Emma Post20s, newyork, illegaldoctorSUMMARY: Emma Post, aged about 20, died in Boston after an abortion likely perpetrated by Dr. Lewis Dix.

Emma Post, “about twenty years of age, daughter of one of our most respectable citizens, was seduced by a young man living at Belleville.” He called on her at the family home for about a year before learning that she was pregnant.

He convinced her to leave Brooklyn with him. She told them she was going to visit somebody in Dover. Instead, “she was kept in two houses of ill repute in this city.” From there she was taken to Boston, where she submitted to a surgical abortion. She was spirited off to Newburyport on Wednesday. On Thursday, June 11, 1857, she “paid the forfeit of such acts, dying in excruciating agony.”

Before she died she made an affidavit recounting that she had submitted to the abortion against her own wishes.

Her baby’s father, William F. Rickerson, “a man of some property,” was arrested, as was Dr. Lewis Dix, alias Hughes, believed to have perpetrated the abortion.

I have no information on overall maternal mortality, or abortion mortality, in the 19th century. I imagine it can’t be too much different from maternal and abortion mortality at the very beginning of the 20th Century.

Note, please, that with issues such as doctors not using proper aseptic techniques, lack of access to blood transfusions and antibiotics, and overall poor health to begin with, there was likely little difference between the performance of a legal abortion and illegal practice, and the aftercare for either type of abortion was probably equally unlikely to do the woman much, if any, good.

For more on this era, see Abortion Deaths in the 19th Century.

For more on pre-legalization abortion, see The Bad Old Days of Abortion

I have no information on overall maternal mortality, or abortion mortality, in the 19th century. I imagine it can’t be too much different from maternal and abortion mortality at the very beginning of the 20th Century.
Note, please, that with issues such as doctors not using proper aseptic techniques, lack of access to blood transfusions and antibiotics, and overall poor health to begin with, there was likely little difference between the performance of a legal abortion and illegal practice, and the aftercare for either type of abortion was probably equally unlikely to do the woman much, if any, good.
For more on this era, see Abortion Deaths in the 19th Century.
For more on pre-legalization abortion, see The Bad Old Days of Abortion

Sources:

• “Seduction, Abortion and Death — Another Doctor in Trouble”, The Brooklyn Eagle, June 17, 1857
• Untitled clipping, Boston Herald, June 15, 1858

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