Hester Vaughn

Hester Vaughn (also spelled Hester Vaughan) was an English-born domestic servant whose 1868 conviction for infanticide became a prominent cause for the early American women's rights movement. Her case attracted the attention of Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who campaigned for her release and used the case to draw attention to women's legal, social and economic disadvantages.

Vaughn was an impoverished immigrant working as a domestic servant in Philadelphia. In 1868 she became pregnant while unmarried. After giving birth she was accused of killing the child. The prosecution alleged that injuries to the infant's skull indicated deliberate violence. Vaughn maintained that the child's death was accidental, and her defence argued that the physical and psychological effects of a difficult childbirth could have impaired her judgment.

In July 1868, Vaughn was convicted of first-degree murder sentenced to death by hanging. The judge reportedly stated that an example needed to be made because infanticide had become increasingly common. Her case subsequently came to the attention of women's-rights activists, who regarded the proceedings as an example of the vulnerability of poor women under contemporary law.

Anthony and Stanton became particularly prominent advocates for Vaughn. Their newspaper, The Revolution, published a series of articles and editorials attacking the conviction and arguing that Vaughn had not received a fair trial. They emphasized her poverty, isolation and vulnerability, while questioning whether the infant's death had actually been intentional. Stanton portrayed Vaughn's predicament as a product of a society and legal system in which women had little political or legal power.

The campaign was also taken up by the Working Women's Association, an organization established in connection with The Revolution. In December 1868, the association held a major public meeting at Cooper Institute in New York City. Anthony introduced resolutions calling either for a new trial or for Vaughn's unconditional pardon, arguing that the conviction rested on insufficient evidence and an inadequate defence. The resolutions also connected Vaughn's case with broader demands for women to serve on juries and to have a voice in making the laws under which they were judged. Stanton addressed the meeting and similarly linked Vaughn's treatment to the denial of women's political and legal rights.

The campaign attracted considerable controversy. Critics accused the women's-rights activists of excusing infanticide and of using Vaughn's case primarily as a vehicle for advocating female suffrage and women's participation in juries. The activists, however, presented Vaughn as an example of how poverty, sexual exploitation, gender inequality and the absence of meaningful legal protections could place working women in desperate circumstances.

Pennsylvania Governor John W. Geary eventually pardoned Vaughn, sparing her from execution. She was subsequently deported to England. The extent to which Anthony and Stanton's campaign directly influenced Geary's decision is uncertain, although the campaign unquestionably helped make Vaughn's case a prominent national women's-rights cause.

Vaughn subsequently disappeared from public prominence, and relatively little is known about her later life. Her case nevertheless became an important episode in the history of nineteenth-century American feminism, illustrating how Anthony and Stanton increasingly connected women's suffrage with broader questions of criminal justice, sexual exploitation, poverty and women's unequal treatment under the law.

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