ABSTRACT

Married working-class women were probably the most frequent users of traditional means of abortion. Middle-class women also sought abortions from midwives or medical men willing to ignore the law and used the many medicines that were advertised as cures for "female complaints" but were often thinly disguised abortifacients. In one famous case, the Ghrimes brothers, makers of Lady Montrose's Female Tabules, were charged with blackmailing 12,000 women who had bought their ineffective abortifacients. The extent of the demand for such worthless concoctions is one indication of the number of Victorian women seeking to control their reproductive lives.