April 26, 1926: Second Death Attributed to Chicago Nurse

On April 26, 1926, Mrs. Hazel Fern Strecker, age 26, died at West Suburban Hospital in Oak Park, Illinois from an abortion performed in Chicago.

The coroner fingered the person responsible for Fern's death as a 55-year-old nurse named Elizabeth Schade, who, like many doctors and midwives, was operating an illegal abortion business at a Chicago location. Schade had already killed Helen Skoza in a 1917 abortion.

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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Source:

• Homicide in Chicago Interactive