Conduct Unbecoming a Woman Medicine on Trial in Turn-of-the-Century Brooklyn

In the spring of 1889, a burgeoning Brooklyn newspaper, the "Daily Eagle", printed a series of articles that detailed a history of midnight hearses and botched operations performed by a scalpel-eager female surgeon named Dr. Mary Dixon-Jones. The ensuing avalanche of public outrage gave rise to two trials - one for manslaughter and one for libel - that became a late 19th-century sensation.;Recreating both trials, Regina Morantz-Sanchez provides a historical whodunit, inviting readers to sift through the evidence and evaluate the witnesses. Jars of specimens and surgical mannequins became common spectacles in the courtroom, and the roughly 300 witnesses that testified represented a fascinating social cross-section of the city's inhabitants, from humble immigrant craftsmen and seamstresses to some of New York and Brooklyn's most prestigious citizens and physicians. Like many legal extravaganzas of our own time, the Mary Dixon-Jones trials highlighted broader social issues in America.