Authors: Charlotte Gray
At eleven o’clock, two policemen shouldered their way through the crowd, unlocked the door, and tried to control the surge of people. Carrie’s sister Maud Fairchild was given a reserved seat behind the bar at the front of the court; her husband, Ed, was going to be called as a witness, so he did not join her. Reporters quickly crammed into the press box and searched the crowd for familiar faces. There appeared to be no Massey present: Rhoda Massey, Bert’s widow, was still in seclusion in her brother-in-law’s Admiral Road house. The smooth young lawyer, Arthur Thomson, was probably in court, but the press made no
note of his presence. Proceedings were now out of Massey hands, and no Massey had been called as a witness.
Newspaper artists took out pads and pencils, ready to catch the likenesses of all the main players. As soon as the public benches were full, the police barred the way to everybody else. Once the crowd of three hundred spectators was settled, the prisoner was led to the dock from an entrance close to the judge’s dais accompanied by two escorts: Miss Minty, from the Toronto Police, and a Salvation Army matron.
When Carrie Davies appeared, there was a crescendo of whispered comments; spectators close to the press box watched the newspaper artists sketching furiously. Next, the jury and the two legal teams filed in. Crown prosecutor Edward Du Vernet and Carrie’s defence lawyer, Hartley Dewart, both tall, thin men with bony faces and bald heads, looked like a pair of vultures in their black silk robes. Du Vernet sat at the table facing the chief justice and the court reporter to the right of the dais; Dewart, accompanied by Henry Maw, sat to the judge’s left. Before Dewart sat down, he smiled at his client, took her hand, and asked how she was. Carrie’s reply was audible to reporters: “All right.”
For Du Vernet and Dewart, the courtroom was as familiar as their offices and clubs. But for Carrie, this court was even more nerve-rackingly formal than either Colonel Denison’s police court or the coroner’s inquest. Spectators and lawyers rose to their feet as Chief Justice William Mulock, in flowing robes, swept in. Placing his hands on his elevated desk, he cast an unsmiling eye over the crowded courtroom as the clerk of the court read aloud the formulaic statement that had opened judicial hearings in English law courts for centuries: “Oyez, oyez, oyez. Anyone having business before the King’s Justice of the Assize Court, attend now and you shall be heard. Long live the King!” Once the crowd was seated and hushed, Mulock called for the jury to be admitted.
The court clerk rose and read out the formal indictment. “Caroline Anne Davies, you are charged that on the eighth day of February this year, you murdered Charles Albert Massey. How say you, are you guilty or not guilty?”
Dewart sprung out of his chair: “Not guilty.”
For the next two days, two different versions of Bert Massey’s death, and the circumstances surrounding it, would be batted back and forth across the courtroom. Which was closest to the truth? Only the opinions of the twelve members of the jury mattered, but everybody watching the proceedings made their judgments. Reporters and editors played their role in spinning the story. The
Toronto Daily Star
and the
Toronto Daily News
paid closest attention to prosecution counsel Du Vernet’s arguments, while the
Evening Telegram
devoted pages to defence counsel Hartley Dewart’s questions and commentary. (An advance copy of Dewart’s address to the jury was probably slipped to the
Tely
, since its coverage was so exhaustive.)
Initially, all observers agreed that Carrie looked anxious (who wouldn’t be, facing a murder charge?), but while allies within the press saw a young woman at risk, others remarked on her composure. The
Star
noted, “When she was placed in the dock, a faint smile played about her mouth. She was pale and painfully nervous, but bore up with a perfectly blank expression in her eyes while the jurors were sworn in to take her fate in their hands.” The
Globe
described her as “looking a trifle pale, but calm and self-possessed.” The
Toronto Daily News
reported that she looked “anything but jaunty or confident … Her clothes were plain and not exactly up to the latest fashion, in fact she was far from being attractively dressed … She smiled only once.”
