Last chance to enter to win a copy of the Bedside Book of Bad Girls:
Outlaw Women of the Midwest.
Nineteen-year-old Jennie Freeman stared pensively out the partially opened window of the tenement building where she lived in Chicago, Illinois. A cold, gentle breeze blew across the bed she was lying on, and she pulled the dingy blankets that were draped across her legs around her waist. Jennie was a petite, bespeckled girl with mousey-brown hair and green eyes. She was a fierce reader, proven by the many books stacked around the bed. A stern-faced doctor stood over her fiddling with a stethoscope. When he finally placed one end of the stethoscope on Jennie’s chest, she turned her attention from the busyness on the street outside the window to him. After the doctor listened to his patient’s heartbeat, he scratched his head, perplexed. He eyed the wheelchair next to the bed and sighed a heavy sigh. Jennie’s mother, Fannie entered the room from the kitchen carrying a tray of food. She was a large woman of dark complexion who wore diamond eardrops and a large marquise ring. She looked worried and carefully studied the doctor’s face, waiting for a verdict.
The doctor lifted the covers off Jennie’s legs and studied her feet. He removed a straight pin from his medical bag and touched it to Jennie’s foot and calves. No matter what he did, he could not get her limbs to even twitch. After a few moments he stopped the examination, pulled the blanket back over Jennie’s legs, and began packing his medical instruments into his bag. Fannie sat the tray she was carrying on a nightstand next to the bed and took her daughter’s hand in hers. The doctor confirmed what the troubled mother had suspected – Jennie was paralyzed. As the doctor put his coat on and exited the cramp, poorly-lit home, Jennie was crying and Fannie was comforting her.
Jennie incurred her injury when she got caught between two cable cars. The intricate system of street railways in downtown Chicago had malfunctioned on January 9, 1893, and the cars collided. Jennie was found on the ground writhing in pain near the accident. After a short stay in the hospital to treat her cracked ribs, bruises, and cuts, she was released into the care of her mother. Two days later she claimed she couldn’t move her legs from the thighs down. A railway company physician verified the report. Believing it would be cheaper to settle than it would be to go to court the company paid Jennie five hundred dollars.
