Down the Rabbit Hole
Dear Historical Fiction reader,
I’ve started a blog focussing on my research journeys for my novels. I thought maybe some of you might be interested in sharing my sources. It’s a part of the writing process that I love and never get sick of.
I’ll write in the order of my books. For my first few blogs I want to focus on primary sources. A wonderful resource is archive.org. Through this you can access many original texts, in their book form. It has a search function, which is priceless.
Firstly memoirs, diaries and letters.
For my novel Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, my major source was the paper Taking the Trade: Abortion and Gender Relations in an Eighteenth-Century New England Village, by Cornelia Hughes Dayton and published in The William and Mary Quarterly, Third Series, Vol. 48, No. 1 (Jan., 1991), pp. 19-49.
A website Taking the Trade was created and designed in 2007-2008 by Cornelia Dayton and Jessica Linker. It has its home-base on the University of Connecticut’s History Department server.
This is, of course, a secondary source, but it contains priceless primary documents.
Taking the Trade: Links | Department of History, is a treasure trove of information, easily accessible to non-academics and school students. As explained by the authors:
This website allows viewers to read the rich set of surviving documents about this case. These consist of depositions—testimony given by witnesses—and indictments. Through them we can explore the mental world, speech patterns, religious understandings, fears, and self-justifications of Amasa, Sarah (as recalled by others), the physician John Hallowell, and their youthful accomplices, friends, and family members.
We include other aids for interpreting the case: nutshell biographies of principal characters, a timeline of the courtship, pregnancy, and abortion and the complex legal proceedings that followed. We also include a map and photographs of the Pomfret countryside today and of Sarah’s and Amasa’s gravestones which stand only 25 feet apart.
Depositions were legal statements made by accused people, witnesses, victims, relatives and friends. Any trial at this time relied not only on court appearances but depositions.
Zervia Grosvenor (Verity in my novel), was the older sister of Sarah Grosvenor (Polly in my novel). This is part of her deposition.
Zerviah Grosvenor testifyeth & saith that being in discourse with my late Sister Sarah Some time in the Month of July before her death and being Suspicious that She was with Child I askd her whether it was so which She declined owning & went away Sorrowful, and in a day or two after She was taken sick and as we apprehended was in danger of a fever: and hearing that Doctor Hallowell was at one of our Neighbours my Mother desired me to go and Call him, which being done he came along with me to See her; I told D: Hollowell I feared She was with Child, which i[f] it was true I desired him to know of her & not Give her any thing that should harm her…
One of Sarah’s cousins stated :
I asked him (the doctor, Hallowell) what was the Reason that they did not marry & he told me that he Doubted that Sessions Did not Love her well a nough for saith he: did not beleive it was his son & if he Could Cause her to gitt Red of it he would not Go near her again, & the doctor gave me to understand that said Sessions had bin Interseeding with him to Remove her Conseption.
Another cousin of Sarah, Hannah, described what she saw when she was called urgently by Zerviah:
i saw Sarah Grosvenor siting over a Chamber pot and Shee a Riseing from thence I saw an untimely birth in the chamber pot that and what was with it, not amuch above half filling the pot the head seamed to be brused and the whole ^baby in a decayed condition
We took The child wrped it up & conveyed it away and Buryed it; I am not certain whether I can find The place, It was in Capt Grosvenour [written above: Our Father’s] wood Land;
A close friend of Sarah’s (Abigail) highlighted the religious anguish which accompanied such actions:
(Sarah was) asking me whether I thought her Sins would ever be pardoned, to which I answered that I hoped she had not Sinned the unpardonable sin but with true and hearty repentence hoped she would find forgivenesss.
In Sinners Polly dies of a botched abortion. She had been forced to take abortion-inducing drugs by her lover Josiah, known then as the ‘trade”.
