Product Advertisements

“French Periodical Pills,” from Boston Daily Times, January 6, 1845 (bound volume, no. 8256). Serial and Government Publications Division. bibliographic record

Besides the ubiquitous advertisements for hair products, complexion lotions, clothing, and dry goods that appeared in every newspaper, a number of newspapers accepted advertisements for thinly disguised treatment for unwanted pregnancies. Such ads appeared in newspapers of large cities and small towns and in newspapers with high and low circulation in the nineteenth century. Advertisers cloaked their remedies in phrases such as “Preventive Powders for married ladies, whose health forbids a too rapid increase of family,” “treatment of obstinate case of female irregularity, stoppage of suppression,” and relief “from severe pains which they occasionally suffer periodically.” One advertisement by a Dr. L. Monroe in the Boston Daily Times (January 6, 1845, p. 4, c. 6) carefully advises that “ladies married should not take them [pills] if they have reason to believe they are enciente [sic], as they are sure to produce a miscarriage.”

In New York, the Sun and the Herald accepted advertisements from abortionists such as Madame Restell, Madame Costello, and Mrs. Bird. Their ads were not, however, universally accepted. The New York Tribune refused them all, and Horace Greeley even campaigned through editorials to bring attention to the “infamous and unfortunately common crime—so common that it affords a lucrative support to a regular guild of professional murderers, so safe that its perpetrators advertise their calling in the newspapers” (New York Herald, August 20, 1871, p. 4, c. 3). The presence of such advertisements in major newspapers, the success of abortion practitioners (Madame Restell became a millionaire), and the relative lack of prosecution despite its illegality and public censure suggest nineteenth-century society's ambivalence toward abortion.

Elizabeth Blackwell (1821-1910), the first American woman to receive a medical degree, labored against the misconception, fostered by newspaper advertisements of the day, that a female physician was by definition an abortionist. In Pioneer Work in Opening the Medical Profession to Women (London: Longmans, Green, and Co.,1895; R133.B63 GenColl), Blackwell states the dilemma when recounting her decision to pursue a medical degree:

There was at that time a certain Madame Restell flourishing in New York. This person was a noted abortionist, and known all over the country. She was a woman of great ability, and defended her course in the public papers. She made a large fortune, drove a fine carriage, had a pew in a fashionable church, and though often arrested, was always bailed out by her patrons. She was known distinctively as a ‘female physician,’ a term exclusively applied at that time to those women who carried on her vile occupation.(pp. 29-30)

Not until the passage of the Comstock Act of 1873 did the “public papers” cease to carry such advertisements.

Help Wanted Ads

“Wanted—Male Help; Wanted—Female Help.” From Chicago Tribune, January 10, 1892 (bound newspaper, no. 7635). Serial and Government Publications Division. bibliographic record

Looking at “Help Wanted” advertisements is another way to document women in the workplace. By looking at the type of work advertised for women and the vocabulary used to describe the tasks over time, researchers can document the advancement (or lack thereof) of women in the workplace.

Most newspapers had separate listings by gender for help-wanted ads until the late 1960s and early 1970s. The sample page on the right from an 1892 Chicago Tribune issue typifies the employment advertising practices—"Wanted-Male Help" and "Wanted-Female Help." The impetus to change this situation was the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In 1968 the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission issued guidelines for employment ads: “The placement of an advertisement in columns classified by publishers on the basis of sex, such as columns headed ‘male’ or ‘female,’ will be considered an expression of preference, limitation, specification, or discrimination based on sex” (29 CFR 1604.5). The American Newspaper Publishers Association challenged the guidelines and voiced many of the arguments held by advertisers and publishers, including anticipated advertising revenue losses and inconvenience to job seekers. By the mid-1970s, challenges by women's groups, public opinion, and failed court cases led to the eradication of separate want ads. Judge Kramer's opinion in the 1972 case Pittsburgh Press Company v. Pittsburgh Commission on Human Relations captures the new attitude: “It is no longer possible to state that all women desire, or have an ‘interest’ in, any one type or classification of work. Some women have the desire, ability and stamina to do any work that men can do. Once we accept such a premise it then becomes logically impossible to permit continued segregation of employment want ads by column headings for any job” (Pittsburgh Press v. Pittsburgh Commission on Human Relations, 287 A.2d 161 1972).