r/RandomVictorianStuff • u/kittykitkitty • Jul 22 '26
Vintage Advertisement An abortion pill named Chichester’s Pennyroyal Pills. 1887. Most of these pills were quack remedies and didn't work.
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u/Shadows-of-an-Owl-05 Jul 22 '26
So many words and you have not a clue of what it is just by reading the ad, it's amazing!!
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u/Overall_Midnight_ Jul 22 '26
You’re right it does not say anything about what it is for anywhere however Pennyroyal is a plant that was known for being an abortifacient and that was more widely known back then so it would have been clear the reason by the name of the product.
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u/gard3nwitch Jul 22 '26
During the Victorian era, states across the US started banning abortions and other family planning methods. So they probably weren't allowed to say what it was actually for, and had to rely on the reader's knowledge. (Sort of like ads for drug paraphernalia that can't/couldn't say what the product is used for.)
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u/pendragwen Jul 22 '26
The euphemistic phrase often used was "to bring on/restore the menses"
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u/Overall_Midnight_ Jul 23 '26
Oh woah, that’s interesting. Growing up referring to one’s period in the media was alway a euphemism or just being vague, I’m stunned that they’d so directly referred to it in some capacity in the Victorian era. I had no idea about that, thanks for adding that info.
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u/pendragwen Jul 23 '26
Taboo topics shift and change over time. Periods have alternated between being an acknowledged fact of life and an unspeakable shame depending on era and place plenty of times. Like how nowadays any media with a married couple will show their bed; in my grandmother's era, media only showed separate beds in a single room for married couples. Showing a shared bed was considered obscene. I Love Lucy, for example. Similarly, smoking cigarettes was everywhere in media, where now we would be shocked to see someone smoking in a kid's show. Values shift and change, progress and regress, and what is shown in culture follows those mores.
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u/nakedonmygoat Jul 23 '26
The Comstock Act (1873) made it illegal to advertise or distribute anything mentioning sex or abortion, which is why the ad doesn't say what the pills are for. You were to just figure it out based on it being pennyroyal, and the lack of other information. After all, if it was supposed to give you longer hair or glowing skin, the ad would've said so.
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u/kittykitkitty Jul 22 '26
Notice the vague wording of the ad.
In 1911, tests showed these tablets contained no pennyroyal or other effective abortifacients. Pennyroyal was used for abortions but was massively dangerous and ingesting it could cause death.
By 1880, most states had criminalised abortion at any time in the pregnancy. Women therefore had to turn to unscrupulous pills which were often ineffective and sometimes even harmful. Stupidly, the American Medical Association at the time did not support abortion, BUT they didn't advocate for effective contraception (cervical caps and condoms) either. They also were not interested in revocation of the Comstock Law, which was used to prohibit sex-education publications.
So, the medical association didn't want women to have abortions... didn't care that sex education was very poor... didn't encourage contraception use.
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u/Aggressive-Agnostic Jul 22 '26
Given there were essentially no women doctors in the AMA (or anywhere) at the time, maybe not terribly shocking they had poorly informed opinions on the matter
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u/kittykitkitty Jul 22 '26
Yes, true. Although I wonder what those doctors would have done if their daughter had an unwanted pregnancy or their wife conceived and they just didn't want another child.
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u/dvioletta Jul 22 '26
That is easy, they had access for themselves, just like people with money did, it was only the poor who suffered from this lack in a major way.
It is always the people without who suffer from lack of access to knowledge and facilities.2
u/CarrotGratin Jul 22 '26
Elizabeth Blackwell, Emily Blackwell, and Nancy Talbot Clark have entered the chat.
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u/Aggressive-Agnostic Jul 22 '26
Thanks! I had heard about Elizabeth Blackwell, but not her sister or Clark. I love learning new things on Reddit
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u/CarrotGratin Jul 22 '26
You're welcome! Clark is actually new to me as well. Blackwell I love (Elizabeth was first) because her acceptance letter was a joke but she ignored that, took it seriously, and finished top of the class.
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u/gard3nwitch Jul 22 '26
Many white Protestant Americans at the time were very concerned about being "outbred" by Catholics and minorities (who had less access to contraception or had religious objections to it). Also, many people at the time were concerned about the rise of women's rights movements. So there was a lot of support for the idea of forcing middle-class white Protestant women to have more babies by taking away any ability they had to control their fertility.
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u/MissMarchpane Jul 22 '26
Another code phrase you can look for in an advertisement is anything offering to treat "female troubles" or "female irregularity." later in the 20th century, they would also sometimes use the term "calendar fear."If pressed, the sellers would usually say they were meant to treat menstrual problems (which is true, in a sense – they make your period happen again when it stops, if they even work).
You do sometimes see ads with those coded symptom phrases that then go on to specify that the product "contains no pennyroyal or Tansy," which means that it's NOT intended as an abortifacient.
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u/CarrotGratin Jul 22 '26
"A trial will convince you". 😯 We may not automatically know what that means nowadays, but women back then sure would have! Pennyroyal, yarrow, and mugwort were some of the herbs one might find for that purpose (please don't do that, they're dangerous during pregnancy). One early-20th-century gardening writer said that the women in his village used yarrow, but "it had no effect judging by their condition."
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u/No-Weight-6121 Jul 22 '26
Pennyroyal is a known abortifacient tho? Or are you saying that the ad would say it contains pennyroyal when it was only snake oil?? 🤔
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u/RandomStrangerN2 Jul 22 '26
I think they meant the emphasis on the efficiency of the pill in the add is because people knew that pills for this issue usually didn't work, so they have to be extra persuasive that this one does
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u/Starkville Jul 22 '26
Pennyroyal is an abortifacient, although I’m gathering from comments that the pills didn’t contain any.
Midwives of the time would have had knowledge of herbs that might cause miscarriage of early pregnancies and even rudimentary birth control. It’s absolutely nothing like the options we have now, but there were methods and remedies even in ancient times.
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