The Massey Murder (34 page)
Authors: Charlotte Gray
C
HAPTER 2
Colonel George Denison and the Toronto Women’s Court attracted so much attention in their day that it is hardly credible that they are almost forgotten today. The journalist Harry M. Wodson wrote an admiring account of the Beak,
The Whirlpool: Scenes from Toronto Police Court
(Toronto, 1917). More recently, Carl Berger examined the origins of Denison’s attitudes in
The Sense of Power: Studies in the Ideas of Canadian Imperialism
,
1867–1914
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1970), and Gene Howard Homel explored Denison’s record in “Denison’s Law: Criminal Justice and the Police Court in Toronto, 1877–1921” in
Ontario History
73, no. 3 (1981). Amanda Glasbeek looked at the Women’s Court in her article “Maternalism Meets the Criminal Law: The Case of the Toronto Women’s Court,” in
Canadian Journal of Women and the Law
10, no. 2 (1998). I also drew on her book
Feminized Justice: The Toronto Women’s Court, 1913–1934
(Vancouver: UBC Press, 2009).
C
HAPTER 3
There is no authoritative history of policing in Toronto, but several scholarly articles, including Greg M. Marquis, “Working Men in Uniform: The Early Twentieth-Century Toronto Police” in
Histoire Social—Social History
20, no. 40 (November 1987), and Bill Rawling, “Technology and Innovation in the Toronto Police Force, 1875–1925” in
Ontario History
80, no. 1, March 1988.
Keith Walden describes the rituals of women’s lives in “Tea in Toronto and the Liberal Order, 1880–1914,”
Canadian Historical Review
, 93, no. 1 (March 2012). The early years of the feminist movement and women’s social activism are covered in N.E.S. Griffiths,
The Splendid Vision: Centennial History of the National Council of Women of Canada
,
1893–1993
(Ottawa: Carleton University Press, 1993); Helen Caister Robinson,
Decades of Caring: The Big Sister Story
(Toronto: Dundurn, 1979); and
Nothing New Under The Sun: A History of the Toronto Council of Women
(Toronto: Local Council of Women of Toronto, 1978). Kathy Southee shared with me details of her great-grandmother Florence Huestis, which she researched for her unpublished 2009 paper, “Christianity in Canada: The Story of Florence Gooderham Hamilton Huestis.”
C
HAPTER 4
The Massey Archives at the University of Toronto include Hart Massey’s day book for 1888 (B87–0082/Box 142 [02]) and Vincent Massey’s diary for this period (B87–0082/Box 302). Neither is extensive, but each gives a sense of the man. Eliza Hart’s will is also in the archives (B87–0082/ Box 121 [22]). The only family history is Mollie Gillen’s
The Masseys: Founding Family
(Toronto: Ryerson Press, 1965). I also drew on Merrill Denison’s
Harvest Triumphant: The Story of Massey-Harris
(Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1948) and Claude Bissell’s
The Young Vincent Massey
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1981).
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HAPTER 5
The Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery, Volume II: 1910–1921
(Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1987), edited by Mary Rubio and Elizabeth Waterston, reveal the novelist’s obsession with war news and her despair as young men in her husband’s parish are wounded and killed at the front.
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HAPTER 6
Information about the lives of young women who worked as domestic servants is painfully scanty: few had time to record their experiences, and as they were considered amongst the least important members of society, little information was collected about them. I found two books
particularly illuminating as background for this chapter: Alison Light’s
Mrs. Woolf and the Servants
(London: Fig Tree, 2007) reveals much about existence downstairs in Edwardian households in England, and Carolyn Strange’s
Toronto’s Girl Problem: The Perils and Pleasures of the City, 1880–1930
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1995) traces the shifting occupation patterns for working-class women in the British Empire’s primmest city. For details about Carrie’s early years in England, I turned to Brenda Fraser-Newstead’s
Bedfordshire’s Yesteryears, Volume 1: The Family, Childhood and Schooldays
(Dunstable, U.K.: Book Castle, 1993.)
