by Janet Benton
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The maternity home that takes in Lilli is also based on a real institution—the State Hospital for Women and Infants. It opened in 1873 at its first home, at 1718 Filbert Street, through the efforts of doctors and residents who’d worked at Blockley and wanted to offer wronged women and their newborns an alternative to that site of disease and roughness. It had a Ladies’ Committee, and its staff included a matron and, soon, a woman doctor. While by 1882 at least one other such institution had opened (contrary to the fictional Anne Pierce’s claim of hers being the only one), I chose this place.
As I learned through records preserved at the archives of Pennsylvania Hospital, for its first sixteen years the refuge was desperately short of funds. Despite the hopeful inclusion of “State” in its name and its board’s stirring annual appeals, it received no state funding until 1889. At the time when I’ve imagined Lilli there, it could house only an average of twelve women at once, couldn’t shelter nursing mothers and infants long enough to give the infants a strong start, and had to turn most applicants away.
To read the records of this institution is to be struck by the difficulty of being a pregnant and abandoned woman in the late nineteenth century and of being in the position of trying to help her in a climate of hate. The primary factor that draws one to comprehend the difficulty—that paints a world startling and compelling—is that the charity had one or more impassioned writers at its helm. In annual reports of the 1880s, the condition of the arriving inmates is described as “depressed by the disgrace attaching to their situation; anxious through fear that their fall should become known to their friends; distressed by their inability to account satisfactorily for their enforced absence from home or from their places of labor; injured by tight lacing—done with a view of hiding their shame; suffering from attempts to produce abortion; unhappy in view of the necessity of separation from their children; and not infrequently, from exposure and insufficiency of food, on the verge of serious illness.”
An 1878 report noted, “No other class of offenders has…been so left outside the pale of humanitarian and Christian helpfulness….[E]xcept in the institution whose interests are represented by this board, no organized effort has been made, no hand has been outstretched, to save those who, but for one false step, were guiltless of offense.”
If only it were possible to send gratitude into the past for the kind intentions of those who ran this charity. Clearly this good place would be Lilli’s refuge.
Starting in the first annual report, in 1874, the writers refer to much “misapprehension” and prejudice against the institution by the public and the press. Once, the hospital had to be closed for a short while, and no other hospital in the city would take in the young women. The hospital was accused of caring for the “deliberately vicious” and was lambasted in the papers, including a Philadelphia newspaper called The Day. A scene in the novel—when Anne Pierce gathers the inmates to discuss a cruel article—was inspired by this. Anne’s reply to the newspaper, which Lilli quotes, contains several lines modeled on lines in the annual reports.
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Historians and novelists have in common a love of reaching for the sinuous shapes that poke from the debris of history and of pulling them into sight. Though this novel is an imagined story that hangs itself on rudiments of history, innumerable details still had to be obtained—from city trash-collection practices to women’s underwear to what words were in use; from the supervision of wet nurses’ diets to hackney-carriage prices; from medicinal herbs to how toast could be made; from vagrancy laws and their irregular enforcement to malnourished infants and their recovery—and on and on, seemingly ad infinitum.
My larger aim was to create belief in lives that could have been lived and to bring the meaning of their struggles into the light of our day. I wanted to give voice to a deserted woman in 1883 who asserts the value of her bond with her infant—and to show how obstacles of prejudice and inequality littered their way.
The difficult work of mothers has long been drastically under-recognized. I wanted to tell a story in which women’s strength was crucial to the world’s surviving and thriving—as it truly is and always has been.
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* Kenelm Winslow, The Home Medical Library, vol. III (New York: The Review of Reviews Company, 1908), pp. 119–20.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book is partly an homage to the city of Philadelphia, which enchants me with how visibly its past continues in its present, as well as by how humbly it contains this richness. I send much appreciation to the people who preserve and interpret this past.
I consulted many people and resources and explored many places while writing this novel. Any errors, elisions, or alterations are my own. I send special thanks to the following people and institutions.
To Janet Golden, whose book A Social History of Wet Nursing in America: From Breast to Bottle (1996) was vital to my understanding of urban wet nursing and more in the nineteenth century; her excellent references made it easy to choose further resources.
