Carolyn Gardner and Birth Control
Corner of Flint and Essex Streets
Carolyn Gardner is remembered by many area residents as the former
director of the House of Seven Gables museum and settlement house
(see S1 and S2),
serving in that capacity from 1930 to 1934 and again from 1965 to
1978. But Carolyn was also a pioneer in the Massachusetts birth
control movement, and in 1936, she and others (with help from the
Birth Control League of Massachusetts) opened a clinic at this site
to serve women for whom pregnancy posed serious health risks. The
clinic’s referrals came from doctors, social service agencies,
and members of the clergy. At the time, birth control was still
illegal in Massachusetts, and on June 3, 1937, the Salem clinic
was raided and closed by local police. Gardner and other clinic
employees were arrested for advertising and distributing contraceptives.
In 1938, the case was heard by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial
Court, and it upheld the guilty verdicts handed down by a lower
court. Carolyn and her fellow defendants had to pay fines but escaped
going to jail. The case was front page news that year in Salem’s
local paper: “Common sense is outraged by a decision so out
of touch with the realities of the world today. It means that a
law is construed to interfere with a medical practice approved by
the American Medical Association. It means that a safeguard to the
health of women and children is considered illegal… it has
been said in other parts of the country that witchcraft days have
come again to Massachusetts!”62
Notes
62. Salem Evening News, May 27, 1938.
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