User:Marialucas26/sandbox

Pregnancy before or outside of marriage in 1850 was socially unacceptable. If one were to be pregnant and not married, it was expected that the couple would marry before having said child. By November of 1849, Berengera Caswell became aware that she may be pregnant. "By November, she may have realized a slight gain in weight as her body changed shape, and two months after leaving Manchester, perhaps she recalled she had missed two, maybe three, menstrual periods." A few months prior, in the summer of 1849 was when Berengera began seeing William Long. Berengera left Salem and headed for Maine, where William worked. She told him privately of her suspected pregnancy and they both decided that marriage was not the solution for them, they moved toward the option of abortion. Abortion in the 19th century was legal and considered a health issue, as long as it was performed before the child moved in the womb, which they called "quickening", this happened at around 16-18 weeks. According to history.com, one in every five women had previously had an abortion in the 19th century. Berengera had no connections to women who knew where to get an abortion, so she turned to William for help. As a guy in the early 1840s, William did not know where to get an abortion done, so he turned to his boss Mr.Blake. And he found Dr. Smith, he was known as a botanic physician. Smith gave Berengera the alias name, Mary Bean. Berengera had moved into Smith's house while he was trying to terminate the pregnancy. Berengera must have thought she wouldn't stay long at the Smith's house, as she had left her trunks full of her stuff at the boarding house, which she was staying in before she moved into the Smith's residence. She had worked in Smith's house while waiting for the pregnancy to be terminated, "she sewed, did light house work, and sold milk from Smith's dairy cow." During her stay at the Smith's, she had tried substances made from "extracts from the juniper bush,which he chopped up, mixed with water, and gave to her to drink" Berengera took the extracts at the end of November and again early in December. But she did not abort, her period never returned. At this point Berengera must have known she was pregnant, as it was a month after she had left Salem.

On December 15, 1849 Berengera Caswell would decide to do something that would change her life path forever. On the 15th of December she had consented to Dr. Smith taking more drastic and dangerous measures to terminate the pregnancy. Berengera had been fifteen to eighteen weeks pregnant at the time of the abortion. (WARNING: Graphic content) "using a wire instrument, eight inches in length, with a hook on the end, smith performed an abortion" Smith inserted the instrument into Berengera's vagina and into her womb, at that time her uterus produced painful and intense contractions, her body was resisting the foreign object Smith was using. At the time of the abortion there was not anesthesia, antibiotics, antiseptics, or analgesics; so Berengera felt all the pain. Even if Smith wanted to help her, he couldn't, and he instead just watched her suffer. Smith's plan was to puncture the amniotic sack and scrape loose her pregnancy. Berengera ended up aborting during, but Smith created another problem. He had pierced her uterus, damaging the organs around the uterus and leaving a quarter inchin diameter and four inches long gash, the cut had quickly became infected. "In intense pain from the procedure itself, her mangled organs and the spreading infection with its fetid, metallic smell, Caswell languished for a week, beset by fevers and chills" Smith had little to nothing to offer her for her pain, as there was not the needed medicine back then. Some say Smith did not realize how bad the internal damage, but if he did there was no way for him to repair or help it in anyway. "Late on Saturday evening, a week after the abortion, James and Sarah Smith retired for the night, fully clothed, in a nearby parlor; they knew Berengera's life was coming to an end. Berengera lay alone in the front room" Berengera would never be able to go back and pick up her trunk at Mrs. Sarah Mean's Boardinghouse in Biddeford, where she was staying prior to staying at the Smith's. Berengera would never be seen again sewing or selling milk, as she died, alone, on December 22, 1849. William Long went to visit Berengera just like he did every Sunday but this time he was too late. Smith told Long that she had died from typhoid, which was clearly not the case. Smith approached Long again in January and asked him for more money and for Berengera's trunks she had left at the boarding house, Long was not interested in retrieving his dead girlfriends belongings and didn't have anymore money so Smith angrily told Long that Berengera did not die from typhoid but had actually "died in childbirth and that she had delivered a son as big as Smith's fist." All of this was brought up later during the trail and used against Smith.