The Massey Murder Read online

  Dewart wanted to cross-examine Bert’s imperious sister-in-law, Mary Ethel Massey, about Carrie’s illness the previous summer on Toronto Island, which Mrs. Massey had described in such detail to the Evening Telegram. The coroner’s inquest was the only chance he might get to do this before the case went to court. But evidence about Carrie’s state of mind was not strictly relevant to a coroner’s inquest, which was only concerned with the facts of Massey’s death. And Dr. Arthur Jukes Johnson rarely allowed irrelevancies when he presided over inquests. Addressing the coroner with exaggerated deference, Dewart said, “No one is better acquainted with the details of medical jurisprudence than Your Honour. No one understands better the bearing that matters of this kind might have on the subsequent disposition of the case.” Dewart’s unctuous tone worked; Dr. Johnson gave permission for Mrs. Massey to be called. The fact that Bert Massey’s sister-in-law was present suggests that she half-expected to be called, and was eager to promote the Massey version of events.

  Mary Ethel Massey, dressed in black, bustled up to the witness stand and stared unblinkingly at the Crown attorney, who was conducting the examination of witnesses. As soon as Greer began his questions, she launched into an account of Carrie’s behaviour on that hot July night of 1914 that was even more spectacular than the description she had given the Tely’s Archie Fisher. Carrie was “pulling at her hair, and trying to bite her hands, and scratching at her neck and tearing her clothes, and then she would be quiet for a little while, and then she would start up again, and she kept calling something about her father all the time … Sometimes she would have a queer look in her eyes, [a] sort of glassy stare in her eyes. Sometimes her eyes would close, then she would be quiet.” This behaviour apparently continued for hours, Mrs. Massey told the court, adding that she herself had helped hold the maid down as Carrie tried to “tear with her hands and claw at her neck.” A Dr. Harris from the Sick Children’s Hospital was summoned, and he used a stomach pump. When Greer asked if Carrie had hurt herself, Mrs. Massey declared that “her neck was all marked, and she would pull out some of her hair.”

  Greer asked Mrs. Massey if there had been other occasions when she had noticed something peculiar about Carrie’s behaviour. Hartley Dewart must have suppressed a smile as she made a statement that reeked of condescension. “I noticed once or twice a peculiar look in her face,” the woman replied. “I thought, ‘Oh well, probably some of these English girls look funny when they come out here.’” The effect of this dismissive answer on the crowded courtroom was noticeable.

  The coroner thanked Mary Ethel Massey for appearing, and she sailed out of the room. The jury had not warmed to her. Dr. Norman MacLaurin, who had called at the Massey cottage the day after the incident, described how he found Carrie on her bed curled up in a tight little ball. Despite his efforts to turn her over, she refused to talk or be examined. As far as he could see, Carrie was in good health, with no abnormal symptoms. Two days later, she was a little more responsive, but only after extensive questioning did she mutter something about “worrying about her people in the Old Country.” A member of the jury who had paid careful attention to Mrs. Massey’s testimony asked, “I would like to know if the Doctor found any scratches on Miss Davies’ chest? On the night, Mrs. Massey said she scratched her neck and chest. Was there any loose hair to be found?” Dr. MacLaurin shook his head. “No, I found no loose hair. As to the scratches, I’m afraid I do not remember actually that.”

  Dewart now called another witness—a witness that nobody was expecting and who was not happy to have been subpoenaed, although he had been a close friend of Bert’s and had acted as a pallbearer four days earlier. A well-dressed man in his early forties, John L. Hynes lived at 106 Walmer Road, a few doors down from the Masseys. When he gave his name, the clerk spelled it “Heintz.” Dewart asked him when he had last seen Mr. Massey; Hynes replied that Massey had been at a family dinner party at the Hynes’s house on the Sunday prior to the shooting and hadn’t gone home until 1:45 a.m. on the morning of Monday, the day he was shot. Asked if Massey had been drinking that evening, Hynes said he hadn’t.

  Then Dewart asked him about another party, two days earlier, at Massey’s house—a dinner for ten people where Carrie had done all the serving. Fixing a cold eye on Hynes, the lawyer asked, “Was there any person who was conducting themselves abnormally that evening?” Hynes shrugged. “I would not say so.”

  Dewart pressed on. “Do you not recollect there were some persons who were under the influence of liquor whom Miss Davies had to serve that night?”