To Stacey Peeples at the Pennsylvania Hospital Archives, who warmly granted access to the invaluable records of the State Hospital for Women and Infants and other materials.
To Pendle Hill in Wallingford, Pennsylvania, where I took retreats, spoke with Friends, attended Meeting for Worship, and found print resources. Pendle Hill’s publications include many gems I relied on, such as Howard H. Brinton’s Quaker Journals: Varieties of Religious Experience Among Friends (1972).
To Anne D. and Stephen Burt, my aunt and uncle by marriage, who shared their collection of spiritual works by Friends and who live gently as environmentalists and lovers of peace.
To Sam Katz, who gave me the opportunity to learn documentary screenwriting and delve further into Philadelphia history.
To V. Chapman-Smith, Emma Lapsansky-Werner, Cynthia Little, Marion Roydhouse, and Anna Coxe Toogood. The hours I passed discussing women’s history with these scholars were joyous.
To Ann Fessler, whose book The Girls Who Went Away: The Hidden History of Women Who Surrendered Children for Adoption in the Decades Before Roe v. Wade (2006) provides dramatic instances of the lifelong impacts of early pregnancy and of giving up a baby.
To those who sustain the area resources that were of benefit to this book, including the sites of Historic Germantown, the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, the Haverford College Libraries Quaker and Special Collections, the Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia, and the Germantown Historical Society.
To Alex Bartlett, Sid Cook, Kristina Haugland, Emma Lapsansky-Werner, Jonathan Maberry, Irv Miller, David Odell, Steven Peitzman, Lisa Pergolizzi-Brock, Suzanne Prigohzy, Lynn Rosen, Susan Gregory Thomas, Jacqueline Wolf, and Simone Zelitch for your time and guidance.
To Mary Bailey, Arnold Benton, Suzanne Benton, Jane Carroll, Stephen Frank, Lisa Kopel, Jennifer Lowman, Frances Nadel, Carol O’Donoghue, Suzanne Rotondo, Ilene Raymond Rush, Deborah Shaw, and David Updike for your valuable responses and support.
To Anne Dubuisson, Natasha Kassell, and the Spinners (Susan Martel, Ellen Murphey, and Lori Weinrott) for your sustaining input and motivating deadlines.
To the hundreds of writing students and clients who’ve entrusted me with your works in progress and taught me much about writing and life, and to my former teacher Valerie Martin, whose keen mind and example I’ve treasured.
To my wise and kind agent and editors, Jane von Mehren, Nan Talese, and Ronit Wagman, for loving Lilli’s voice from the first sentence to the last and for giving this book a caring home.
To Carolyn Williams and Daniel Meyer, helpful, smart, and gracious; Pei Loi Koay, book designer; and Michael J. Windsor, book-jacket genie, as well as the many others at Doubleday and Penguin Random House who’ve moved this book into the world, including Todd Doughty, Victoria Chow, and Lauren Weber.
To Dori Ostermiller, gifted writer, for more than two decades of joyful and life-sustaining friend
ship, and to all my life-sustaining friends and family, whom I dearly love.
To my father, Arnold Benton, for your honesty and caring, and for teaching me that every phenomenon can be known from many points of view.
To my mother, Suzanne Benton, for raising and sustaining me in your loving and creative spirit, and for teaching me that one’s understanding of history depends entirely on where one looks.
To my husband, David, and our daughter, Dariel: Living with you and loving you are my greatest pleasures and sources of growth. My home is where you are.
Though writers work alone, we sit as if shoulder to shoulder with all who value stories, and aim our efforts toward those who might find value in them.
In other words, to you, reader.
A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Janet Benton’s work has appeared in The New York Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Glimmer Train, and many other publications. She has cowritten and edited historical documentaries for television. She holds a B.A. in religious studies from Oberlin College and an M.F.A. in creative writing from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and for decades she has been an editor, taught writing, and helped individuals and organizations craft their stories. She lives in Philadelphia with her husband and daughter. Lilli de Jong is her first novel. Visit her at www.janetbentonauthor.com.
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