On March 16, 1905, 27-year-old seamstress Mary Putnam (sometimes identified as May Putnam) died at Chicago's Monroe Street Hospital from infection caused by an abortion.
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| Dr. Lucy Hagenow |
Mary, unmarried and working as a manager at an art society, had been brought to the hospital two days earlier, in critical condition, and the police were notified. The party responsible for Mary's death is noted as Dr. Louise Hagenow, who did her abortions on her own premises and even had a preferred undertaker to haul away the bodies.
Hagenow and a man identified as F. E. MacCordy were arrested by the Coroner's Jury on March 16. MacCordy was president of the MacCordy cigar Company and lived in the same building with Mary. He was about 40 years old.Hagenow had been linked to the abortion deaths of Louise Derchow, Annie Dorris, Abbia Richards, and Emma Dep in San Francisco, and would go on to be linked to over a dozen Chicago abortion deaths:
- 1891: Minnie Deering
- 1892: Sophia Kuhn and Emily Anderson
- 1896: Hannah Carlson
- 1899: Marie Hecht
- 1906: Lola Madison
- 1907: Annie Horvatich
- 1925: Lottie Lowy, Nina H. Pierce,
- Jean Cohen, Bridget Masterson, and Elizabeth Welter
- 1926: Mary Moorehead
Hagenow, who originally used the first name Louisa, then Louise, and then finally Lucy, was typical of criminal abortionists in that she was a physician.
Sources:
- "Man and Woman are Held for Causing Girl's Death," Chicago Tribune, March 17, 1905
- Homicide in Chicago Interactive Database
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