Terrible Virtue (16 page)

And they did.

DESPITE THE FORCE-FEEDING,
Ethel's condition continued to deteriorate. I couldn't let her go on with the strike, though I knew she wouldn't thank me for stopping her, or for the way I went about it. She'd told me more than once what she thought of my new friends. She couldn't understand that the movement was becoming increasingly respectable. These days it required more will than guts, more accommodating of the people who could make things happen and less thumbing of noses at their prerogatives. I was moving on. She couldn't forgive me for that. And, I admit it, I resented her assumption of moral superiority. The mutual resentment was one more snarl in our tangled connection.

Ethel disliked most of the society women I was turning to for support, but she'd taken a particular antipathy to Juliet Rublee and Gertrude Pinchot, perhaps because they had taken a special shine to me.

Juliet was a restless Chicago heiress. Gertrude was a well-connected suffragist and philanthropist. Both women knew Governor Whitman. Nine days after Ethel went on her hunger strike, six after they began force-feeding her, Juliet, Gertrude, J.J., and I took the train to Albany. At first, I hadn't wanted J.J. to come along. I was sure the easiness between us, the pull between us, would give away our affair.

“You think you're the only one who can fool people, Peg?”

I found the statement vaguely unsettling, though I wasn't sure whether the implication was that I wasn't fooling him or that he was fooling me.

An aide ushered us into a large office hung with portraits of great men in New York State history. The governor rose from behind his big desk, flanked on one side by the state flag, on the other by that of the United States.

“How nice to see you, Mrs. Rublee,” he said.

“How are you, Mrs. Pinchot?” he asked.

I was back in Mrs. Graves's class, a shamed outcast.

The governor held out his hand to me. “It's a pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Sanger.”

“I appreciate your seeing us, Governor.” Where had I picked up that accent? My consonants were clipped, my vowels plump as oysters.

J.J. and the governor shook hands; then Whitman gestured us to chairs in front of his desk and sat behind it.

“In view of Mrs. Byrne's health,” he began, “I am prepared to pardon her. If she will agree to abide in the future by the current laws.”

It was the same paltry peace offering. Agree to live by an unjust law we were trying to overturn and the men in power would pat us on the head and send us off like the good little girls we were, or should be.

“I cannot promise you that, Governor.” My accent, I was relieved to hear, was returning to normal.

The governor's smooth mask of cordiality developed a hairline crack. “I thought the purpose of the meeting was to obtain a pardon for Mrs. Byrne.”

“The law you want my sister to obey, Governor, is the unjust law she is starving herself to overturn. I cannot agree to your terms without her consent.”

“Margaret—” Juliet began.

“Think of your sister's health,” Gertrude said.

J.J. sat watching me. He had been through this before. He knew argument was futile.

“I'm thinking of her moral health,” I answered.

“Surely you can understand my position, Mrs. Sanger,” the governor said. “Mrs. Byrne was convicted of knowingly and willfully breaking the law. I cannot pardon a woman who intends to go on knowingly and willfully breaking the law.”

“I have a suggestion.” It was the first time J.J. had spoken, and we all turned to him. That was one of the things I loved about J.J. Bill had bombast. Hugh had whimsy. Havelock had depth. But J.J. had gravitas. When he spoke, people listened. “The commissioner won't permit Mrs. Byrne visitors. If you can arrange a pass for Mrs. Sanger to see her sister, perhaps she will be able to persuade Mrs. Byrne to agree to your terms.”

The governor looked as if he were the one who had been pardoned.

A NURSE LED
me down the hall of the workhouse infirmary. They'd moved Ethel from her cell to a room in the medical wing. The nurse came to a closed door, opened it, and stood
aside for me to enter. I stepped into the room, then stopped. This wraith in a hospital gown could not be my sister. Her skin was yellow as a tallow candle, and covered with dark blotches. When she turned her face at the sound of my steps, her eyes rolled in their sockets like a blind woman's. Patches of her once lovely auburn hair lay on the pillow. Her scalp showed through the bald spots.

I crossed the room, sat on the side of the bed, and took her in my arms. It was like holding a rag doll.

“Ethel,” I said.

She didn't respond.

“Ethel, can you hear me?”

Her filmy eyes rolled in their sockets again.

“It's Margaret.”

A sob racked her limp body.

