Mary Putnam1900s, chicago, illinois, illegaldoctorOn March 16, 1905, 27-year-old seamstress Miss Mary Putnam died at Chicago’s Monroe Street Hospital from infection caused by an abortion. May had been brought to the hospital two days earlier, in critical condition, and the police were notified.

The Homicide in Chicago Interactive Database seems to have some facts a bit bungled, since it gives the victim’s name as Mary and said that she had died at the scene of the crime — which is highly unlikely, because the party identified, “Dr. Sucy alias Louise Hagenow” is actually Dr. Lucy Hagenow, who did her abortions on her own premises and even had a preferred undertaker to haul away the bodies.

Hagenow and a man identified as F. E. MacCordy were arrested by the Coroner’s Jury on March 16. MacCordy was president of the MacCordy cigar Company and lived in the same building with Mary. He was about 40 years old.

Hagenow, who had already been implicated of the abortion deaths of Louise Derchow (August, 1887), Annie Dorris (June, 1888), Abbia Richards (June, 1888), and Emma Dep (August, 1888) in San Francisco, would go on to be linked to over a dozen Chicago abortion deaths:

• January, 1891: Minnie Deering
• September, 1892: Sophia Kuhn
• December, 1892: Emily Anderson
• July, 1896: Hannah Carlson
• September, 1899: Marie Hecht
• March, 1906: Lola Madison
• May, 1907: Annie Horvatich
• January, 1925: Jean Cohen
• February, 1925: Nina H. Pierce
• July, 1925: Lottie Lowy
• September, 1925: Elizabeth Welter
• December, 1925: Bridget Masterson
• November, 1926: Mary Moorehead

Hagenow was typical of criminal abortionists in that she was a physician.

During the first two thirds of the 20th Century, while abortion was still illegal, there was a massive drop in maternal mortality, including mortality from abortion. Most researches attribute this plunge to improvements in public health and hygiene, the development of blood transfusion techniques, and the introduction of antibiotics. Learn more here.

external image MaternalMortality.gif

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

Sources:

• Homicide in Chicago Interactive Database
• death certificate
• “Man and Woman are Held for Causing Girl’s Death,” Chicago Tribune, Mar. 17, 1905

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