Billie Holiday
Holiday's mother was called Sadie Fagan. Fagan became pregnant when she was 13 years old. Her parents threw her out of her home in Baltimore, and she went to Philadelphia where her daughter Eleanora (Billie Holiday) was born. Fagan moved back to Baltimore and married Clarence Holiday, who was probably her baby's father, but they later divorced. When she was 10 years old, Holiday often missed school. When she said that she had been raped, she was sent to The House of the Good Shepherd, a Catholic reform school. She was allowed out two years later, with the help of a family friend. Holiday moved to New York City with her mother in 1928. In 1929 Holiday's mother saw a neighbor, Wilbert Rich, raping Holiday. Rich was sentenced to three months in jail. But after her incident as a rape victim she was still constantly raped by drunk men in her neighborhood. She almost got pregnant by a drunk man walking down their street.