NEW!
THE DISQUIETING DEATH OF EMMA GILL: Abortion, Death, and Concealment in Victorian New England (Jan. 2024)
The narrative unfolds like a high-stakes crime novel.”—Kirkus Reviews
“This timely, detailed work contributes to the history of women’s reproductive rights. It is sure to find an enthusiastic audience.” — Booklist
“This highly researched and detailed book serves as a stark reminder of the sometimes fatal consequences women face when denied the right to safe, legal abortions.” — Library Journal
In 1898, a group of schoolboys in Bridgeport, Connecticut, discovered gruesome packages under a bridge holding the dismembered remains of a young woman.
Finding that the dead woman had just undergone an abortion, prosecutors raced to establish her identity and fix blame for her death. Suspicion fell on Nancy Guilford, half of a married pair of “doctors” well known to police throughout New England.
A fascinated public followed the suspect’s flight from justice, as many rooted for the fugitive. The Disquieting Death of Emma Gill takes a close look not only at the Guilfords, but also at the cultural shifts and societal compacts that allowed their practice to flourish while abortion was both illegal and unregulated.
Focusing on the women at the heart of the story—both victim and perpetrator—Biederman reexamines this slice of history through a feminist lens and reminds us of the very real lives at stake when a woman’s body and choices are controlled by others.
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OTHER BOOKS BY MARCIA BIEDERMAN:
About A MIGHTY FORCE, a 2021 title from Prometheus Books:
In the last half of 1945, news of the war’s end and aftermath shared space with reports of a battle on the home front, led by a woman. She was Elizabeth O. Hayes, MD, doctor for a coal company that owned the town of Force, PA, where sewage contaminated the drinking water, and ambulances sank into muddy unpaved roads while corrupt managers, ensconced in Manhattan high-rises, refused to make improvements.
When Hayes resigned to protest intolerable living conditions, 350 miners followed her on strike, shaking the town’s foundation and attracting a national media storm. Press – including women reporters, temporarily assigned to national news desks in wartime – flocked to the small mining town to champion Dr. Hayes’ cause. Slim, blonde, and 33, “Dr. Betty” became the heroine of an environmental drama that captured the nation’s attention, complete with mustache-twirling villains, surprises, setbacks, and a mostly happy ending.
News outlets ranging from Business Week to the Daily Worker applauded her guts. Woody Guthrie wrote a song about her. Soldiers followed her progress in the military newspaper Stars and Stripes, flooding her with fan mail. A Philadelphia newspaper recommended Dr. Betty’s prescription to others: “Rx: Get Good and Angry.” President Harry S. Truman referred her grievances to his justice department, which handed her a victory.
A Mighty Force is the only book, popular or academic, written about Hayes. Readers interested in feminism, the environment, corporate accountability, and the World War II home front will be excited to discover this engaging, untold episode in women’s history. Fortunately, a fascinated press captured Hayes’s words and deeds in scores of news pieces. Author Marcia Biederman uses these pieces, written by major news outlets and tiny local papers, as well as interviews with descendants, letters written by Hayes’s opponents, union files, court records, an observer’s scrapbook, mining company data, and a journalist’s oral history to tell the story of Dr. Betty and her pursuit of public health for the first time.
About SCAN ARTIST, a 2019 release from Chicago Review Press:
The best-known educator of the 20th century was a scammer in cashmere. “The most famous reading teacher in the world,” as television hosts introduced her, Evelyn Wood had little classroom experience, no degrees in reading instruction, and a background that included cooperation with the Third Reich. Nevertheless, a nation spooked by Sputnik and panicked by paperwork eagerly embraced her promises of a speed-reading revolution. Journalists, lawmakers and two US presidents lent credibility to Wood’s claims of turbocharging reading speeds through a method once compared to the miracle at Lourdes. fudging test results, and squelching critics, Wood founded a company that enrolled half a million. The course’s popularity endured even as science proved that her system taught only skimming, with disastrous effects on comprehension. Now, as apps and online courses attempt to spark a speed-reading revival, and with science under attack, this engaging look at Wood’s rise from missionary to marketer exposes the pitfalls of wishful thinking.
I recently sat for an interview with NFReads, a website devoted to nonfiction. Check out our conversation!
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About POPOVERS AND CANDLELIGHT, published Fall 2018 by SUNY Press:
Patricia Murphy immigrated to New York from Newfoundland in 1928. After being from a series of jobs at restaurants, she decided to open one of her own. Gambling her last $60 on a rundown Brooklyn restaurant, she turned it into an overnight sensation. By then, the Great Depression was in full swing but the first of nine fabulous Patricia Murphy’s Candlelight Restaurants helped customers forget their troubles.
Eye-popping decor, stellar service, and bottomless baskets of popovers an airy bread brought throngs to the restaurants, where customers waiting hours for tables could tour Murphy’s award-winning gardens or shop at her expansive gift shops. Murphy’s urban and suburban Candlelight restaurants flourished in Greater New York and Southern Florida from the 1930s until the 1970s, serving millions of customers and making Murphy, a socialite and millionaire. She raised orchids, raced horses, and dashed between her properties in a private plane until it all came to an operatic end.
In this blog, I’m excited to all the new discoveries about Patricia that couldn’t fit in the book. Also, please don’t miss the great review of my book from Kirkus Reviews (on my Media page) or my report on the Milleridge Inn in Jericho, NY, where roving servers still offer popovers that carry Patricia Murphy’s DNA. (The Milleridge was founded in the Sixties by Murphy’s estranged siblings, who copied her format and menu, right down to the popovers.)
©Marcia Biederman, 2024
