The Massey Murder (18 page)

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 rest, 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.

But the publisher and editor of the
Evening Telegram
had no intention of letting the case languish. John Ross Robertson and Black Jack Robinson were busy on two different fronts on Carrie’s behalf.

The
Tely
’s first priority was to shoot holes in the Massey claim that Carrie was unbalanced. The Masseys’ motives were obvious. If the court decided that the young woman was unfit to stand trial by reason of insanity, she would be locked away in an asylum until she became “fit” (if ever). In the unlikely event that she was declared fit, she might then have to go back and stand trial for murder. Meanwhile, Bert Massey’s behaviour would not get a public airing.

The paper had already carried a story berating its competitors (particularly the
News
) for declaring that Carrie was subject to monthly fits of severe depression. The
Tely
’s headline over that story was “Slide to Asylum via Trial by Newspaper.” Now, immediately after Carrie’s appearance in the Women’s Court, the
Tely
published an article with
the headline “Has the Govt. Taken Hand in Carrie Davies’ Case? From the Coroner’s Remarks It Looked as Though She Might Never Get a Trial.” As far as the
Tely
was concerned, Dr. Beemer’s presence at the coroner’s inquest was clear proof that the Masseys were pulling strings. The article claimed that Dr. Johnson had told the coroner’s jury, “Before her trial is arranged, the Government will probably see fit to order some enquiry into her mental condition. It will largely depend on that investigation whether she will ever be tried.”

The day after the coroner’s inquest, the
Tely
’s Archie Fisher cornered Dr. Johnson and questioned him about this statement. Dr. Johnson denied making it (it does not appear in the official transcript, and no other paper reported such remarks). The coroner tried to shoulder aside the scruffy reporter, but Archie wasn’t going to be brushed off. “Have you had any orders from the Government or spoken to the Attorney General concerning Carrie Davies’s sanity?” Dr. Johnson insisted that no such conversation had taken place. He explained that it was normal practice for the government to appoint experts “in all cases where a person’s sanity is questioned.” Archie ostentatiously scribbled down every word in his dog-eared notebook as he persisted: “Did you know that Dr. Beemer of the Mimico Hospital for the Insane was present at the inquest?” Dr. Johnson admitted he saw him there, but denied that he represented the government. “I suppose he was there to get a line on the case.” Whatever the coroner said, a
Tely
reader could not escape Archie’s spin—that the government and the Masseys had ganged up on Carrie Davies in the interests of preserving the Massey reputation. Nor could the reader be satisfied that all the facts were on the table, because Archie made that clear, too. “It was clearly established that what the girl said was not her story of all that has happened. She only answered the questions asked her.”

It was no coincidence that the
Evening Telegram
’s account of the coroner’s inquest echoed all the points Hartley Dewart had made. Dewart
had not spent twenty-eight years at the Canadian bar without knowing the importance of perception. He had a smart young law student named Arthur Roebuck working in his office, and he quietly instructed Roebuck to keep in close touch with the
Telegram
’s city editor, Jerry Snider. Snider, in turn, had daily meetings with Black Jack. A quiet word to a reporter … a quick note sent over to the
Tely
office on King Street … and a reply to Dewart’s law office on Adelaide Street. Dewart and Black Jack were manipulating public opinion in unison. And Black Jack was not acting alone. “Nothing was ever done at
The Telegram
without Robertson’s approval,” according to Ron Poulton, John Ross Robertson’s biographer. “He engineered Carrie Davies’ defence because she was a lone figure against a member of The Establishment, just as he had been.”

The
Tely
’s second tactic to save Carrie was the public fundraising campaign that Black Jack and Robertson had dreamed up a couple of days earlier. The letter from “Fair Play,” the paper announced, “has produced many others of similar strain.” The
Tely
orchestrated an outpouring of sympathy for Carrie, publishing every letter that offered support. “I can assure you in the east end district where the poor girl spent so many happy days, the public would be pleased to assist,” wrote “Justice,” who went on to describe the eighteen-year-old as “a very bright and cheerful girl, and at no time … ever known to have epileptic fits … I was in her company a good many times. We are ready to come forward to give any assistance it is possible to give.”

Henry A. Ashmead of 16 Belmont Street was more explicit: “The suggestion of your correspondent ‘Fair Play’ that a subscription should be taken up to defray the expenses of counsel engaged in the defence of Carrie Davies is a very good one.”

And an anonymous “Irish-Canadian” begged to know how he could help save the “poor orphan girl” from “the mad house.” “I would be pleased to contribute to help this young girl, who is probably the
sole support of her poor widowed mother in the old land in her efforts to keep the body and soul of her small family together, in her fight to obtain justice under the flag that her father fought and died for.”

“Fair Play of Waverley Road” turned out to be a Mrs. J.W. Drummond, who dropped her
nom-de-plume
and told the
Tely
that “the girl was only eighteen years of age and it could hardly be expected that a girl at that age would use the mature judgement of a man of forty [sic], nor have the financial resources necessary to prove, first her sanity and second, her innocence of the crime with which she is charged … Every person I have been speaking to feels the same as I do and is willing to assist in any way they can towards helping her. I would be quite ready to start a fund myself among my own friends.”

Were these letters real? Who knows. But thanks to the
Evening Telegram
, momentum built for a Carrie Davies Defence Fund. The main beneficiary of the fund would inevitably be Carrie’s lawyer—and the
Tely
’s ally—Hartley Dewart. But the newspaper put more emphasis on other, more poignant uses—uses that might open sympathizers’ purses. “May Have to Bring Mother to Save Girl from Gallows,” read a headline in Monday morning’s paper. But who should establish the fund? One correspondent suggested either Toronto veterans or the Sons of England, a benevolent society founded in Toronto in 1874 with goals dear to the hearts of the
Evening Telegram
’s owner and editor—to assist needy Protestants from England and to promote the British monarchy. Another correspondent urged the newspaper itself to organize the fund.

How much did Carrie’s mother, back in Bedfordshire, know about the murder case gripping Toronto? Since she almost certainly did not have a telephone, and two weeks had elapsed since Bert Massey’s death before news of the case was featured in the British press, the answer is probably nothing. No matter. What could be more wrenching for
Tely
readers than the image of the blind and grieving mother, helpless on the wrong side of the Atlantic?