generalspeaking

Barefoot and Pregnant

"[Dorothea Palmer, social worker, Parents' Information Bureau, 1930s] told the cops to go ahead and arrest her, because the minute she got out of jail she'd go back to doing what she'd been doing."
"[Palmer, in a 1978 interview, speculated she had been 'set up' to do] the men's dirty work. She felt perhaps that Kaufman had put her in that situation knowing what would happen."
"I don't think she had a eugenic bone in her body. She believed [contraception] was a woman's right."
Elizabeth Koester, historian, Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science, University of Toronto

Dorothea Palmer, an Ottawa-area social worker, was arrested in 1936 and charged with advertising birth control, which was then a criminal obscenity. She did not testify at her own trial. Historian Elizabeth Koester speculates that this was because Palmer's marital status was in question. She ran a bookstore with a man she called her husband, Gordon Ferguson, but it’s not clear if they were actually married. Palmer went by her maiden name. Someone who was “living in sin” would have been seen as an unreliable witness in a trial that was concerned with public morals, Koester said.

Dorothea Palmer, a social worker working with the Parents' Information Bureau, an institution created by A.R. Kaufman of the Kaufman Rubber Company which made Sorel boots, was recruited to visit the homes of poor francophone women living near Depression-era Ottawa. He employed seasonal workers to be laid off after the winter rush for boots was over. He took note that the workers, young women, complained of being destitute. At the time there were crusades for birth-control, and he decided the problem for the women was they had too many children.

He hired dozens of women, most of whom were nurses, to make home visits and give contraceptive advice to his workers, and he arranged sterilization operations for them. He eventually extended the operation of the Parents' Information Bureau to the wider community, and then to other communities throughout the nation. Dorothea Palmer was one among many women whom he had hired.

And she ended up being accused of advertising contraceptives, considered at the time an obscenity under the Criminal Code of Canada, The women she visited did have too many babies and they were concerned over having more. And they were unable to care for them all, much less feed and clothe them. Some of the women attempted induced abortions at home. And they were all receptive to the visits from Ms. Palmer, who informed them of other options available to them, other than continued pregnancies.

The women of the impoverished town of Eastview (now part of greater Ottawa) were called to testify in the trial called the Eastview Birth Control Trial that took place in 1936-37. They testified in fact, for Ms. Palmer. In the end, a magistrate dismissed the charge against her in March of 1937. She had a brilliant lawyer, hired by A.R. Kaufman; Franklin Wellington Wegenast who mounted a successful defence arguing that Palmer had acted in the public good.

Through the six months of court proceedings with testimony from social service organizations and religious groups, deep questions about morality, social justice, the rights of women, church and state and war and peace were all aired. Wegenast "threw everything plus the kitchen sink at the issues", said Koester the historian who studied the case. He dispatched two men at one point in the trial to pharmacies to search out contraceptives and they returned, dumping armfuls of condoms and spermicidal jellies on the courtroom table.

Ably demonstrating that birth control was viewed as a public positive, its enabling tools widely available if one was informed. So to victimize one individual as the law was intent on doing with Dorothea Palmer made no moral sense whatever. Dozens of women were called as witnesses for their connection with Palmer, to testify that she had advertised contraceptives to them. When Wegenast cross-examined the women they testified what a good thing it turned out for them that they could prevent unwanted pregnancies to space their childrens' births.

As for Kaufman, though his actions appeared to stem from altruistic care for the plight of the poor and the unwanted children foisted upon long-suffering women, the man in fact felt that poor "feeble-minded" women were simply the wrong types of people to have children. He harboured "virulent" prejudice against Catholics in particular, according to Dr. Koester. And he was a founding member of the Eugenics Society of Canada.

The group that advocated for immigration restrictions, for the segregation of people considered mentally deficient and encouraged policies to encourage "fit parenthood", based on the notion of applying the science of selective breeding to humans. He did not, however  advocate openly for sterilization lacking consent. And he has been honoured with a school and a YMCA in Kitchener, Ontario named after him.

As for Dorothea Palmer, the trial placed her under great stress. Her character was impugned and she fought furiously for what she believed in. As she attempted to enter the courtroom one day, two men were alleged to have grabbed and groped her, threatening she would be raped. "She kneed them in the groin. She was just fabulous", said Koester, the academic historian.

Labels: Birth Control, Canada, Depression era, Poverty

posted by Pieface @ Monday, June 17, 2019