Page 81
“…mumbled something about barbarity.”
See “…old, indiscriminate bleeders…,” above. Sims spoke often about other doctors’ indiscriminate use of bleeding.
SIMS, J. Marion, (1885). The Story of my Life, ed. by H. Marion-Sims. D. Appleton & Co: New York, p. 149.
“…an implement that struck Anarcha…”
The similarity of fire tongs and older styles of obstetrical forceps is not difficult to discern.
“Eliza Westcott smoked a pipe…”
Narrartive of Caroline Farrow.
Library of Congress. (2018). Slave narratives: A folk history of slavery in the U.S., South Carolina Narratives, Vol. 2, p. 42.
Caroline Farrow
“…let it lay for twenty minutes…”
Many of the narratives from Kentucky came from unidentified sources.
Library of Congress. (2018). Slave narratives: A folk history of slavery in the U.S., Kentucky Narratives, Vol. 1, p. 109.
Unidentified
“…or even if it lived.”
Anarcha’s uncertainty here is an attempt to render an ambiguity in the extant records. Even today, upwards of 90% of cases of prolonged obstructed labor result in stillbirth. Sims, however, claims that Anarcha’s baby came away “easily” with forceps, though he is speaking relatively, and he does not specify whether the baby lived or died. It’s Westcott family lore that Anarcha gave birth to a healthy boy, though they also claim that Anarcha almost died during the procedure. As with Anarcha’s rape, I felt that it was best to leave the uncertainty in place, and there is no record of Anarcha caring for a child when Sims sees her subsequently and brings her to Montgomery.
“The Obstetric Vesicovaginal Fistula: Characteristics of 899 Patients from Jos, Nigeria,” L. Lewis Wall, Jonathan Karshima, Carolyn Kirschner, Steven D. Arrowsmith, American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Vol. 190, 2004, p. 1013.
SIMS, J. Marion, (1885). The Story of my Life, ed. by H. Marion-Sims. D. Appleton & Co: New York, p. 227.
I’m very grateful to Gerald Thompson, a descendant of the Westcott family, for having made his extensive genealogical materials about the family available to me. Thompson is in possession of a great trove of photos and documents, and has done extensive work to recreate the history of the family.