I asked the nurse who was still standing in the doorway to go downstairs and tell Mrs. Pinchot to telephone the governor. Ethel was in no condition to give her consent, but I was. Perhaps she'd hate me for it, but holding that limp lifeless body in my arms, I felt a rush of love, and responsibility. I couldn't risk another Peggy.

The governor didn't waste any time. In less than half an hour, two orderlies came into the cell, lifted Ethel off the bed, and began half carrying, half dragging her down the hall. Her head lolled from side to side. Her legs dragged behind her, the tops of her feet scraping the floor.

“Stop!” I shouted. “Can't you see she needs a stretcher?”

“Commissioner's orders, m'am. He says the reporters got to see the prisoner walking out on her own two feet.”

I ran ahead of them and stopped in the corridor blocking their way.

“Get her a stretcher.”

The orderlies stood for a moment, looking around the corridor for a higher authority.

“Do I have to call the governor again?” I took Ethel in my arms and pushed one of them away. “Get a stretcher!”

The other orderly and I stood with Ethel between us as the man went down the hall and came back with a stretcher. By now Gertrude had arrived.

The orderlies put the stretcher on the floor, the three of us arranged Ethel's inert body on in, and the men picked it up.

“Wait.” I turned to Gertrude and took the lapel of her sable coat between my thumb and forefinger. “Do you mind?”

“Not at all.” Gertrude slipped off the coat and held it out to me.

I took it, placed it over Ethel, and tucked it in around her. “All right,” I said to the orderlies.

They carried the stretcher with my sister's wasted body out to the crush of reporters who had come across the East River to see the little woman who had almost starved herself to death for the right to contraception.

“No single act of self-sacrifice in the history of the birth control movement has done more to awaken the conscience of the public or arouse the courage of women,” I told the reporters, as Gertrude and her chauffeur maneuvered my sable-swathed sister into the waiting limousine.

“Some shroud,” Ethel said when I got into the auto. She managed a rictus of a smile, then passed out again.

T
HE COURTROOM WAS
bedlam. Spectators fought for seats. Reporters jockeyed for position. Thirty women, whom the district attorney had subpoenaed because their names had appeared in the clinic records that the police had confiscated in the raid, crowded onto the benches with children and bags of diapers and newspaper-wrapped food. I spotted several I remembered from their visits to 46 Amboy Street. Behind them, members of the Committee of One Hundred sat in their expensive furs and handsome hats, but their lavender soap was no match for the smell of kosher pickles, salami, and garlic.

As I made my way down the aisle, carrying a bouquet of crimson American Beauty roses the committee had sent, the reporters and photographers surged toward me, snapping pictures and firing questions.

“Look this way, Mrs. Sanger.”

“Do you think you can get a fair trial, Mrs. Sanger?”

“If you're convicted, will you go on a hunger strike like your sister, Mrs. Sanger?”

I kept smiling and pushing my way through the crowd, until a reporter shouted another question.

“Are you worried that the subpoenaed women will testify against you, Mrs. Sanger?”

“I'm worried
for
the women who were subpoenaed,” I said. “Most of them have no place to leave their children, as you can see. They can scarcely afford the carfare to get here. Yet the district attorney threatened them with fines of two hundred and fifty dollars each if they failed to show up to testify to what I readily admit. I disseminated contraceptive information. In my opinion, any law that makes it wrong to help the poor is unconstitutional. And the burden the district attorney has placed on these women is unconscionable.”

A wave of applause ran through the courtroom. Flashbulbs exploded. A dozen pairs of nicotine-stained fingers scribbled on notepads. Then the cry of “All rise” rang through the courtroom, and the three judges entered.

They took their places on the high massive bench without a glance at me or any of the other women in the room. Perhaps no women were real to them except their wives and daughters, and possibly not even them. Their faces were closed and impassive. They might have been thinking about the case before them, or court politics, or what they were going to have for lunch.

The presiding justice, John Freschi, was a Catholic, as was Judge George O'Keefe. J.J. said our only hope was the third judge, Moses Herrman, an elderly Jew. As I sat watching them settle in, I knew J.J. had picked the wrong horse. Judge Herrman's hair and face were gray, his expression stern, his eyes small and sharp. In his black robe, he looked like a cartoon image of the Grim Reaper. All he needed was a scythe.

The district attorney called Mrs. Arthur Whitehurst to the stand. She was wearing the fox neckpiece again. As she told the court about her visit to the clinic, she stroked the skins.
If the court wanted a definition of obscene, she was giving it to them.

