Dorothy Sherwood
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Dorothy O. Sherwood, née Caskey[1] (born February 7, 1908, date of death unknown)[2] was a burlesque dancer and Salvation Army worker who was convicted of first-degree murder for killing her two-year-old son.[3]
Sherwood was born in St. Louis, Missouri.[4] She was the third child of Thomas Caskey, a Scotch-Irish foundry worker and his wife Florence Caskey.[4] Her father was married six times and Sherwood was the daughter of his third wife.[5] One of her older siblings died at eighteen months and another at five years of age. Sherwood's mother died when she was nine and she was placed in an orphanage. Salvation Army work,[4] in 1925,[5] followed her period in the orphanage.[4] As a lassie, she wore a red-ribboned bonnet. In this endeavor, she sang gospel hymns in six southern cities for approximately three years.[5] From this job, she moved on to dance in burlesque.[4]
One day she saw an ad offering employment in show business to girls with fair singing voices. She answered the ad and went to work in Chicago, Illinois.[5] In burlesque, she never achieved the prominence of a stripper. Instead, she was always in the back row in the chorus. She married a stagehand, James Sherwood, the electrician of the burlesque company. Her marriage was conducted as a publicity stunt before an audience of burlesque fans during a regular performance. James was from a poor family in Newburgh, New York, a Hudson River town.
When the company broke up, the couple returned to Newburgh. There James found sporadic work as a motion picture operator and Sherwood was employed as a waitress. Their daughter, then age seven, resided with his mother. At that time their other child, Jimmy, was an infant. James had tuberculosis and died in a sanitarium in New York. Afterward, Sherwood became engaged to a minor politician and dry county agent. When she lost her job the engagement was broken. Her landlady evicted her when she could not afford the room and board.[4]
Crime
Sherwood drowned two-year-old Jimmy in Moodna Creek[6] in Newburgh, on August 20, 1935. The case was exceptional, being the only first-degree murder case involving a woman in Orange County, New York history until then.[3]
She carried Jimmy's body to the Newburgh police headquarters, exclaiming it was too hard to make a living for myself and the baby.[7] Her husband died four months earlier.[8]