Abortion was a booming business in San Francisco in the 19th and early 20th centuries. As in many parts of the country, women here sought ways to manage their lives and families, and doctors practiced often dubious procedures in an ever-changing legal landscape. In this episode, we start off with a fatal case in which a doctor went on trial for murder, and we look at the history of abortion practice and law, locally and across the U.S.

Sources:

"Witches, Midwives, and Nurses: A History of Women Healers," Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English, 1973

"Abortion in America : the origins and evolution of national policy, 1800-1900," James C. Mohr, 1978

San Francisco Call, Volume 108, Number 121, 29 September 1910: https://cdnc.ucr.edu/?a=d&d=SFC19100929.2.11.1

For information on abortion providers, services, and laws in the US: I Need An A

Acid Attacks: Pakistan's Worst Social Epidemic

Evie Magazine, Ballerina Farms, and the Yassification of Christian Nationalism

Peter Thiel's Investment Firm is Backing a Menstrual Cycle-Focused "Femtech" Company

What is the Comstock Act? Center for Reproductive Rights

This Podcast Will Kill You: Pregnancy

The Comparative Safety of Legal Induced Abortion and Childbirth in the US

The True Story Behind the Welfare Queen Stereotype

Buck v. Bell + The Right to Self Determination: Freedom from Involuntary Sterilization Abortion Everyday: Tradwife Classes for High Schoolers?

Production Note

We recorded this episode in two sessions so you may come across some differences in audio, or you may not notice at all. Fingers crossed for the latter. - CK

Do you have a favorite cemetery and, if so, why is it City Cemetery, which currently lies hidden under Lincoln Park Golf Course and the Legion of Honor Museum in San Francisco? You know the one, with 20,000 people lying unmarked and invisible? Come with us on a journey back to the Gold Rush, where not one, but two cemeteries were closed and moved to the newest municipal burial ground, CITY CEMETERY, where they would eventually be abandoned and turned over to golfers and museum-goers. If you liked hearing about the PIT OF BONES at Fort Mason and Yerba Buena Cemetery, you'll love finding out what a CHARNEL HEAP is in this episode.

Show Notes

San Francisco's Forgotten Cemeteries: A Buried History: https://www.bethwinegarner.com/san-franciscos-forgotten-cemeteries

Here Lies A Story : Lost Cemeteries of San Francisco

https://hereliesastory.com/lost-cemeteries-of-san-francisco/

SF Genealogy, City Cemetery: https://mail.sfgenealogy.org/doku.php?id=san_francisco_history:cemeteries:city

Alma de Bretteville Spreckels: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alma_de_Bretteville_Spreckels

Tunnel boring machine "Big Alma"

Richard Barnes, "Still Rooms and Excavations:" https://www.richardbarnes.net/still-rooms/883irtu53jjpubdflaiy0p67uosyrz

Nikki the Archaeologist:

https://www.instagram.com/nikki.the.archaeologist/

City Cemetery landmarking: https://www.sfheritage.org/community/lincoln-park-officially-designated-as-a-city-landmark/

Steven Welch, a fifth-generation funeral director at San Francisco's Duggan's Funeral Service, joins Beth and Courtney to share what mortician life is like, both today and historically. He also dishes about the embalming job on Pope Francis, how HBO's "Six Feet Under" feels torn from the pages of his own family's life, and how cremation services leave room for funerary malfeasance.

Links:

Jessica Mitford, "The American Way of Death" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_American_Way_of_Death

Valencia Street funeral home map, FoundSF: https://www.shapingsf.org/images/fall2021/Corridor to Colma 11x17_final smaller.pdf

Pope Francis' embalmed hands:

What do you know about the bubonic plague? Probably that it killed a lot of people, it broke out in the middle ages, and rats were somehow involved. . . but did you know we ACTUALLY HAD A PLAGUE OUTBREAK IN SAN FRANCISCO?

That's right, in 1900 the plague came to the city, and it wreaked havoc for 8 years. Join us for a journey through crowded tenements, racist blockades, wooden pallets full of fleas, quack medicine, corporate conspiracies, and finally, FINALLY some actual science.

The Great Mortality by John Kelly

Plague and Fire: Battling the Black Death and the 1900 Burning of Honolulu's Chinatown by James C. Mohr

The Barbary Plague: The Black Death in Victorian San Francisco by Marilyn Chase

The Plague Comes to San Francisco @ Here Lies a Story

Plague at the Golden Gate American Experience

City of Plagues by Susan Craddock

If you got sick with a visible disease in 19th century San Francisco, you wouldn't be taken to a doctor or a hospital. You wouldn't be given chicken soup and penicillin. You'd be forcibly removed in a zinc-lined cop carriage to a set of nasty, claptrap, decrepit cottages in Potrero Hill known as the PESTHOUSE. And you guys thought Covid-19 quarantine was bad!

