The next day Ethel and Fania were both absent from the clinic. The waiting room was filled almost to suffocation when the door opened and the woman who had been described to me came in.
“I’m a police officer. You’re under arrest.”
The doors were locked and this Mrs. Margaret Whitehurst and other plain-clothes members of the vice squad—used to raiding gambling dens and houses of assignation—began to demand names and addresses of the women, seeing them with babies, broken, old, worried, harrowed, yet treating them as though they were inmates of a brothel. Always fearful in the presence of the police, some began to cry aloud and the children on their laps screamed too. For a few moments it was like a panic, until I was able to assure them that only I was under arrest; nothing was going to happen to them, and they could return home if they were quiet. After half an hour I finally persuaded the policemen to let these frightened women go.
All of our four hundred and sixty-four case histories were confiscated, and the table and demonstration supplies were carried off through the patient line outside. The more timid had left, but many had stayed. This was a region where a crowd could be collected by no more urgent gesture than a tilt of the head skyward. Newspaper men with their cameras had joined the throng and the street was packed. Masses of people spilled out over the sidewalk on to the pavement, milling excitedly.
The patrol wagon came rattling up to our door. I had a certain respect for uniformed policemen—you knew what they were about—but none whatsoever for the vice squad. I was white hot with indignation over their unspeakable attitude towards the clinic mothers and stated I preferred to walk the mile to the court rather than sit with them. Their feelings were quite hurt. “Why, we didn’t do anything to you, Mrs. Sanger,” they protested. Nevertheless I marched ahead, they following behind.
A reporter from the _Brooklyn Eagle_ fell into step beside me and before we had gone far suggested, “Now I’ll fix it up with the police that you make a getaway, and when we reach that corner you run. I’ll stop and talk to them while you skip around the block and get to the station first.” It was fantastic for anyone so to misconstrue what I was doing as to imagine I would run around the block for a publicity stunt.