  Dr. Johnson interrupted to question the relevance of this question to a coroner’s inquest. Dewart replied, “I want to show that these conditions existed, because I want to show that this is the pivot around which this thing swings.” When the coroner gave an impatient nod, Dewart turned back to Hynes and repeated the question. John Hynes tried to laugh it off. “It’s a matter of what you mean by being under the influence of liquor.” Dr. Johnson immediately announced that this answer was enough, and Hynes walked back to his seat as fast as he could.

  Carrie’s lawyer had achieved exactly what he wanted. His questions to Inspector Kennedy had suggested that Carrie’s statement was only part of the story: the girl had been given no opportunity to explain her conduct in her own words. In addition, Mary Ethel Massey’s descriptions of Carrie’s “fit” had sounded not only snobbish but also suspiciously exaggerated to make it sound like an epileptic seizure. And a whiff of dissipation now clung to Bert Massey after John Hynes’s evasions. Dewart had raised doubts in the minds of spectators and reporters. Was there more to this story than simple, cold-blooded murder?

  But Dr. Jukes Johnson was exasperated by what he considered extraneous information being dragged into his court. It was already after 10 p.m., and the temperature outside was rapidly falling below freezing. The courtroom door kept swinging open and shut, letting in drafts, as newspapermen left so they could file before deadline. The chief coroner could not have been clearer, or more impatient, as he instructed the jury.

  He began his remarks by telling jurors to ignore all the stories about Carrie’s “fit” the previous summer. “The matter is absolutely immaterial to you, whether these were attacks of smallpox or hysteria or insanity or hives or anything else. You have nothing to do with that. It does not matter what either her physical or her mental condition was at the time of shooting.

  “You are to consider the evidence that you have heard, and you are to form out of that evidence the answer that you are to give, and that answer is as to when, where, how and by what means the deceased, Charles A. Massey, came to his death …

  “There is no question as to when this occurred. There is no question as to where it occurred, and there is no question as to how and by what means it occurred. The evidence is perfectly plain. You may say to yourselves, ‘What was the motive?’ Well, I do not think that that need bother you. A person does not commit murder without a motive … It does not matter whether a person stood on his head and shot him, or stood on his feet and shot him. It does not matter whether they were sane or insane. Insane people commit murders, and sane people commit them. Therefore, take all that out of your mind, the question of sanity or insanity.”

  After such clear instructions, the jury did not take long to reach its decision. At 10:40 p.m., foreman James Burford led the jury back into the room, and then read the verdict. “We find that Charles A. Massey came to his death on February 8, 1915, as a result of a pistol shot which we, the jury, believe was fired by Carrie Davies, and that the aforesaid Carrie Davies did feloniously and with malice aforethought kill and slay the said Charles A. Massey.”

  “Feloniously and with malice …” The coroner’s jury had decided that Bert Massey had been deliberately killed, and that Carrie Davies should be charged with the murder. Dewart and Maw knew this meant the police court would confirm the murder charge, which would then be heard in front of a different jury in Ontario’s top trial court. Thanks to the Toront
o Daily Star and the Evening Telegram, both Bert Massey and Carrie Davies would also be tried in the court of public opinion. But Carrie herself understood little of this as she was hustled across the Don River, back to the prison hospital.

  { CHAPTER 9 }

  “Well-Dressed Women Who Might Find Better Things to Do …”

  TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 16

  SPECTER OF STARVATION STALKS IN KAISERLAND PEOPLE ALREADY ON HALF RATIONS OF BREAD … GERMANY GROWS DESPERATE THROUGH THE LACK OF FOOD STRONG IN A MILITARY SENSE, BUT WEAK IN MEANS OF LIVING MENINGITIS ATTACKS TWO SOLDIERS AT CAMP

  … HAMILTON MAN DEAD PATRICIAS IN ANOTHER FIGHT NEAR ST. ELOI?

  —Toronto Daily Star, Tuesday, February 16, 1915

  HAS THE GOVT. TAKEN HAND IN CARRIE DAVIES’ CASE? FROM THE CORONER’S REMARKS IT LOOKED AS THOUGH SHE MIGHT NEVER GET A TRIAL DR. BEEMER OF MIMICO ASYLUM WAS “ALSO PRESENT” BEDFORDSHIRE ASSOCIATION JOINS IN THE DEFENCE WOMEN SWARM TO SEE GIRL RECORD CROWD ALMOST STORMS CORRIDORS.