Life in the Ward is put under the spotlight in
Immigrants: A Portrait of the Urban Experience, 1890–1930
by Robert F. Harney and Harold Troper (Toronto: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1975).
Morley Avenue is today known as Woodfield Road.
C
HAPTER 7
Predictably, the two towering press barons of 1915 Toronto both merited hefty biographies. Ron Poulton’s
The Paper Tyrant: John Ross Robertson of the Toronto Telegram
(Toronto: Clarke, Irwin, 1971) and Ross Harkness’s
J.E. Atkinson of The Star
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1963) were invaluable sources for this chapter. I also drew on
From Politics to Profit: The Commercialization of Canadian Daily Newspapers, 1890–1920
by Minko Sotiron (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1997) and an unpublished 1983 doctoral dissertation by Thomas Walkom, “The Daily Newspaper Industry in Ontario’s Developing Capitalistic Economy: Toronto and Ottawa, 1871–1911.” J.H. Cranston’s memoir,
Ink on My Fingers
(Toronto: Ryerson Press, 1953) gave an exuberant account of the early days of the
Toronto Star
.
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HAPTER 8
The material in this chapter is drawn from the inquest transcript, plus commentary from the
Globe
and the
Evening Telegram
of February 17, 1915.
C
HAPTER 9
There are two excellent books about the feisty women reporters in Toronto newsrooms: Marjory Lang’s
Women Who Made the News: Female Journalists in Canada 1880–1945
(Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1999) and Linda Kay’s
The Sweet Sixteen: The Journey That Inspired the Canadian Women’s Press Club
(Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2012).
C
HAPTER 10
My chief sources for this chapter were the February 1915 issues of
Saturday Night
magazine and Tim Cook’s
At the Sharp End
. Information about Sir William Mulock came from several sources, including Augustus Bridle’s
Sons of Canada: Short Studies of Characteristic Canadians
(Toronto: Dent, 1916) and John Honsberger’s
Osgoode Hall: An Illustrated History
(Toronto: Dundurn, 2004.)
C
HAPTER 11
I found material on Hartley Dewart, KC, in the
DCB
, and a discussion of his handling of the Carrie Davies case in Carolyn Strange’s article “Wounded Womanhood and Dead Men: Chivalry and the Trials of Clara Ford and Carrie Davies,” in
Gender Conflicts: New Essays in Women’s History
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992), edited by Franca Iacovetta and Mariana Valverde. Information about legal education comes from Christopher Moore’s
The Law Society of Upper Canada and Ontario’s Lawyers, 1797–1997
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997), amongst other publications.
Judith Flanders gives an excellent overview of murder in popular British culture in
The Invention of Murder: How the Victorians Revelled in Death and Detection and Created Modern Crime
(London: HarperPress, 2011).
C
HAPTERS 12 THROUGH 16
Material on Dewart’s defence strategy and the two-day hearing in court is drawn from contemporary newspaper accounts, particularly the
Evening Telegram
. On particular points of law and use of precedent, I referred to Simon Verdun-Jones’s article “‘Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity’: The Historical Roots of the Canadian Insanity Defence, 1843–1920,” in
Crime and Criminal Justice in Europe and Canada
(Waterloo, Ont.: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1981), edited by Louis A. Knafia; Jim Phillips and Rosemary Gartner’s
Murdering Holiness: The Trials of Franz Creffield and George Mitchell
(Vancouver: UBC Press, 2003); and Angus McLaren’s
The Trials of Masculinity: Policing Sexual Boundaries, 1870–1930
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997).
The case of Hilda Blake is described in Reinhold Kramer and Tom Mitchell’s
Walk Towards the Gallows: The Tragedy of Hilda Blake, Hanged 1899
(Toronto: Oxford University Press, 2002).
C
HAPTER 17
Sandra Gwyn’s
Tapestry of War: A Private View of Canadians in the Great War
(Toronto: HarperCollins, 1992) dealt movingly with the impact of the war on Canadians, and the quotation for Harold Innis is taken from her book. Another poignant discussion of the long shadow cast by the bloodbath is
My Grandfather’s War: Canadians Remember the First World War, 1914–1918
(Toronto: Macmillan, 1981) by William D. Mathieson.
