Partial 1905 Wanted Poster for Mary S. Dean, Charged with Providing an Illegal Abortion to a Murdered Woman

Boston, Massachusetts, 1905. Single 8.5 x 8.5 inch sheet, cut from a larger whole; likely missing a portion. Marks at upper left side, some folding. Otherwise excellent to near fine.. Wanted poster for Mary S. Dean, dated December 16, 1905. Three months prior, a young woman’s torso had been found in a suitcase floating in Boston Harbor. A month later, a suitcase containing her limbs was found, and she was identified as Susanna Geary. In September, Geary had gone to the medical practice on Tremont Street where Dean worked as a nurse, and Dean had performed an abortion for her - at the time, an illegal procedure in Massachusetts. Geary developed sepsis from the surgery; when she died, Dean and three men, one a doctor, conspired to dismember Geary and dispose of her body in the ocean.[1] The doctor was acquitted and the two men pleaded guilty, but Mary S. Dean was never found.

[1] “Says McLeod Made Plans: Crawford Testifies in Suit Case Trial”, The Boston Globe, November 28 1905.