The district attorney asked Mrs. Whitehurst to tell the court what she had found on her first visit to the Brownsville Clinic. She described the line of women that went halfway down the block, the crowded waiting room, the children in tow, Fania behind the desk.

“She was registering the women. During the forty-five minutes I was there, she registered twenty women and charged each of them ten cents.”

“So this clinic was a moneymaking enterprise?”

J.J. was on his feet. “Objection!”

“Sustained,” Judge Freschi said.

“How were these women registered?”

“Name, address, age, number of children.”

“Were the women asked if they were married or unmarried?”

“They were.” Mrs. Whitehurst hesitated, the better to deliver her punch line. “But they were all registered whether they said married or single.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the reporters scribbling rapidly. This was the juicy part.

“Mrs. Whitehurst, did you have any financial transactions while you were in the clinic?”

“I paid a registration fee and bought a booklet.”

“You paid for the booklet?”

“Twenty-five cents.”

“Was this booklet written by the defendant, Mrs. Margaret Sanger?”

“It had her name on it.”

“What was in this booklet?”

“Contraceptive information.”

“You mean information to prevent the birth of children.”

“Yes.”

“Mrs. Whitehurst, from your experience on the police force, how would you characterize the Brownsville neighborhood?”

“The people there are very poor.”

“Do they belong to a certain race?”

I could not imagine what the district attorney was driving at. I looked at J.J., but his attention was riveted on the DA.

“Most of them are Jewish. There are some Italians and other foreigners.”

“But most of them are Jewish?”

“Yes.”

“Would you agree then that by selling this contraceptive information to Jews, Mrs. Sanger's intention was to do away with the Jewish race?”

J.J. was on his feet even faster this time. “Objection!”

“Sustained,” said Judge Freschi.

The district attorney did not try to pursue the point, and I thought that was the end of it. It embarrasses me now to think how naïve I was.

The district attorney called Mrs. Pincus Berger to the stand. A plump woman in a shawl handed her baby to her neighbor, edged her way out of the row of mothers, and made her way to the witness stand. Her back was straight as a Prussian soldier's, her chin high.

The clerk swore her in. She settled herself in the chair and arranged her shawl around her shoulders.

“Can you tell me, Mrs. Berger, why you went to 46 Amboy Street?”

She looked at him as if he were a slow child.

“To have her stop the babies.”

“Who?”

She pointed at me. “Mrs. Sanger.”

“And did she give you the information you wanted?”

She nodded and smiled at me. “Yes. Good information.”

The district attorney nodded and returned to his seat.

J.J. stood and made his way to the witness box.

“How many children do you have, Mrs. Berger?”

“Eight.”

“How old is the eldest?”

“Twelve.”

“Did you lose any in birth or miscarriages?”

“Two died, three miscarriages.”

“Is your husband employed?”

“A presser in a sweatshop.”

“How much does he make a week?”

“Sixteen dollars a week.”

“Do any of your children work?”

“Sure they work. Good children I got. They do piecework. Just like me.”

It went on that way for some time. One after another, the women handed over their babies, made their way to the witness stand, and told the district attorney that they had gone to the clinic at 46 Amboy Street to get information to stop the babies, and that I gave it to them. More than one of them glanced over at me with a smile of gratitude.

When the district attorney finished with each woman, J.J. took up the questioning. One after another, they cataloged the misery of their lives. Miscarriages, stillbirths, and infant deaths; tuberculosis, undiagnosed illnesses, and female complaints. Husbands who earned fifteen dollars a week, husbands who could not find work, and husbands who never looked for work.

T
he district attorney called Mrs. Guido Giuseppe to the stand. She handed over two babies and made her way out to the aisle. She was so thin her bones seemed to protrude through her shirtwaist. Her skin had the grayish cast of a threadbare sheet that's been washed too often, without bleach. When she reached the witness stand, she held on to the railing for a moment to steady herself.

The district attorney asked his questions. She answered in a voice so soft it was barely audible. Then J.J. stepped up to the stand.

“How many children do you have, Mrs. Giuseppe?”

“Twelve.”

“Could you speak up please, Mrs. Giuseppe?” Judge Freschi asked in a voice that was almost deferential.

“Twelve,” she repeated.

“And how many did you lose?” J.J. asked.

“Three from miscarriage. All the time, I was so sick the doctor say I die. One baby die.”

“At birth?”

“Two years.”

“Does your husband work?”

“When he can find it.”

