Lisa Riggin details the life and dramatic trials of the notorious abortionist Inez Burns in her book San Francisco’s Queen of Vice: The Strange Career of Abortionist Inez Brown Burns. Together, Burns and the corrupt city officials she paid off to run her illegal business were responsible for the vice and corruption of San Francisco. The district attorney’s office, however, brilliantly targets Burns alone for the purpose of using her conviction to secure the seat of attorney general and governor of California for Brown. Burns’s illegal business was well known as far back as the 1920s. At this time, women’s role began to change because they had gained the right to vote.
They wanted to seek equality elsewhere and more and more of them moved into the workforce or pursued a higher education. Burns, on the other hand, becomes a successful abortionist without ever going to college. Her business was successful not only due to her years of experience with Dr. West, but also how meticulous she was about sterilizing instruments and disinfecting surfaces in the operating room (Riggin, p.14). This prevented botched abortions and complications with infections, so much so that “Inez was the place to go if you wanted it done right” (Riggin, p. 32).With new career opportunities, marriage became less common. Burns, however, was onto her fourth husband. Moreover, in every one of her marriages, she made the money. It was common that women who moved into the workforce helped provide for the family, and some even gained total economic independence. Burns was one of them, and she was able to purchase her dream home on Guerrero Street (Riggin, p. 14). This is another example of her successes; it was a major accomplishment considering how it was at the time, it was still a social norm for men to be the ones bringing food to the table.During the roaring twenties, conspicuous spending also became another social norm. In addition to her upscale home, Burns dressed in fancy designer gowns and furs, which she wore to party with San Francisco’s elite (Riggin, p. 31).
By the same token, Burns’s extravagance can also be classified as a failure because it led downfall. For instance, she drew the attention of two journalists who wrote an undercover exposé about her in the San Francisco News. This led to a raid on her clinic, her arrest, and an IRS investigation for tax evasion in 1938 (Riggin, p. 34). Though corruption was another social norm in San Francisco, another one of Burns’s shortcomings was her overconfidence in just how above the law she was. While it is true that protection money had allowed her to run her business for 20 years, that alone couldn’t save her. Furthermore, she still embraced the attention after she was finally caught. She walked out of the courthouse with her held held high and topped with a bright, brand new hat. (Riggin pp. 59, 111). Her extravagance and love for the spotlight ultimately worked against her; it spiked public interest, thus fueling District Attorney Brown’s crusade on her case.Like Burns, another character by the name of Gloria Shannon became addicted to the attention and money she received. Both caused her to make up false stories and invite reporters to her hotel room (Riggin, p.78). Of course, this backfired.
Questions were raised about the legitimacy of her exposition and she was dismissed as a witness. The female character who was most different from Burns was her receptionist Mabel Spalding. Burns was very attentive, as evidenced by her little black notebooks, where she logged in all patient and pay-off details. This was highly confidential and incriminating information that Burns went to great lengths to protect. Mabel Spaulding, on the other hand, was careless. She showed Burns’s partner Dr. Everson the daily envelopes, costing Burns thousands of dollars to avoid blackmail (Riggin, p. 92). Spaulding was unguarded, while Burns was always controlled. Afterall, she had everything to conceal.Inez Brown was the perfect target for the conservative District Attorney Pat Brown. In fact, he made it clear that he would not tolerate abortionists— challenging what the community considered as a “necessary evil, something to be ignored and tolerated” (Riggin, p. 61). Brown planned the 1945 raids of her clinic; her arrest was the first step in implementing conservatism. His so-called crusade on her work is illustrated by his relentless efforts in getting Burns locked up.
For example, when Brown had still not been convicted by the second trial, Brown proclaimed, “If the views of the two juries… are an indication of how this community as a whole feels about accommodating the open violation of the law… then we have no choice but to try again” (Riggin, 114). He even went so far as to select the jury himself. After all, he was not so much concerned with the ethics behind all of this; rather, he was interested in using this high profile case as a political stepping stone to become attorney general and governor of California, which he was ultimately successful in doing. With that being said, his conservative platform does not persist long-term. This is immediately shown at Burns’s conviction at the third trial; Brown and Lynch turn a blind eye to the men indirectly involved with running the abortion clinic. For instance, Edward Scott, the drugstore owner who supplied Burns with cleaning supplies and “enough drugs to supply a hospital” was never charged (Riggin, p. 101). Others who were let off the hook included Burns’s customers that agreed to testify against her.Most significantly, Brown turns a blind eye to the corrupt officials that he had promised would be penalized for their deliberate involvement in organized crime by allowing Burns to run her abortion clinic.
