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

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.

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