The Abortionist of Fifth Avenue

Madame Restell's notorious Fifth Avenue home

"Madame Restell...could neither be forced out of business not dislodged from her large brownstone home on the northeast corner of Fifth Avenue and Fifty-second Street.

She was aware of her power in the community and did not hesitate to intimate it. She declared that she had secret information concerning many eminent New Yorkers; that if she wished she could open rich and fragrant closets, and expose skeletons whose existence nobody suspected.

In the city directory, and in the newspapers, Madame Restell announced herself as a professor of midwifery. She advertised her offices on Chambers and Greenwich streets, her 'infallible French female pills,' her thirty years of practice, and she guaranteed 'a cure at one interview.' But she scarcely required this publicity. She was notorious as the most expensive abortionist in the city.

As the tide of fashion ascended Fifth Avenue and drew near the street that proceeded it, Madame Restell was repeatedly offered fabulous sums for her property. She refused to sell...

The brownstone wash of wealth flowed up Fifth Avenue, and Madame Restell remained in her home, despised, feared, objectionably scandalous. Men remembered that twenty years earlier she had been brought to trial as result of the death, in her former home downtown, of a girl who had been placed there for treatment. Though the evidence had been sufficient to convict her, she was acquitted. It was said that she had purchased her freedom at the cost of one hundred thousand dollars.

Recalling that ancient triumph, the godly concluded that she was now too rich to be dislodged and too powerful to be eliminated from practice. They saw her on pleasant afternoons, a hard-visaged, black-haired woman, fashionably dressed, descend the stoop of her home, entire a glittering carriage attended by two men in livery, and set off for the her daily drive in Central Park. Madame Killer, she was called, the wickedest woman in town. At night, coaches frequently stopped at the side off her home, and muffled female figures would hurriedly enter the house. Sometimes, at three or four in the morning, a late reveler might see a hearse waiting at that door.

One day in 1878, a respectable whiskered young man came to consult Madame Restell in the office which she maintained in the basement of her home. She had had some correspondence from him, and knew his story. He was desperately poor; his wife was pregnant; the birth of another child would bring them to ruin. Madame Restell gladly gave him her professional advice and provided him with medicine and instruments for his wife.

She was somewhat surprised when, ungratefully, he arrested her, identifying himself as Anthony Comstock, a crusader against vice. She sent for her carriage, and accompanied him to the Tombs. On the way, she offered him forty thousand dollars to drop his charges. He refused, but Madame Restell secured her release on bail. She returned to her Fifth Avenue home. There, early in the morning a few days later, one of her seven servants found Madame Restell's body on the floor of her bathroom, in a pool of blood. During the night, she had cut her throat..."

[from Incredible New York by Lloyd Morris]