Unsurprisingly, Brown changes his tune as his election for attorney general approached. He claimed that “relatively few officers were involved in the tip-off,” and, therefore, the case would focus only on the illegal operation of abortion (Riggin, p.145). There was plenty of incriminating evidence inside Burns’s black notebooks, such as details of pay offs to police officers. There is no question that he allowed the corrupt men to walk free as to “avoid a public break with Police Chief Charles Dullea” (Riggin, p. 127). This kind of attention would have jeopardized his election, which again, was Brown’s main concern. It is also noteworthy that Brown “opted to remove… two notebooks from evidence in an effort to keep the identities of prominent patients and corrupt officials secret” (Riggin, p. 130). Revealing the A-list celebrities who had sought Burns’s help would’ve tarnished the public perception of him and, again, jeopardize his chances of getting elected as attorney general. Brown was afterall a politician. Prosecutor Tom Lynch did not go after the men involved with vice either.
For instance, when Levina Queen testified that it was Burns and the other men who removed the fetal remains, Lynch did not question who the “other men” were (Riggin, p. 120). The witness account of Burns committing a seemingly twisted act was enough to paint the picture the district attorney’s office wanted to the public. Another male identity that Lynch protected was Burns’s partner Dr. Everson, who was always referred to as “young doctor” (Riggin, p.129). He moved to another state and was uncooperative, but that did not faze the district attorney’s office. Their main priority was the abortionist and her employees. They wanted to get them convicted quickly so that Brown could celebrate his “crackdown on crime.” Other vices in the city involved mobsters that collected protection money. Vincent Bruno was a gangster who referred Gerrylee Marsigli to Burns. Complications with her abortion was what led to the raids and Burns’s arrest. Bruno was arrested during the second trial for being an accomplice and for his involvement in a drug ring (Riggin, p. 59). This is an excellent example of Brown’s “crackdown on crime” against none other than somebody who was not a police officer.
Although Bruno did give Burns a customer, it was the police who had allowed her to run her illegal business. Brown’s lack of action against them proves that his conservative stance was short-lived and for electoral purposes only.Years after the Burns case, which did little to cleanse the city, a San Francisco IRS agent named William Burkett resigned over the corruption of his superiors. They had tried to cover up his investigations on tax fraud and extortion rackets. As a matter of fact, Burket was ignored when he reported that Burns had given him the name of the police officer whom she paid $125 to per day in protection money (Riggin, p. 175). It is likely that no action was taken by Burkett’s superiors because they too were being paid off. Furthermore, there is no doubt that the police officer’s name was in one of the black notebooks that the district attorney’s office had swept under the rug. This is especially clear when Lynch cowardly replied, “The statute of limitations has run out on any Burns allegations” in response to Burkett’s claims (176).
Burkett finally reported this to the U.S. Senate Committee when he was given explicit instructions to ask Burns about income taxes only and not pay-offs during a second interview in prison. The U.S. Senate Committee forced the IRS to go after Burns for almost a million dollars in tax evasion (Riggin, p. 163). More importantly, their involvement led to the March 1951 San Francisco hearings. The purpose was to get to the bottom of the city’s organized crime— something Brown had failed to do. At the hearings, Lynch affirmed that the huge sum of money confiscated from Burns was indeed reported to the IRS, but she was never prosecuted for tax evasion. This revelation led to Burns, the chief director of the San Francisco IRS Michael Schino, and four others to be charged bribery and fraud (Riggin, p. 171). These were just some of the individuals that Brown and Lynch had turned a blind eye to. San Francisco was a city filled with vice and corruption; the district attorney’s office had only scraped the surface with their glorified conviction of Inez Burns.