  —Evening Telegram, Tuesday, February 16, 1915

  The following morning, you couldn’t see an inch of the terrazzo tiles on the floors of City Hall, the crowd was so thick. The police were furious. “Clear away that mob of women,” ordered the sergeant. “You’d think it was a circus.” He fought his way through the throng of hatless girls, furred and expensively gowned matrons, street urchins, and young male idlers who jammed the corridor from City Hall’s main entrance, up the staircase, as far as the door to the Women’s Court. Many of them had no idea where the case would be heard, and they called out to each other for directions, their voices producing a deafening roar that echoed through City Hall’s lofty corridors. Three constables did their best to clear a path through the crowd as Magistrate Denison made his way up the marble stairs.

  After a few hours’ sleep, Carrie Davies was returned to the Women’s Court to be formally charged. Today’s furor made the excitement at City Hall the previous week look like a Quaker meeting. Court watchers had burst into the second-floor courtroom as soon as the solid wooden doors were opened, and then crammed onto the spectators’ benches, many of them protesting that they were “so sorry for the poor girl.” Denison, who could never resist an audience, announced he would admit another fifty women onlookers. These newcomers now stood behind the prisoners’ bench.

  At a table just below Magistrate Denison sat Hartley Dewart, along with his clerk, T.C. Robinette; they were among the few men allowed into the courtroom. Dewart affected an attitude of nonchalant confidence as he glanced through his papers. Carrie’s sister Maud (“almost broken down over the affair,” according to the Tely) was not present, nor were any members of the Massey family.

  Crammed into a couple of benches on Denison’s left sat a clutch of women reporters—an unusual sight, given that newspapers had only recently begun to employ women as anything other than secretaries to the editors. From the 1890s onwards, editors of big-city papers had grudgingly allowed a few women into their newsrooms. The reason for female hires was nothing to do with gender equality, and everything to do with economics; Eaton’s and Simpsons department stores would buy half-page advertisements for household goods, fashions, and daily specials if they were placed opposite pages geared to a female readership. The Globe’s women’s section was called “Women at Work and at Play,” the Evening Telegram’s was “For the Woman of Today.” Female journalists catalogued notices of weddings and society events and churned out articles on kitchen tips, fashions, and beauty treatments. The implicit message of the women’s pages was that matching dishes and dainty linen were every reader’s priority. “Sandwiches should always be made as short a time as possible before being used,” was a typical tip. Fashion advice was equally lacklustre: “Many women will rejoice to hear that one of the smartest French dressmakers has advanced a new suit with skirt not more than two yards wide.” Nevertheless, the number of women reporters crept up, and by 1911 sixty-nine women listed their occupation as “journalist” on the federal census.

  Women in newsrooms knew that, almost to a man, their editors shared the general prejudice against women professionals. A few women elbowed their way into hard news; at Toronto’s Mail and Empire, Marjory MacMurchy had a column called “Politics for Women.” Even the old-fashioned Tely had a feisty and determined woman who had broken out of the pink ghetto: in 1912, Mary Dawson Snider managed to win an exclusive interview with the Titanic survivors. (It did not hurt that her husband, Jerry Snider, who encouraged her ambitions, was the Tely’s city editor.) But most newspaperwomen found themselves in a peculiar position. While they themselves were adventurous and open-minded, their work required them to promote the idea that marriage and motherhood were a woman’s true calling.

  However, women like Kathleen Coleman from Toronto’s Mail and Empire, Robertine Barry from Le Journal de Françoise, Grace Denison from Saturday Night, and the Tely’s own Mary Dawson Snider, were forceful characters who were not going to let a few curmudgeons shut them out of political, business, and financial reporting. Coleman, Barry, Denison, and Dawson were among the sixteen Canadian women (eight writing in English, eight in French) who had been invited by the Canadian Pacific Railway to travel to the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair on the CPR so they could file reports home. George Ham, the CPR’s jovial publicity director who organized the trip and travelled with them, nicknamed the group the “Sweet Sixteen,” although he acknowledged that some of them “didn’t think they were [sweet].” On the journey home, the women decided to establish the Canadian Women’s Press Club. Kit Coleman had remarked to a young reader a few weeks earlier that she thought women ought to form an association: “Why should Canadian men journalists have all the trips and banquets?”