References

"Driven by Fear: Epidemics and Isolation in San Francisco's House of Pestilence," Gunter Risse

"[The Origin of the Word Quarantine](https://www.sciencefriday.com/articles/the-origin-of-the-word-quarantine/#:~:text=But to find the origin,to mid-14th century Europe.)," Science Friday

"City of Plagues," Susan Craddock

"The Pest House," HLAS [including a map of the location]

The David Rumsey Map Collection

The Chinese Exclusion Act

Visiting Hawaii's Tragic and Remote Leprosy Colony

"The Sick Rose," Richard Barnett

"And the Band Played On," Randy Shilts

Ward 86 at San Francisco General Hospital

An 1896 etching from the San Francisco Call of the San Francisco Pesthouse Annex

Do you know what happens to people when they die in poverty and estranged from family? We talk to writer and advocate Amy Shea about her book, "Too Poor to Die: The Hidden Realities of Dying in the Margins," in which she looks at how society treats poor, homeless and marginalized people in life, and how that connects to their outcomes when they die. We also chat about a resurgence of anti-poverty laws in the Bay Area and beyond.

Sources and additional reading:

"Too Poor to Die: The Hidden Realities of Dying in the Margins," Amy Shea: https://www.rutgersuniversitypress.org/too-poor-to-die/9781978843981/

Equitable Disposition Alliance: https://equitabledisposition.org/

"A Certain Kind of Death," dir. Grover Babcock and Blue Hadaegh: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ErooOhzE268&pp=ygUdYSBjZXJ0YWluIGtpbmQgb2YgZGVhdGggbW92aWU%3D

"The Potter's Field," dir. Edward Heavrin:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwN_rfOoIuA

"The Unclaimed: Abandonment and Hope in the City of Angels," Pamela Prickett and Stefan Timmermans:

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/669835/the-unclaimed-by-pamela-prickett-and-stefan-timmermans/

"Ashes to Admin: Tales from the Caseload of a Council Funeral Officer," Evie King:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/76699588-ashes-to-admin

"The Lonely Death of George Bell," N.R. Kleinfeld, New York Times:

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/18/nyregion/dying-alone-in-new-york-city.html

"Dying old: and preferably alone? Agency, resistance and dissent at the end of life," Allan Kellehear: http://ijal.se/article/view/1183

How did all those bones end up in a pit at Fort Mason? The Anatomy Act, that's how! In this episode, Courtney takes us through the history of using human cadavers to learn about medicine — whether people liked it or not. What started out as punishment for criminal acts turned into punishment for being poor. We'll talk about how this practice evolved from England to the US, from the East Coast to the West, and how the bodies of the poor and marginalized fed the study of medicine and anatomy.

Links & References

Death, Dissection, and the Destitute by Ruth Richardson

The Butchering Art by Lindsay Fitzharris

Archaeology and Bioarchaeology of Anatomical Dissection at a Nineteenth-Century Army Hospital in San Francisco by Willey et al

On Penn's dubious collection of human remains

China Turns Out Mummified Bodies for Display

Surgeon's Hall Museum, Edinburgh - home of Burke's death mask

Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach

Reuters Investigates: The Body Trade

Photo of a Mortsafe

A note from Courtney On Mathus:

The Malthusian theory - sometimes called the Malthusian trap - posits that if population growth outpaces agricultural production, famine will result, which will lead to more poverty and declining birth rates, leading to societal collapse. His work was used to justify eugenic forms of population control (Including the New Poor Acts) - and although Malthusianism has since come to be identified with the issue of general over-population, the original Malthusian concern was more specifically with the fear of over-population by the dependent poor. Still not a fan.

Workers clearing lead-contaminated soil at Fort Mason in 2010 got an unpleasant surprise when they uncovered a pit full of body parts dating back to the 19th century. Beth shares the research into who these early San Franciscans were, why they were buried in a Fort Mason courtyard, and the man most likely responsible: A U.S. Army surgeon named Edwin Bentley.

Sources:

"Archaeology and Bioarchaeology of Anatomical Dissection at a Nineteenth-Century Army Hospital in San Francisco," edited by P. Willey, Peter Gavette, Eric J. Bartelink and Colleen F. Milligan: https://upf.com/book.asp?id=9781683402664

"Now and Then: Fort Mason," National Park Service: https://www.nps.gov/goga/learn/photosmultimedia/now-and-then-foma.htm

Dr. Edwin Bentley. Image courtesy of the NIH's National Library of Medicine: https://collections.nlm.nih.gov/catalog/nlm:nlmuid-101416384-img?qvq=q:bentley;lc:NLMNLM~1~1&mi=5&trs=8

Check out the books we are reading https://bookshop.org/lists/dead-reckoning-sources

There's an unmarked cemetery in the heart of San Francisco, where hundreds, possibly thousands, of graves rest beneath the popular destinations like the Main Library, the Asian Art Museum, and the United Nations Plaza. Beth takes us through the history of this place, once called Yerba Buena Cemetery, and touches on the history of SF burials before and during the Gold Rush.

Sources:

"San Francisco's Forgotten Cemeteries: A Buried History" by Beth Winegarner: https://www.bethwinegarner.com/san-franciscos-forgotten-cemeteries

"Archaeological monitoring and architectural documentation : San Francisco Main Library project, site of the former City Hall completed in 1897," City and County of San Francisco: http://sflib1.sfpl.org/record=b1554397~S1

From San Francisco Call, Volume 75, Number 69, 7 February 1894

Welcome to Dead Reckoning, the podcast where death isn't the end of the story. Hosted by writer and creator Courtney Minick, and journalist and author Beth Winegarner, based in San Francisco. Produced by Carolyn Kissick and Here Lies a Story. Artwork by Dante Silliman.