On March 10, 1913, 35-year-old Annie M. Brassler of Whitestone, New York was admitted to Flushing Hospital in New York. After doctors concluded that she was suffering from the effects of an abortion they notified the coroner's office.
Annie gave the coroner a deathbed statement in which she said that 60-year-old Dr. F. Waldo Whitney had performed the abortion on February 22, presumably at his office on West 64th Street in Manhattan.
Whitney was arrested based on Annie's statement and held for three weeks before he was finally released on $3,000 bail.
Annie lingered for three months before finally dying on June 12, leaving her husband, George, to raise their four young children alone. An autopsy confirmed that she had died of septicemia due to an abortion.
Whitney's attorney was able to get the deathbed statement ruled inadmissible because of the three months that lapsed between the date of the statement and the day Annie died. This left him free to perform a fatal abortion on Margaret Buetelman in 1914.
Whitney was convicted of first-degree manslaughter for Margaret's death on December 10, 1915 and was sentenced that day to a sentence of two years to 19 years six months at hard labor in Sing Sing. He was pardoned on August 6, 1918 after serving only 2 years, 7 months, and 27 days. He went on to perform a fatal abortion on a woman whose name I've been unable to determine in 1923.
Watch "Would A Second Statement Have Saved the Next Woman?" on YouTube.
Sources:
- "Woman Dies; Doctor Sought," Brooklyn Times Union, June 13, 1914
- "Increase Doctor's Bail," Brooklyn Times Union, June 14, 1913
- "Held for Woman's Death," Brooklyn Times Union, July 3, 1913
- "Physician On Trial," Evening World, June 12, 1914
- Sing Sing Prison Receiving Blotter Number 66778
- "Convicted of Manslaughter," New York Sun, December 11, 1915
- "Physician Sent to Sing Sing," The (NY) Evening World, December 22, 1915
- Request for Pardon, August 6, 1918
- Restoration to Citizenship, August 6, 1918
No comments:
Post a Comment