It is highly likely that Dr Hallowell, who sold the abortion drugs to Josiah, did not know that they had been adulterated by the apothecary, or diluted, to increase his profits. They may also have been stale, held in the shop for years. I found this information in a book called The Poison Plot (Elaine Forman Crane), a few years after I published Sinners. It was no wonder that the ‘trade’ did not work for Polly.
The Judges’ decision stated:
John Hallowell in the summer of 1742 not having the fear of God before his eyes and instigated by the Devil did make an assault on the body of Sarah Grosvenor] under Color & pretext of administering to her as a Physician, [and did] give, administer unto and persuade her to take (She then being pregnant) Sundry Dangerous & Destructive Medicines and did allso further as well with his own hands as with a certain Instrument of Iron by him then used…violently Lacerate and ^grievously wound ye body of ye sd Sarah whereby the Child whereof she was then pregnant was caused to Perish and immaturely to Depart from her, upon which said medicinal applications and manual force & violence she…Languished for about Six Days & was then of sd Child Delivered as aforesd and from yt time…[for about three weeks] further languished and…Dyed. [thus the Jurors say that John Hallowell] by his Wicked and Diabolical practice [did feloniously murther said Sarah Grosvenor]
“ not having the fear of God before his eyes and instigated by the Devil”
This was a common phrase used in serious criminal indictments until around the 1830s, according to various sources, in both New England and England. It shows an interesting connection between the church and state, which most likely wasn’t that strong when it was phased out.
An indictment of (deceased) Aaron Burr in his trial for the killing of Alexander Hamilton states that:
"The Jurors [...] upon their oath present that Aaron Burr late of the Township of Bergen in the County of Bergen esquire not having the fear of God before his eyes but being moved and seduced by the instigation of the Devil…(did) feloniously Wilfully and of his malice aforethought did make an assault upon Alexander Hamilton in the peace of God and of the said State then and there
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Novels and memoirs published around the time I was writing about, are excellent primary sources. Popular novels drew on themes of fallen women, often pregnant and abandoned by their rakish lovers. These were intended to serve as a warning to young ladies!
The Coquette by Francis Underwood. Pub 1893
The Coquette tells the much-publicized story of the seduction and death of Elizabeth Whitman, a poet from Hartford, Connecticut. Written as a series of letters between the heroine and her family and friends and her lover and his friend, it describes her long, tortuous courtship by two men, neither of whom perfectly suits her. Eliza Wharton (as Whitman is called in the novel) wavers between Major Sanford, a charming but insincere man, and the Reverend Boyer, a bore who wants to marry her. When, in her mid-30s, Wharton finds herself suddenly abandoned when both men marry other women, she wilfully enters into an adulterous relationship with Sanford and becomes pregnant. Alone and dejected, she dies in childbirth at a roadside inn.
Eliza writes a last letter to her mother:
Yes, madam, your Eliza has fallen; fallen, indeed! She has become the victim of her own indiscretion, and of the intrigue and artifice of a designing libertine, who is the husband of another! She is polluted, and no more worthy of her parentage! She flies from you, not to conceal her guilt, that she humbly and penitently owns; but to avoid what she has never experienced, and feels herself unable to support, a mother's frown; to escape the heart-rending sight of a parent's grief, occasioned by the crimes of her guilty child.
Like Josiah in my novel, the cad, Sanford, in an astonishing reversal of character, professes:
I would have given millions, had I possessed them, to have been at liberty to see, and to have had power to preserve Eliza from death!
A friend writes:
"But let no one reproach her memory.
Her life has paid the forfeit of her folly.
Let that suffice."
Another friend relays the message of the story:
From the melancholy story of Eliza Wharton, let the American fair learn to reject with disdain every insinuation derogatory to their true dignity and honor. Let them despise, and for ever banish the man, who can glory in the seduction of innocence and the ruin of reputation. To associate, is to approve; to approve, is to be betrayed!
Hope you enjoyed reading this, as much as I did writing it. More to come!
Cheers Judie