Hartley Dewart had already shaped the jury he wanted during the jury selection process by objecting to eight of the men who had been called as potential jurors. On what grounds he objected, and whether Du Vernet made any objections, was never reported. But thanks to
Dewart’s careful choices, most of those selected lived outside downtown Toronto and all were well into middle age. There were no Bert Massey clones—businessmen in their thirties—on the jury. The final list included George Robbins (gardener), John Oldham (farmer), Samuel Miller (farmer), George Foster (farmer), William Webster (plasterer), Newman Wagstaff (machinist), Fred W. Carter (farmer), John Molloy (farmer), Arthur Pherrill (farmer), Chauncey Walker (tailor), Jerome Campbell (farmer), and James Johnstone (farmer). There was a disproportionate number of farmers for a city trial—in fact, it could have been a roll call from a rural jury in Carrie’s Bedfordshire hometown.
Dressed in their Sunday suits, and uncomfortable in the formality of the court, the men stared uneasily at the eager throng of spectators and the white-faced prisoner. They were Carrie’s social peers—as opposed to the lawyers, magistrate, newspaper editors, and Masseys who had, until this minute, controlled Carrie’s fate in both the legal system and the press. None of the jury members had studied together at Osgoode Hall, mingled with each other at the National or Toronto Club, met at society weddings at St. James’ Cathedral or the Metropolitan Methodist Church, or visited each other’s summer homes in Muskoka or the Kawarthas. The court rituals were as unfamiliar to them as they were to Carrie.
After the court clerk had read the murder charge, Carrie’s lawyer rose and asked the chief justice if the prisoner might leave the dock and sit at the defence counsel’s table. Dewart knew this would remind a sympathetic crowd of Carrie’s youthful vulnerability, even though he also knew what the judge’s answer would be. Sure enough, Mulock curtly replied that, because she was charged with a capital offence, “it cannot be done.”
Next, Edward Du Vernet rose and opened the Crown’s case against the accused. Like Hartley Dewart, Du Vernet had considered his arguments carefully. Extensive newspaper coverage and intense public interest
meant he must tread a narrow line. He had to avoid any appearance of undue harshness towards the eighteen-year-old immigrant, all the while pressing the Crown’s murder charge. She had, after all, killed a man. So he turned to the jury and informed them that this case was “the most unpleasant duty I have had to perform during my career, to prosecute this young girl for murder. But I must do my duty and you must do yours. I want you to take your impressions of the details of this case solely from the witnesses. I want you to be like pieces of white blotting paper which have had no imprint. You must put aside all the ideas of the case which you have already formed and you must forget the opinions you have heard outside. You must not think of the articles concerning this case which you have read in the newspapers.”
Finally, Du Vernet pinpointed the question that he wanted the jury to answer: Was there sufficient justification for Carrie’s act? “It is not a question whether Mr. Charles Albert Massey was killed or if Carrie Davies killed him.” Like Dewart, Du Vernet knew the jury would shrink from sending Carrie to the gallows. He read out sections from the Criminal Code that permitted the charge to be reduced from murder to manslaughter if sudden provocation was proved, or in cases of self-defence. But he also declared, “Life is sacred, and the law says any person who takes another’s life is always held accountable.”
“Many men may go a certain distance and not want to break the law,” the Crown prosecutor said. Carrie had fled 169 Walmer Road after Bert Massey had made his fumbling assault, but she had returned the same night. “It seems that Mr. Massey did her no physical injury. Nothing was accomplished by him. He did not really assault her. It was not a serious offence for him to kiss her, although he should not have done so.”
After minimizing Bert’s offence, Du Vernet suggested that Carrie had carefully planned her attack on him. “There was a great deal of deliberation in all this. The girl takes this weapon; she puts five bullets
into it. She goes downstairs. The man has not yet come in. She sees him on the street. She fires and he says, ‘Oh!’ She’s missed him. There wouldn’t be much inclination for a man to enter the house after that. But apparently she’s not satisfied. She fires a second shot, which kills him. The assault that the girl spoke of took place on the previous day: it took all that time to formulate the plan which ended in the alleged murder.”
Du Vernet tried to dilute the salacious aspects of the case by pointing out that, if this case had involved two men, the jury would have no difficulty in deciding on the verdict—it was a cowardly murder because the killer was armed and had planned the assault, and the victim was unarmed and taken by surprise. But he acknowledged that this case was different. “You must judge whether the girl was insulted. It is too bad that Mr. Massey is not here to state his side of the case. He has been called to a Higher Judge.”
