On January 15, 1924, Klinetop was indicted by a grand jury for felony murder in Lydia's death. Back in 1912, he had been identified by a coroner's jury as the doctor responsible for the abortion death of Minnie Miller.
Lydia's abortion was typical of criminal abortions in that it was performed by a physician.
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.
2 comments:
I was absolutely stunned when I ordered my long-lost great grandmother’s death certificate to find she’d died from septicemia and murder by abortion. Everything finally made sense: all the family secrecy, her unmarked grave, etc. To find out Lydia Nelson was murdered is beyond shocking and apparently it was a well guarded secret, not even my dad knew. Do you know what happened to Dr. Klinetop? Was he ever jailed?
I'm so sorry that your family has been so wracked with trauma and tragedy. I don't know the final outcome for Klinetop, alas. News articles can be sketchy and the Homicide in Chicago Interactive Database can be messed up. I think that they go by handwritten notes and often struggle with illegible stuff.
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