1906 abortion landed Bangor doctor in prison

“PITIFUL FATE OF A POOR COUNTRY GIRL,” announced the main headline on Page 1 of the Bangor Daily News on March 2, 1906. “Maud Taggett of Masardis the Victim of Alleged Criminal Malpractice – Inquest In Progress.”

The story’s opening paragraph summarized the tragic tale in veiled language expressing sufficient moral indignation while not offending the era’s delicate sensibilities: “If Arthur E. Rosie of Smyrna and Maud B. Taggett of Masardis had loved discreetly as well as fondly they might now be happily married; but they lapsed from the path of virtue, and behold the sad results – the maiden cold in death in a Bangor undertaker’s shop, and her lover a wretched prisoner half crazed with grief in the police station.”

Maud Taggett had died of septic peritonitis early on March 1 a few days after an abortion performed by Dr. William H.H. Briggs, a well-known Bangor physician. Her lover was being kept at the police station as an important witness at the inquest. So was Mrs. Belle M. Wesley, a woman of suspicious background in whose Main Street apartment Taggett had died. Dr. Brigg’s trial for murder, as unusual as it was sensational, opens a door for modern readers on how abortions were conducted before being legalized by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Maud B. Taggett, a graduate of the Bangor Business College, had been working at a boardinghouse connected to a spool mill in Lake View. Arthur E. Rosie, was a store clerk and assistant postmaster in the tiny Piscataquis County town. They had planned to be married.

When Taggett became pregnant, the couple agreed she would seek advice from physicians. If there was any danger, however, Rosie said he had urged her to go to New Brunswick, where no publication of intentions was required, and get married. Maud had protested that she’d rather die than get married in such a condition.

Briggs, a graduate of Dartmouth Medical College, had been practicing in Bangor for seven years. Taggett went to his Main Street office on Saturday, Feb. 24. On the same day she consulted a clairvoyant and “magnetic healer” on Harlow Street, giving us some indication of her state of mind. At Briggs’ office that afternoon she was introduced to Belle Wesley, who rented three rooms nearby at 130 Main St. Feigning innocence, Wesley testified in court that Briggs lied to her, saying only that the girl had an accident and needed a place to stay.

Letters written by Taggett to Rosie before her death and shown to a reporter by the county attorney tell a different story. Portions were printed in full or paraphrased in the Bangor Daily News on March 31: “‘Yesterday afternoon I went to the doctor and had the operation performed.’ Continuing, the letter relates in detail how, the operation over, the physician sent for a nurse (Mrs. Wesley) who conducted her to the rooms in Main Street. The Wesley establishment, says the letter, was in reality a ‘lying-in hospital,’ disguised somewhat by a legitimate business in dressmaking conducted ‘on the side.’ Liquor was also sold – in what quantity is not stated. Some facts which would not look well in print are added about Mrs. Wesley.” Briggs had asked $300 for his services.

Taggett felt better the next day, but that night she began suffering labor pains. Briggs came to the apartment and delivered a dead baby. Mrs. Wesley, who was described in newspaper accounts as clever, articulate and stylishly dressed, testified in court that she saw Briggs place the body in a folded section of a newspaper and put it in a burning wood stove. The impact of this testimony was so strong that “many women who had come to the trial through sheer love of excitement, had the grace to hide for a few moments their faces in their hands.”

Briggs offered too many defenses complained Assistant Attorney General Philbrook in his closing arguments: “[Dr. Briggs] has practically four lines of defense – the alibi [that he was treating other patients on the Saturday afternoon he was supposed to have performed a procedure on Taggett], the contention that the miscarriage may have been natural, the cunning suggestion that it may have been caused by a physician in Houlton and the cowardly suggestion it may have been done by the girl herself. Usually one defense is enough.”

The all-male jury, apparently lost in this web of confusion, found Briggs guilty of manslaughter instead of murder. The details of the abortion remained obscure. The dead woman’s letters were never introduced as evidence or released in their entirety for publication. Justice Powers sentenced Briggs to three years of hard labor at the Maine State Prison. Briggs was taken by train to Thomaston on Sept. 3 manacled with an assortment of killers, burglars and thugs.

Two years later, a scathing article published in “Transactions of the Maine Medical Association” called attention to the large number of criminal abortions in Maine. Dr. Frank H. Jackson of Houlton wrote, “To our disgrace, the men who do the most of the abortions in this state are not outcasts from their profession. Some of them are members of this state society and its county branches; as a shield for their rottenness they are sometimes seemingly earnest workers in our church and social life; they are often pointed out as honest, hard-working physicians, but some of them will kill a baby in its mother’s womb with as little compassion as the butcher in the abattoir performs his daily work on the killing floor.”

Then, in what was probably a reference to the Briggs case, Jackson wrote, “With all due respect to the judiciary of the State of Maine, I ask why a man who has destroyed two human beings should receive only three years in our State Prison, while a tramp who stole a few dollars should get almost five.”

Wayne E. Reilly can be reached at wreilly@bangordailynews.net.