On October 15, 1926, 23-year-old homemaker Ethel Horner, a Chicago native, died at Chicago’s Jackson Park Hospital from an abortion performed earlier that day.
Theresa Feltz, a mother of five, admitted that she had taken Ethel to the Chicago office of 55-year-old Dr. Albert Peacock of 1442 East 55th Street, who was arrested the following day. On November 15, 1926, he was indicted for felony murder.
Peacock, who told police, “I’m too old to go through with a trial,” when they arrested him, admitted to the abortion but insisted that it had been medically necessary. He was kept under close watch after making remarks indicating that he might kill himself.
Ethel’s husband, Robert Horner, said that he’d been unaware that his wife was arranging an abortion.
I've been unable to learn anything of the outcome of the case. However, Peacock shows up in the 1930 federal census as living in Chicago with his wife, two of his grown stepchildren, a son-in-law, and two grandchildren. This would indicate that if he was prosecuted, he was not convicted.
Ethel’s abortion was typical of criminal abortions in that it was performed by a doctor.
Watch Was the Deadly Abortion Legal? on YouTube.
Sources:
- Homicide in Chicago Interactive Database
- “Physician Held in Death of Woman After Operation,” Chicago Daily Tribune, October 17, 1926
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