Mini Review: ‘Ugly Prey’

Three characters in the musical Chicago are based on real-life women accused of murder and held in the Cook County Jail a century ago.

Beulah Annan and Belva Gaertner were pretty. Sabella Nitti was not.

At trial, Annan and Gaertner played to their juries, and Chicago newspapers lapped it up. They won acquittals.

Nitti was an Italian migrant who wore rough work clothes to court – a “dumb, crouching, animal-like peasant,” according to a Chicago Tribune reporter. Nitti’s English was so poor that she did not understand when the jury convicted her of killing her husband and sentenced her to hang. It took a day for authorities to bring in a translator to break the news to her.

In Chicago, Annan becomes the character Roxie Hart, and Gaertner becomes Velma Kelly.

A Hungarian ballerina in Chicago is based loosely on Nitti, who is the subject of the excellent Ugly Prey: An Innocent Woman and the Death Sentence that Scandalized Jazz Age Chicago by Emilie Le Beau Lucchesi. The book is a heart-wrenching (but ultimately heart-warming) study of a judicial system easily swayed by anti-immigrant prejudice and bigoted newspaper coverage.

Nitti was the first woman in Chicago history to be sentenced to death. How a young woman attorney helped her escape the noose is a tale you need to read for yourself.