Exterior of the Cook County Jail. Photo found in Bob Fosse's collection at the Library of Congress "Cook County was established by the Illinois State Legislature in 1831. Chicago, an unincorporated settlement with fewer than 60 residents, held the county seat. The first county jail and courthouse was a small wooden stockade built in 1835, outgrown 15 years later. "The county built a larger court and jail on Hubbard Street for offenders awaiting trial for serious crimes [this

Sabella in the Cook County Jail Sabella Nitti was an Italian immigrant living outside Chicago in the early 1920s whose story became one of the most striking examples of injustice in American criminal history. When her husband, Francesco Nitti, disappeared from their farm in 1922, Sabella, and a younger farmhand Crudelle were accused of murdering him. With no evidence, they were released. But when her husband's decomposed body was found a year later in a drainage ditch, Sabell

Katherine "Kitty" Malm "Katherine 'Kitty Malm' was nineteen years old with a two year old daughter, estranged from a husband who she claimed verbally abused her. The young, poor, uneducated immigrant entrusted few others with her daughter's care. 'The only one in this whole damn world I'd let take care of her is my mother. She'd be good to her.' "After taking up with convicted murderer Otto Malm, who called her 'Sweetheart,' the two attempted to break into a sweater factory o

Belva Gaertner Belva Gaertner was a 40-year-old 3-time divorcee when she fatally shot her lover, Walter Law, a married man with a toddler at home, in the front seat of a sedan. When taken in to custody she claimed to have been too drunk to know whether or not she had killed the man. Her exact words were, "I don't know. I was drunk." "For three months, automobile salesman Walter Law, and Belva spent their nights together visiting Chicago nightclubs and drinking illegal liquor.

"Already twice married and a mother by the age of twenty-four, neither marriage nor motherhood seemed to satisfy Beulah Annan [inspiration for Roxie Hart]. She met Harry Kalstedt [inspiration for Fred Casely]—a married man who had a six-year-old daughter—at work. Walks together quickly progressed to drinks at her apartment while her husband, Albert Annan [Inspiration for Amos Hart], was away working. The pair were intimate on at least three occasions, she would later admit. "

To learn about the history of the 1975 musical Chicago, we must actually look back over 100 years to 1924. Our story begins with two real-life murderesses, Buelah Annan (left) and Belva Gaertner (right), who were charged with killing their husbands in Cook County, Chicago. Their stories were sensationalized in the newspapers by journalists, including reporter Maurine Dallas Watkins, whose articles highlighted the women's beauty and the unlikely prospect of either of them bei

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