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Tuesday, April 09, 2024

April 9, 1935: Newlywed Joins Ranks of Dr. Brewer's Dead

Newspaper clipping of a bald, middle-aged white man wearing round black spectacles, in 3/4 profile and with a grim facial expression
Dr. Guy E. Brewer
On June 7, 1935, Dr. Guy E. Brewer pleaded guilty to six counts of manslaughter for the deaths of six women who died from complications of abortions he had perpetrated. He was sentenced to serve six consecutive four-year terms. He spent his incarceration working in the prison hospital. 

One of those young women was Wanda Lee Gray, age 20, who died April 9, 1935 at the home of her parents, Lewis and Effie May Wickline, in Enid, Oklahoma. She left behind her husband, Robert George Gray, two brothers, and two sisters. She was a 1933 graduate of Enid High School. She and Robert were newlyweds, having only married the 30th of the previous July. They had honeymooned in Chicago to visit the World's Fair, traveled in Michigan and Minnesota, then returned to set up house on a farm southwest of Kremlin, Oklahoma.

Wanda wasn't the first death attributed to Brewer's abortion activities. The first was of 21-year-old Myrtle Helen Rose, of Ponca City, Oklahoma, who died on December 23, 1931. Ruby Ford,  a 26-year-old homemaker, died April 1, 1934 after an abortion perpetrated by Brewer. Hermoine Fowler, a 20-year-old coed, died June 27, 1934. 

Wanda had not even been buried yet when an abortion at Brewer's hands ended the life of Doris Jones, a 20-year-old mother of two, who died April 11, 1935. Elizabeth Shaw, 23, of Roxanna also died in 1935. I have yet to determine if Elizabeth died before or after Wanda.

Brewer had graduated from the University of Louisville in 1906 and had been practicing medicine in Garber for 21 of the 29 years he had been a physician. He supported young men during their university studies, maintaining houses for them to live in. Those he had educated over the years rushed immediately to his defense. Though Brewer had spent many long years helping boys and young men, his impact on women's lives was evidently lightning-fast.

Brewer pleaded guilty to second-degree manslaughter on each case, ostensibly to avoid putting those who cared about him through the embarrassment of a public trial on such distasteful charges. One particular statement by Brewer is very telling:

"I could not stand to have my boys brought into this case and I would not betray the trust so many people have placed in me by having them harassed, and in some instances their lives ruined by the notoriety a trial would bring to them."

This implies that a lot of those abortions were done at the behest of Brewer's "boys," who would themselves face serious charges for arranging the fatal abortions on women they had impregnated. 

Those "boys" offered support to Brewer from all corners of the globe, where they had work they attributed to Brewer's support in getting their educations.

The county attorney who arranged the plea, Holbird, didn't seem to think that Brewer had done much harm. "In accepting Dr. Brewer's plea of guilty in these abortion deaths I do so with the feeling that the law has collected its debt. The matter of the penalty assessed is unimportant. The thing that counts is that these crimes have been exposed to the world, and the people can now realize the serious danger and hazard to life in this kind of operation." 

Thus came Brewer's  six four-year sentences, to run concurrently, for all six abortion deaths. The likely reason that he got such a light sentence was his extreme popularity for his benevolence in putting local young men through college. So beloved was Brewer that one victim's husband was fired in retaliation for reporting his wife's death to the police.

Governor E. W. Marland, however, was not exactly delighted with the wrist-slap administered by local officials. "This is the worst case I ever heard of," the governor said, "He was, in my opinion, guilty of mortal turpitude of character almost as serious as that resulting in the death of these women." Noting that Brewer would be eligible for parole after serving only 28 months, the governor urged an investigation which he was certain would uncover more crimes so that additional charges could be brought so that Brewer would end up serving a sentence commensurate with the harm he had done. 

In the end, Brewer's supporters triumphed. The young men prospered, the young women lay dead in their graves.

Watch One of Six Victims on YouTube.

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