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.
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| 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.
- Louise Derchow (1st San Francisco death, 1887)
- Annie Dorries (1888)
- Abbia Richards (1888)
- Emma Depp (1888)
- Minnie Dearing (1st Chicago death, 1891)
- Sophia Kuhn (1892)
- Emily Anderson (1892)
- Hannah Carlson (1896)
- Marie Hecht (1899)
- Mary Putnam (1905)
- Lola Madison (1906)
- Annie Horvatich (1907)
- Lottie Lowy (1925)
- Nina Pierce (1925)
- Jean Cohen (1925)
- Bridget Masterson (1925)
- Elizabeth Welter (1925)
- 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
1 comment:
Lottie Lowy was my great-grandmother. Her husband’s (my great-grandfather) name was Louis Lowy, but he also went by Simon and Siegfried. He was a Jewish man from Bohemian Republic, now Czechia. Lottie was originally Irish, but migrated through England to Canada, then she moved onto Chicago. They had one surviving child, my grandpa Leo Nathan Lowy. I’ve seen some evidence of at least one other child who passed away very young. I know Lottie was warned not to have more children due to her health, but I don’t know if the fetus she was trying to abort was due to a rape or not. The information did not get passed down and I only know what I know by researching it myself. My grandpa was orphaned when his father died in a horrific car accident two years after Lottie died. My great-grandfather seemed to be completely broken by my great-grandma’s death. My grandpa went on to have two kids, my dad, S. Leo Lowy who passed away in 2000 and my aunt Vicky, who passed away in 1997. My dad had 6 kids.
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