Florence Schnoor

Florence Schnoor20s, 1940s, newyork, illegalunknown, quackeryAt around 4:00 p.m. on February 14, 1942, socialite Florence Nimick Schnoor, age 24, died at St. Joseph’s Hospital in New York of what the coroner called a “brutal and inept” illegal abortion.

Florence, grand-niece of Andrew Carnegie and heiress to a Pittsburgh steel fortune, had eloped with Richard H. Schnoor, sergeant-at-arms of the New York State Assembly, one week earlier. The couple had met the previous September at “a fashionable Greenwich tavern.” After their elopement, they’d moved into Florence’s rooms at The Maples.

Florence, described as “attractive blond-haired and popular member of the Greenwich, Conn., younger social set,” was the daughter of Alexander Kennedy Nimick Jr. Florences’s mother, Beatrice Arnold Nimick, was Alex’s second wife, and died when Florence was seven years old. She had a sister, Beatrice, and a half-brother, Coleman, from her father’s first marriage.

Her husband reported that he had taken her to White Plains so she could catch a train to New York for a day’s shopping. Later that morning, she called and asked him to pick her up at the station. He found her obviously ill and asking for a doctor. He took her straight to the hospital, where she died three hours later.

Doctors reported that Florence refused to discuss her case at all, much less implicate the abortionist, despite pleas from her husband.

New York Times headlines
Investigators contacted all 200 people whose names were in Florence’s address book, but were unable to gain any clues as to who performed the fatal abortion. All they were able to piece together is that Florence evidently paid $40 for the abortion, since her husband reported that she had left for New York with $50 in her purse and there had been $3 in her purse when she was hospitalized..

Florence’s husband was not implicated in her death; police believed that he had not even known Florence was pregnant.

During the 1940s, while abortion was still illegal, there was a massive drop in maternal mortality from abortion. The death toll fell from 1,407 in 1940, to 744 in 1945, to 263 in 1950. Most researches attribute this plunge to the development of blood transfusion techniques and the introduction of antibiotics. Learn more here.
external image Abortion+Deaths+Since+1940.jpg

For more on pre-legalization abortion, see The Bad Old Days of Abortion

Sources:

“Police Inquiry on in Heiress Death,” New York Times, Feb. 14, 1942
“Probe Death of Bride,” Oswego Palladium-Times, Feb. 14, 1942
“Police Probing Bride’s Death in Yonkers Hospital,” Troy NY Times Record, Feb. 14, 1942
“Death of Bride, Grand-Niece of Carnegie, Probed,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, Feb. 15, 1942
“Steel Heiress, Bride of Week, Abortion Victim,” Chicago Tribune, Feb. 15, 1942
“Schnoor Case Addresses Fail,” Mount Vernon, NY Daily Argus, Feb. 17, 1942

FlorenceSchnoorChiTribFeb15 1942.png

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Florence Schnoor