Page 217

“He chose May 18…”

SIMS, J. Marion, (1885). The Story of my Life, ed. by H. Marion-Sims. D. Appleton & Co: New York, p. 281.

“…lecture hall of the Stuyvesant Institute…”

“…asked for paper and ink…”

SIMS, J. Marion, (1885). The Story of my Life, ed. by H. Marion-Sims. D. Appleton & Co: New York, p. 281.

“…interest in a partnership?”

This comes from a joint interview done with Sims and Henri Stuart many years after the incident described. By then, Sims had entered into a feud with his colleagues at Woman’s Hospital. Notably, Sims’s autobiography skips over completely the compensation Stuart requested for his services. As will be documented later, I am supposing that Stuart had darker motives in offering his assistance to Sims—regardless, it was Sims who first proposed that Stuart’s assistance would be a business transaction.

“Editorial Interview with Dr. J. Marion Sims: A Full Exposition of the Points in the Controversy between Drs. Peaslee, Emmet, and Thomas, and Dr. Sims,” The St. Louis Clinical Record, Vol. 4, No. 6, September 1877, p. 171.

“…two beds in Sims’s hospital…”

Sims’s biographer, Seale Harris, provided “deserving,” without citation. Harris’s book is not well-sourced, and is not particularly credible, but Harris did have access to sources that have since disappeared.

“Editorial Interview with Dr. J. Marion Sims: A Full Exposition of the Points in the Controversy between Drs. Peaslee, Emmet, and Thomas, and Dr. Sims,” The St. Louis Clinical Record, Vol. 4, No. 6, September 1877, p. 171.

Harris, S. (1950). Woman's surgeon: The life story of J. Marion Sims. New York: Macmillan, p. 113.

“I shall never ask anything of you…”

“Editorial Interview with Dr. J. Marion Sims: A Full Exposition of the Points in the Controversy between Drs. Peaslee, Emmet, and Thomas, and Dr. Sims,” The St. Louis Clinical Record, Vol. 4, No. 6, September 1877, p. 171.

“…arrived at Sims’s home…”

SIMS, J. Marion, (1885). The Story of my Life, ed. by H. Marion-Sims. D. Appleton & Co: New York, pp. 281-82.

“…the city’s great media men…”

SIMS, J. Marion, (1885). The Story of my Life, ed. by H. Marion-Sims. D. Appleton & Co: New York, p. 283.

“…never to speak of it again.”

See “…interest in a partnership?” above.

Although Stuart would later characterize this portion of their agreement in benign terms, he left the exact nature of his request quite vague. It was true that wealthy women sponsored beds at Woman’s Hospital that were reserved for friends or acquaintances who might need them, but I can think of no truly altruistic reason why a man like Stuart would need beds for women. Stuart is a very difficult figure to pin down, but he appears to have been something of a “fixer” for wealthy and influential men, and the conclusion that he would be assisting them in defusing sexual imbroglios is pretty much unavoidable. That Sims failed to mention it in his autobiography only adds evidence to this theory.

“…because it had been advertised?”

Sims’s complaints about advertising were consistent throughout his life. I suspect that he was more in league with Stuart’s plan to advertise his lecture than he lets on in his autobiography, which goes to great pains to suggest that the whole scheme was Stuart’s idea.

SIMS, J. Marion, (1885). The Story of my Life, ed. by H. Marion-Sims. D. Appleton & Co: New York, p. 278.