SUMMARY: On December 22 or 23, 1909, 39-year-old Sadie died at Cook County Hospital in Chicago from complications of either a miscarriage or an illegal abortion.

“Sadie,” identified in the source document as “Mrs. D,” was 39 years old in November of 1909 when she either had a miscarriage or an illegal abortion.

Five weeks later, on December 21, she was admitted to Cook County Hospital. She was vomiting and obviously very ill. Her pulse was 108, her respirations 28, her temperature 100 degrees.

The next day her temperature had fallen to 97.6, and her pulse and respirations had increased to 132 and 30, respectively. For reasons the document doesn’t provide, she endured slightly over two hours of surgery during which surgeons removed both of her Fallopian tubes, drained her pelvic cavity, then curetted her uterus and packed it with alcohol gauze.

The surgery sent her into shock and she died 14 hours later, either on December 22 or December 23.

Chicago death records list a 39-year-old woman named Nora Dorgan who died on December 23, 1909. However, a death notice indicates that Nora died at home rather than in a hospital. I am thus unable to get a proper identity for “Sadie.”

Source: “A Study Of and Deductions From Fifty Fatal Cases of Puerperal Fever,” Dr. Herbert Marion Stowe, Surgery Gynecology and Obstetrics, 1912, Part 1 and Part 2