July 12, 1925: Life of the Mother?

  From the records of the Cook County Coroner's office:

1926 July 6 -- Lowy, Mrs. Lottie - Age 37 -- Died from a criminal abortion at 301 W. North Ave., office of a midwife, Lucy Hagenow, who was held by the coroner on 7/17/25. 11A Dist. Sept. 1950 No Bill.

Dr. Louise "Lucy" Hagenow

July 6 is evidently the date of the crime, because all other sources give the date of death as July 12.

According to Illinois death records, Lottie's full name was Charlotte Lottie Cagney Lowy, an immigrant from England. She was married to Simon Lowy. Genealogy records indicate that she and Simon had two children, ages 11 and 12, at the time of her death.

News records give her husband's name as Siegfried. He was an immigrant from Hungary, so it's likely that he Anglicized his name, which was a common practice at the time.

Siegfried/Simon was arrested just hours after Lottie's funeral. "Though he had allowed the act which caused his arrest, he said, believing it would save his wife's life, he was arrested on a charge of being an accessory to an illegal operation...." Lottie, he told the papers, had been in ill health for several years. 

Lottie became seriously ill after the abortion. She was admitted to St. Anthony Hospital, then transferred to Cook County Hospital where she died.

Prior to her death Lottie "told police officers .. how she had been attacked several months ago by Phillip Dispensa, an Italian, whom Mr. Lowy had hired to work around his yard." This seems to indicate that both Lottie and her husband might have attributed the pregnancy to a rape that had gone unreported. This fact, rather than Lottie's health, might have been the real reason for the abortion, since it would have been legal for a doctor to admit Lottie to a hospital and preform an abortion under the best possible conditions had her life really been endangered.

Lottie was 12th of the 18 victims attributed to Dr. Lucy Hagenow, who was reportedly 85 years old at the time of the fatal abortion. Women's deaths attributed to Hagenow are:

1. Louise Derchow (1st San Francisco death, 1887)
2. Annie Dorries (1888)
3. Abbia Richards (1888)
4. Emma Depp (1888)
5. Minnie Dearing (1st Chicago death, 1891)
6. Sophia Kuhn (1892)
7. Emily Anderson (1892)
8. Hannah Carlson (1896)
9. Marie Hecht (1899)
10. Mary Putnam (1905)
11. Lola Madison (1906)
12. Annie Horvatich (1907)
13. Lottie Lowy (1925)
14. Nina Pierce (1925)
15. Jean Cohen (1925)
16. Bridget Masterson (1925)
17. Elizabeth Welter (1925)
18. Mary Moorehead (1926)

Sources:

• Cook County Coroner's office
• "Husband Jailed the Day of His Wife's Funeral," (Chicago) Liberty Bell, July 17, 1925
• Homicide in Chicago Interactive Database