Abortion in the Berkshires, Pre Roe v Wade

Saturday, May 7, 1897 , Dalton, MASS–  It was Thomas Menton, a worker at the Old Berkshire Mill, who first spotted something in the water, near the upper headgates on the East Branch. 

At first he could not believe what he saw, when he drew up the tiny body from the river.

Dalton was already abuzz with rumors that Saturday morning by the time Medical Examiner Paddock confirmed that the female child, about two months premature, had already been dead for several hours before being in the river.  
News spread rapidly to surrounding towns as a wave of collective shock at the occurrence overtook the region.  From the age of the body, many were quick to surmise an abortion had been performed, and speculation ran rampant as to who could be the mother.

While the discovery of the body in such a manner gave the event a particularly vivid face, the occurrence itself was far from unknown, or even uncommon, to local residents of the period.  It had been almost forty years since the death of North Adams teen Mattie Butler from a botched abortion had first provoked much controversy in 1859.

“It is well known, or at least fully believed, in this vicinity, that the crime of abortion is alarmingly frequent,” the Berkshire District Medical Society stated in a resolution that year.

At the time of the body’s discovery in Dalton, a trial in Springfield had just recently concluded for a barber charged with performing an abortion that resulted in the death of Sophronia Bearaguard.  A few months later, a North Adams housewife would perish from an air embolism after another such procedure went wrong.

The first arrest in the “Baby in the Brook” case, as it was called, came that Wednesday at the home of Fanny Stearns. The Dalton widower was not really a principal suspect; investigators brought in Stearns on an accessory charge as they built their case against their actual target, to whom Stearns was renting a room.

Dr. Robert Henry Neefus was known to local law enforcement and had quickly emerged as the primary suspect.  Neefus had two prior offenses: charged in 1880 for performing an abortion on Mrs William Jacques of Cheshire, and sentenced to a $2,000 fine; in 1892, he was sentenced to four years in Charlestown for the same procedure on Miss Burke of Dalton, but released early for good behavior after a petition for clemency was circulated and signed by many, including a number of prominent Pittsfield businessmen and lawyers.  
“His reputation in this county is not of the best, and his intended arrest was suspected from the start,” said the Berkshire Evening Eagle after a warrant was issued on the charge on May 18.

“He has… brought grief and shame on others and is reported to be incorrigibly bad,” the Pittsfield Sun remonstrated more forcefully.

Neefus himself was already in custody, and had been since before the body was discovered.  He’d been in jail since that Friday night, “recovering from a terrible case of delirium,” and at his arraignment that Monday was invited to serve an additional ten days for said intoxication.

Over the next few days, four more arrests followed- Emerson and Harriet Williams of Coltsville, along with Mr and Mrs. George Contois of Cheshire, as the mystery was slowly unraveled.  The Williams family were charged as accessories to murder, and the Contois couple with aiding and abetting the crime at their home.

Mrs Williams stated under questioning that she had suffered a miscarriage, for which she’d been treated by Dr. Neefus.  According to Williams, and later borne out by Neefus, the pregnancy has been four months along and the fetus died in the womb.  

However, the state contended, per the opinion of the medical examiner, that the fetus was at seven months development and had been born alive, with suffocation thought to be the probable cause of death.   It was on this contention that the district attorney sought to try the case as a homicide rather than charges then associated with performing an abortion.

“All parties connected with the case deny their guilt and in every case no one appears to know anything that would lead to their arrest,” commented the Eagle.  “The officers claim to have sufficient evidence to hold some, if not all, of the parties for being connected with the crime.”

Rumor had it much of this evidence came out of testimony from a witness who had “spent some little time last week” with Neefus, though that witness is never named.

On May 28, testimony for the prosecution was heard by Judge Bixby, who dismissed the Contois family while the Williams couple would go on to face a grand jury as accessories to the act.  They were granted $800 bail, while Neefus was held without bail to await the grand jury in July. At a July 14 grand jury proceeding, the district attorney asked for time to make a more thorough investigation, and the case against Neefus and the Williams family was continued to January.

By that January the lion’s share of public attention had shifted to the case against Nathaniel Mosely, who had shot and killed George Spencer at Hartsville, and who was also to go before the grand jury that day along with “a pretty hard looking lot” being held for other lesser charges, according to the Pittsfield Sun.
“Dr. R.H. Neefus, of Dalton, looking very neat in a new suit of gray clothes, clean collar and cuffs, sat apart from the rest,” noted the Sun.  
As his case came up, the district attorney said he had no further evidence against the defendants, and motioned for it to be dismissed. 

“When he learned that the grand jury had failed to find an indictment against him for murder, he took up his hat, and after shaking hands with his counsel, walked quickly out of the courtroom,” the Sun observed. Harriet and Emerson Williams were likewise discharged.

Following his release after 7 months in jail, Neefus returned to Dalton, later relocating to Pittsfield. He continued to practice medicine, and in 1903 became one of the first doctors in town to install a telephone line; but his drinking and mental state continued to worsen. in September of 1909, following an arrest for disturbance of the peace, Neefus was “adjudged insane at the District Court” by a Dr. Burke, and “sent to the insane asylum at Northampton.”   He died there six months later.

Abortions continued to be performed in Berkshire County in the 20th century much as they had in the 19th century, with occasional arrests, and periodic publicity following grievous injury or death of the patients.  In some cases they were performed by physicians, such as Dr. Wilfred Brosseau, a longtime family practitioner in North Adams, who plead guilty in 1930 following near-death complications in a Pittsfield wife already with several grown children.  
Other times non-medical practitioners for hire could be called upon to provide the operation; suspended sentences were given in October 1957 to Peter Leonisio of North Adams and Anthony Gaetani of Pittsfield as part of “the roundup of an alleged abortion ring” which extended across New York’s capitol region.  

Recent research on this period has scarcely yet scratched the surface in identifying just how frequent and widespread was this phenomenon throughout American history, though judging from what forensic anthropology and source reconstruction has been undertaken it would seem quite widespread.  For every incident which made the news, many more families struggled in silence with the grim outcomes.  A shroud of secrecy and inspecific death certificates signed by sympathetic family doctors belied a sizable epidemic of women at all ages from illegal in-home abortions.

 In 1970 New York became the first east coast state to repeal its ban, making the state next door a destination for those seeking the procedure;  Roe v. Wade confirmed its legality nationally three years later. Today, approximately 21% of pregnancies in Massachusetts end in abortion, about 3% above the national average.  Less than 0.5% of women experience medical complication from the procedure, which now has a fatality rate of about one tenth that of childbirth.

Though perhaps not as acutely here as in some parts of the country, controversy of varying intensity has continued to surround the procedure, as it likely always will.  On occassion this has risen to the level of medium size protests, as it did in front of a Pittsfield walk in clinic in ’85 and at North Adams Regional Hospital in ’94. Regional access, however, remains a major issue. At present, there are 47 facilities providing abortion in Massachusetts, 19 of them clinics. 43% of Massachusetts counties have no clinics that provide abortions, with 13% of Massachusetts women living in those counties.