist Activities in the United States in 1939, which links Margaret to the American Civil Liberties Union.