C
HAPTER 18
Frank Jones discussed his encounter with Carrie’s descendants in his novel,
Master and Maid
(Toronto: Irwin, 1985), pp. 333–337.
T
ime travel back to the Toronto of 1915 was a fascinating challenge, as I walked along old streets lined with new buildings and tried to visualize the smaller, less confident but unassailably smug city of Bert Massey and Carrie Davies. Several people were immensely helpful: Rachel Young and Jacob Bakan (layout of Old City Hall); Thomas Klatt (history of the Lombard Street morgue, today shuttered and covered in graffiti); David Wencer (information about Toronto streets and buildings); Elise Brais (library researcher
extraordinaire
). Paul Leatherdale, archivist at the Law Society of Upper Canada, helped with information about the lawyers involved in the case. At the
Toronto Star
, John Honderich gave me a sense of the
Star
’s continuing commitment to progressive values and opened the doors to the newspaper’s archives, where Astrid Lange and Peggy Mackenzie were generous with time and help.
I would like to thank Elinor Groom, librarian at Sandy Public Library, Bedfordshire, for information relevant to Carrie Davies’s
background, and Kathy Southee for sharing with me family details about her great-grandmother, the remarkable Mrs. Huestis.
In the course of writing this book, I talked to many members of the legal profession who provided me with crucial feedback and suggestions for future reading. Justice Robert Sharpe and Susan Binnie gave me legal references and advice. I am particularly grateful to Justice James MacPherson, who invited me to speak to the Ontario Court of Appeal study day, where I met Professor Jim Phillips, editor-in-chief at the Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History. Professor Phillips’s encouragement (“The law is
part
of social history; it reflects and incorporates contemporary social values”), his insights into the “unwritten law” defence, and his rigorous review system have helped make this a better book.
Frank Jones, author of
Master and Maid
, generously shared the information and insights he had gathered while writing his novel about the Carrie Davies case. I am truly in his debt. Vincent Tovell helped me understand the Massey side of the story. I am also grateful to Dr. Sandy Campbell, Dr. Duncan McDowall, Dr. Tim Cook, Dr. Norman Hillmer, and Rosemarie Tovell, who carefully read some or all of the manuscript, suggested further dimensions of the story, corrected my more egregious errors (those that remain are entirely mine), and offered encouragement. Dr. Naomi Griffiths and Monique Begin gave me a sense of the challenges facing twentieth-century feminists. Thanks are due to friends who cheer me on: Patricia Potts, Maureen Boyd, Cathy Beehan, Wendy Bryans, Judith Moses, and Julie Jacobson.
Special thanks go to editor and publisher Phyllis Bruce, who championed this book from the start, and as usual provided extraordinarily constructive counsel on how to amplify and strengthen my first draft. I am grateful to the team at HarperCollins Canada, who shepherded the book to publication, particularly my editor, Jennifer Lambert—a pleasure to work with—and Noelle Zitzer, Lloyd Davis, Tilman Lewis, Alan
Jones, Greg Tabor, Maylene Loveland, and Dawn Huck. My agent, Hilary McMahon at Westwood Creative Artists, was helpful at every stage of the process.
My husband, George Anderson, remains my most rigorous and supportive reader, with a gimlet eye for clichés.
Finally, I am grateful to the Office of Cultural Affairs in the City of Ottawa and to the Canada Council of the Arts for financial assistance. Without their continued support for writers, Canada would be diminished in ways that most of us would recognize only when it is too late.
Charlotte Gray
, one of Canada’s preeminent biographers and historians, has won many awards for her work, including the prestigious Pierre Berton Award for a body of historical writing, the Edna Staebler Award for Creative Non-Fiction, the Ottawa Book Award, and the CAA Birks Family Foundation Award for Biography. Her nine books have brought our past to life. A member of the Order of Canada, Gray was a panellist for the 2013 edition of CBC Radio’s Canada Reads. She lives in Ottawa.
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