“What is the most he makes when he does find work?”

“Ten dollars a week.”

Most of the spectators were concentrating on the witness, but I was watching Judge Freschi. He had his elbow on the bench, and his forehead was resting on his hand. His fingers shielded his eyes from view, but I could see his mouth. He was grinding his teeth. Suddenly he dropped his hand from his face and looked up.

“Enough!” he shouted. “You've made your point, Counselor. Court is adjourned until tomorrow morning at nine.”

If there's one thing I love to see, it's a man's awakening.

I CONGRATULATED J.J.
and thanked him, but I never mentioned a thought that had passed through my mind as I'd watched him questioning the women in court that morning. For the first time since he'd begun talking about marriage, I could envision it. Not the domestic aspect. That was the point. J.J. wouldn't want to lock me up in a dream house. He'd want me out in the world fighting injustice, just as he was. I'd battle for the cause in clinics and meetings, on the podium and the printed page, and he'd fight for me in court.

The romantic in me fell for the fairy tale. The rebel scented the sham.

That night I dreamed I was back at Wantley, in bed with Hugh. I spread my legs and arched my back and shuddered with pleasure, and when I opened my eyes, I was shocked to discover that I was making love to J.J.

THE JUDGES FOUND
me guilty. Four days later, I was back in Special Sessions court for sentencing. This time Judge Freschi looked at me as I approached the bench. I wouldn't swear to the other two judges, but I knew he'd heard the stories the women had told.

“Mrs. Sanger,” he began, “if you promise to obey the law faithfully in the future, this court will exercise extreme clemency.”

I told him I would obey the law pending the decision of the appeal. Of course, we were going to appeal.

The judge frowned.

J.J. pointed out that if I disobeyed the law after the appeal, I would be subject to another arrest.

“Mr. Goldstein, what is the use of beating about the bush? We are not looking for blood, only a promise by Mrs. Sanger that she will obey the law.” He turned to me. “Mrs. Sanger, if you will state publicly and openly without any qualifications whatsoever that you will be a law-abiding citizen, this court is prepared to exercise the highest degree of leniency.”

“This is a test case, Your Honor. I can promise to refrain from my activities only pending an appeal.”

The judge closed his eyes for a moment, as if he were praying for patience. “We will take your word if you will give it, Mrs. Sanger.”

“I cannot respect the law as it exists today.”

Behind me, murmurs of approval were beginning to build.

The judge rapped his gavel. “The court must have an answer, Mrs. Sanger. Yes or no?”

“Yes.”

Behind my back, a collective gasp went through the spectators.

“Pending the appeal.”

Applause rippled through the courtroom, and a few shouts of approval rang out. The judge gaveled them into silence.

“The judgment of the court is that you pay a fine of five thousand dollars or be confined to the workhouse for thirty days.”

This time only a single voice was raised. “Shame!” It had become the cry of my supporters.

I CHOSE THE
thirty days.

“Mrs. Byrne's experience has persuaded me,” I told the re
porters, “that I can do more good by serving a sentence than by paying a fine. Conditions on Blackwell's Island are unconscionable. I propose to expose them.”

“What about a hunger strike?” a reporter shouted.

“Are you going on a hunger strike like your sister?” another yelled.

I was not going on a hunger strike. The doctor had warned that one would exacerbate my tuberculosis and most likely kill me. But my health was not the only argument against it. A little more than two years earlier, I'd fled the country because I'd known that as long as men were fighting and dying in trenches abroad, no one would care about one woman's battle for justice at home. Now the struggle was drawing closer. The Kaiser had declared unrestricted submarine warfare, and America had severed diplomatic relations with Germany. It was only a matter of time before we got into the fight, and once we did, editors wouldn't need hunger strikes to sell newspapers. But I did not tell the reporters that. It sounded too self-serving and calculated. It also sounded, after Ethel's heroism, cowardly. I told them I hadn't yet made up my mind.

THE WORKHOUSE ON
Blackwell's Island refused to take me. Ethel had given the prison a black eye as well as a great deal of trouble. The warden wanted no more obstreperous Higgins sisters. I was sent to the Queens Women's Penitentiary. It wasn't a walk in the park, but it was better than the workhouse. I had a private cell. Sometimes I read aloud to the other inmates, most of whom, either prostitutes or drug addicts or both, were illiterate. I also taught them about sex and birth control. The matron was livid.
“They don't need no teaching about that. They already know more than is good for them.”