Fannie Shead20s, blackwomen, 1920s, chicago, illinois, illegalunknownOn June 21, 1929, 25-year-old maid Fannie Williams Shead, a native of Huntsville, Alabama, died in Chicago from a criminal abortion performed that day by an unknown perpetrator. Interestingly, the coroner only recommended an arrest for “unintentional manslaughter,” not the usual homicide by abortion. I wonder if this might be due to the fact that unlike the other victims of Chicago abortionists whose cases I’ve documented, Fannie Shead was Black.
Oddly, the database lists a date a defendant was arrested — August 10 — but does not list a suspect.
Keep in mind that things that things we take for granted, like antibiotics and blood banks, were still in the future. For more about abortion in this era, see Abortion in the 1920s.
For more on pre-legalization abortion, see The Bad Old Days of Abortion
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