The bloody history of childbirth is riddled with death and despair. It's a burden that was carried almost entirely by women, behind closed doors, something men took no part in. And, because of that, we know very little about it today. What we do know is that it was an extremely dangerous affair. Mortality was so high, many women wrote a will as soon as they found out they were pregnant. The 18th century saw the beginning of the "medicalization" of childbirth when inexperienced forcep bearing male doctors got involved and began a crusade to put a stop to midwifery. But, ironically, childbirth didn't get any safer after that. It actually got deadlier, at first.

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Sources:

• Birth Injury Help Center "The History of Childbirth"
• Designing Motherhood "Birthing Furniture: An Illustrated History"
• What to Expect "500 Years of Childbirth History in Under 2 Minutes"
• Oregon Health and Science University "A Brief History of Midwifery in America"
• The Guardian "I enjoyed researching the bloody history of childbirth - then I had a baby"
• World Health Organization "Maternal Mortality"
• Slate "The Disturbing, Shameful History of Childbirth Deaths"
• Statistica "Percentage of physicians in select specialties in the U.S. who were women as of 2023"
  
  
  

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On March 25th, 1911, a fire erupted on the 8th floor of the Asch building in New York City. The 8th, 9th, and 10th floors of this building housed the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory which employed around 500 people, mostly young immigrant women, to sew women's blouses under sweatshop conditions. The owners, Max Blanck and Isaac Harris, believed the building to be fireproof and refused to take any fire safety measures. They also locked the exit doors, fearful that the women would steal from them if allowed to leave before their bags could be searched. Due to this negligence, 123 women and 23 men died, burned alive, trapped in locked stairwells or waiting for the only elevator. Many of the victims were forced to jump from 8th and 9th floor windows, their broken bodies littering the sidewalk below. This horrifying tragedy was a wakeup call for labor conditions in the US, leading to the passing of more than 30 health and safety laws. But what of Blanck and Harris? Were they punished? Did they learn their lesson? Of course not.

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Sources:

• Cornell University website about the Triangle Factory Fire
• History.com "Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire"
• US Department of Labor "History of Labor Day"
• OSHA "The worse day I ever saw"
• The New York Times, March 26, 1911 "141 Men and Girls Die in Factory Fire"
• Encyclopedia Britannica "Triangle shirtwaist factory fire"

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Michael Rockefeller was the great grandson of John D. Rockefeller, the founder of Standard Oil and the richest man in the world. He was also the son of Nelson Rockefeller, New York governor, Vice President of the United States, and a well known art collector. Michael had big shoes to fill. To do that, he followed in his father's art collecting footsteps, traveling to the Asmat region on the west coast of New Guinea to collect wood carvings for his father's Museum of Primitive Art in Manhattan. The Asmat people were hunter gatherers living in the jungle with almost no western contact. They led a very different life than Michael, practiced head hunting and cannibalism. Michael admired the Asmat, their culture, their art. But he never truly understood them. He couldn't. So when his sailboat capsized near the village of Otsjanep and he disappeared attempting to swim to shore, never to be seen again, his family assumed he had drowned. But did Michael Rockefeller really drown? Or was his fate far more violent? Let's fix that.

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Sources:

• "Savage Harvest: A Tale of Cannibals, Colonialism, and Michael Rockefeller's Tragic Quest for Primitive Art" by Carl Hoffman
• Smithsonian Magazine "What Really Happened to Michael Rockefeller"
• The Met Museum "Bis Pole"
• Rockefeller Archive Center "John D. Rockefeller"
• PBS American Experience "Biography: Nelson A. Rockefeller"
• NPR Author Interviews "Cannibals and Colonialism: Solving the Mystery of Michael Rockefeller"

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