Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations: The Veil Lifted, and Light Thrown on Crime and its Causes, and Criminals and their Haunts. Facts and Disclosures.Howe, William F.
History
Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations: The Veil Lifted, and Light Thrown on Crime and its Causes, and Criminals and their Haunts. Facts and Disclosures.
Howe, William F.
Crime -- New York (State) -- New York; Criminals -- New York (State) -- New York; New York (N.Y.) -- Social conditions
The pitiable case of Miss Alice Augusta Bowlsby will occur to many
readers just here. The facts in her case were simply these: One Saturday
night towards the end of August, 1871, a trunk containing the remains of
a young and beautiful female was found at the depot of the Hudson River
Railroad, checked for Chicago. The remains were subsequently recognized
as those of Miss Bowlsby of Paterson, New Jersey, and the trunk was
traced, by means of the truckman employed to carry it, back to the
residence of Dr. Jacob Rosenzweig. It was soon discovered that the death
of the unhappy girl was caused by an operation tending to produce
abortion. Rosenzweig was a burly fellow, with a forbidding aspect, and a
bold, confident look. His large, bullet eyes looked defiantly from
behind the deep-intrenched line of wrinkles that care or conscience had
gradually drawn around them. He had, in fact, a forbidding aspect, and
when he was placed on trial before Recorder Hackett, according to a
newspaper reporter present,
"one eye was devoted to watching the Grecian bend of his vulture-hooked
nose, while the other was on duty over a precocious lock of his curling
red hair, which clung to the verandah of his left ear like a Virginia
creeper."
Rosenzweig was convicted of manslaughter while treating a woman for
abortion, and was sentenced to state prison for seven years--a sentence
so obviously out of proportion to the enormity of the crime that a howl
of public indignation went up to the skies. However, Recorder Hackett
had awarded the utmost penalty of the then existing law, and Rosenzweig
was sent to Sing Sing. Soon after, a law was enacted by the state
legislature, making the penalty of crimes like Rosenzweig's twenty years
in the state prison, with hard labor. After this law was passed, and
when the abortionist had served about a year of his sentence, another
charge of abortion was found against him, and he was brought down the
river, again put on trial and sentenced. Mr. Howe, for his defense, in
appeal, raised the natural objection that it was unfair and improper to
try Rosenzweig in two cases at once. Consequently, he got a new trial,
in which he was acquitted, because the old law under which he had been
previously convicted had been repealed. Here was a manifest miscarriage
of justice effected by a wise change in the laws. This prisoner escaped,
but such a result could hardly, within the range of possibility, occur
under the same law again.
In the majority of cases, the victims of abortion are gotten rid of by
the practitioner before they die. The operation once over, they are
hurried from the premises with all possible dispatch, even though the
fatigue and exposure may imperil their lives. Many die a few days after
reaching home, in which case the name of the abortionist is never known,
and many more linger for a few months or years, mere physical wrecks of
their former selves, till merciful Death folds them in his leaden arms.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations: The Veil Lifted, and Light Thrown on Crime and its Causes, and Criminals and their Haunts. Facts and Disclosures. — John Shaqi
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