  But Coleman wrote in a more serious vein when she described the new association in a column: “The heart and object of the club is to bring together and make known to each other the women who are working on various newspapers in the Dominion, that we may be friendly and helpful to one another in the work.” The club grew and prospered: by 1915, membership stood at over three hundred and it included two bestselling authors—Lucy Maud Montgomery (a friend of Marjory MacMurchy’s) and Nellie McClung, a westerner preoccupied with the suffrage campaign. The club’s constitution proclaimed its high-minded goals, which included “mutual sympathy” and a commitment to “maintain and improve the status of journalism as a profession for women.” Marjory MacMurchy made the same point in a spirited address to the collected potentates of the Canadian Press Association, when she addressed their annual meeting in 1910: “The conduct of a social page, a beauty department or a section on home adornment did not exhaust the possibilities of a newspaper woman.” The camaraderie was a welcome relief for club members, who had nowhere else to share the problems of being a small minority in newsrooms filled with competitive men, some of whom were the stereotypical foul-mouthed drinkers of popular culture, and many of whom resented the newcomers.

  But there was one arena in which female reporters could monopolize a front-page story: the Toronto Women’s Court. Thanks to the Women’s Court ban on male onlookers, only women were welcome in the court’s press box. This outraged reporters like Archie Fisher and Harry M. Wodson: Wodson spoke for many when he dismissed women reporters as “fluttering lady scribes.” He accused them of writing maudlin and misleading reports in order to elicit reader sympathy for “the diseased figure of a fallen angel.” Newspaper articles in this era, whether written by men or women, were usually anonymous. But on the day that Carrie made her second appearance in the Women’s Court, Helen Ball of the Toronto Daily News was given a byline.

  The turmoil at City Hall when Carrie Davies made her second appearance shocked Ball. “The scene in the court, and in the corridors leading to it, was one of the most disgusting in the history of Toronto,” she wrote for that day’s paper. “Mobs of curious men and women packed the passages … Many of the women were well-dressed and evidently of the ‘upper’ stratum of society: but they pushed and jostled with the re
st, intent on satisfying a more or less morbid curiosity.

  “It was an excessively unpleasant picture of women, well-dressed women who might find better things to do than fight to get in where they might see a girl who had shot a fellow-being, hoping to hear the unhappy story of what had led her to such extremities.”

  Denison banged his gavel ferociously. Once the hubbub had died down, he gave a brisk nod and the sturdy figure of Police Constable Minty entered the court, followed by a line of women. Carrie was third in line as the women shuffled along the prisoners’ bench. Ball noted her shabby coat and battered black hat, “with its pink ostrich tips.” But Ball remained the cold-blooded reporter as she marvelled that a girl so normal in appearance should be accused of such a “horrible crime.” Although she had editorialized about the crush outside the court, and suspected there was an “unhappy story” that had compelled Carrie to shoot Bert Massey, once in the press box she simply recorded the proceedings. Back among the guys at the News, where the editorial line was already anti-Carrie, it would not do to look “soft” on the eighteen-year-old accused. The class barrier between educated women like Ball and servants like Carrie was an even higher hurdle than the gender barrier between male and female reporters. Ball would have jeopardized her own professional status if she crossed it.

  Denison dealt quickly with the first two cases, and then a court official barked, “Carrie Davies.” A buzz of excitement erupted: spectators craned forward as Carrie stepped towards the Beak’s desk. She appeared composed, “but much whiter than on her first appearance, and her eyes had a look of terror in them.” Clasping and unclasping her hands, from time to time she sent desperate looks of appeal to Miss Carmichael.

  The proceedings were so routine that the eager mob of onlookers was bitterly frustrated. The salacious details of how Carrie was nearly “ruined,” revealed the previous night at the coroner’s inquest, were not mentioned. In the Women’s Court, the verdict from the coroner’s jury was read, and only two witnesses were called: Sergeant Brown, who had been first on the scene of the crime, and the paper boy Ernest Pelletier, who identified Carrie as the woman who had fired the gun. The Crown attorney briskly announced that this evidence, along with the decision from the coroner’s inquest, was “all we need to commit her for trial.” Mr. Maw announced that the prisoner would plead not guilty. Happy to proceed at his usual gallop, Colonel Denison snapped that there would be no bail: the prisoner would return to jail. Once again, Carrie was led out of court without having uttered a word. Disappointed onlookers edged towards the door. The case would now move to the Ontario Supreme Court, High Court Division (today’s Ontario Superior Court), which sat on the ground floor of City Hall, in an imposing, high-ceilinged room. It could be days, weeks, or even months before Carrie was summoned to face the charge of murder.