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