Hester Vaughn, or Vaughan,[1] was a domestic servant in Philadelphia who was arrested in 1868 on a charge of killing her newborn infant, and was sentenced to hang after being convicted of infanticide.
In a nod to the issue of women's suffrage, the editorial also mentioned that Vaughn had been wronged by "the legislature that enacted the law" under which she was tried, for as a woman, she necessarily had no "vote or voice" in such matters.
"[5] The Working Women's Association (WWA), an organization that had been formed in the offices of The Revolution, made Vaughn's case its first public cause, with a goal of obtaining her pardon from Pennsylvania governor John W. Geary.
In November, 1868, Anna Dickinson, a well-known orator on the subject of women's rights, gave a lecture for the WWA at the Cooper Institute in New York City, in which she "described the girl's terrible wrongs and sufferings," and declared her support.
Among other symptoms, this had included temporary blindness, leading them to argue that if the infant had indeed been born living - which was unclear, as it has never been examined - Vaughn may have inadvertently smothered it, as she was alone during and after the birth and could not see.
"[7] Other resolutions were broader in scope, calling for women to serve on juries and to have a voice in making laws and electing public officials, and for the end to the death penalty.
For example, according to the New York Evening Telegram, none of the speakers at the WWA's meeting "expressed the slightest sympathy with the thousands of poor little infants who are sacrificed to this puerperal mania or something else every month of the year... Hester Vaughn's murdered child is surely entitled to some pity as well.
"[10] The Nation said that Vaughn's conviction was "denounced with as much fury as if the woman's story of bigamy, and the rape which the victim refuses to prove, made it in some mysterious way the duty of the Governor to treat the infanticide as really a blameless act".
In 1876, Stanton and Anthony's "Declaration of Rights of the Women of the United States" did reference infanticide, stating that women's lack of rights and representation on juries resulted in their unfair treatment within the legal system: "Young girls have been arraigned in our courts for the crime of infanticide; tried, convicted, hung - victims, perchance, of judge, jurors, advocates, while no woman's voice could be heard in their defence.
"[14] Nevertheless, according to historian Sarah Barringer Gordon, suffragists faced a damaging public backlash for their support of a woman convicted of infanticide, and their work on Vaughn's behalf ultimately proved detrimental to their credibility.