The Crown counsel recognized that Carrie had been provoked. But she had not acted in the heat of the moment when she shot her employer. In Carrie’s favour, she had sought outside advice from her brother-in-law, who had advised her to return to Walmer Road but to be careful. This was probably the wrong advice, Du Vernet suggested, but it didn’t excuse the death.
“If all this is true,” Du Vernet concluded, “it seems to me that the death sentence would be rather severe. Give the benefit of the doubt to this girl as far as you can under your oaths.” Manslaughter, he implied, was the appropriate verdict. But the law was the law, and a man was dead.
Crown prosecutor Du Vernet then called eight witnesses to confirm the details of the shooting. Spectators fidgeted as the mundane details of Bert Massey’s death and subsequent events, all of which had been reported after the coroner’s inquest, were once again trotted out. The newsboy, Ernest Pelletier, described hearing the shots just after his encounter with Massey. Sergeant Lawrence Brown repeated his account of Carrie’s arrest, and Mrs. Nesbitt and Miss Beatrice Dinnis,
the two women who had been walking down Walmer Road, described what they had witnessed. The medical evidence was given by Dr. John Mitchell, the physician who had pronounced Bert dead, and by Dr. J.E. Elliott, who had performed the post-mortem. There was an upsurge of interest when Dr. Elliott produced the small glass bottle containing the bullet that had killed Bert Massey. The twelve jurors inspected it with intense curiosity while spectators craned forward to catch a glimpse of the macabre object.
Carrie’s lawyer, Dewart, cross-examined Dr. Elliott, and asked him whether the first or second bullet would have killed Massey. “He must have been facing the direction the bullet came from,” replied the doctor, leading him to believe it must have been the first bullet that entered the chest, then caused the rupture of Massey’s heart. Du Vernet’s assertion that Carrie had missed the first time, so continued firing, did not fit the medical evidence. Dr. Elliott explained, “I think he would probably have lived for ten seconds”—enough time, Dewart ascertained, for him to stumble back to the Walmer Road sidewalk. The second bullet must have gone wide and been lost in the street.
Justice Mulock announced the court would adjourn for lunch and meet again at two o’clock. Spectators reluctantly left their seats, and the court clerk locked the door. By five minutes to two, according to the
Evening Telegram
, a “throng of people … struggled and fought and resisted the police in their efforts to get admission to the Assize Court … the wide corridors outside were blocked with people. When the doors were opened, the rush to get seats almost overpowered the strong force of police on duty, and reinforcements had to be summoned to press back the throng.”
The afternoon began with Crown prosecutor Du Vernet calling Inspector Kennedy as a witness, with the stolid policeman once again reading in a monotone the answers that Carrie had given him during the interview at Court Street police station on the night of Massey’s
death. The Crown’s final witness was Joseph Pearson, who had been staying with his grandmother that evening and had been amongst the first to reach the body. The Crown spared fourteen-year-old Charlie, Bert and Rhoda’s son, from the ordeal of giving evidence. The facts of Bert Massey’s untimely death were not in dispute; Charlie could have added nothing. This closed the case for the Crown, and Edward Du Vernet sat down.
When Hartley Dewart rose to give arguments for the defence, a ripple of excitement ran through the court as the lawyer adjusted his gown and leaned towards the judge. As yet, he had not shown his hand. So far, his client had been a sad, silent figure in a shabby coat who had uttered barely two words in public since she had killed a man. What evidence was Dewart going to produce to justify a plea of not guilty?
Dewart’s first witness was Dr. A.J. Harrington. Nobody was surprised that the defence led off with medical evidence; the shock came when he gave evidence about Carrie’s physical, and not her mental, state. Dr. Harrington told the court that he had examined the prisoner the previous day. With a grave face, and a theatrical sense of timing, Dewart asked him what he had found.
“I have no doubt that she is a virgin,” Dr. Harrington replied.
Dewart pressed on: “Were you alone in the examination?”
“Dr. Duncan Anderson was associated with me,” Dr. Harrington informed the court.
Hartley Dewart asked his witness if Dr. Anderson agreed with him that Carrie’s hymen was intact.
“Quite,” Dr. Harrington stated.
Today, such evidence would probably not be allowed in court. But in 1915, the evidence was a bombshell. As Dewart had anticipated,
Carrie’s virginity elevated her to the moral high ground. Everybody in court that day knew immediately that Carrie’s sexual innocence was as good as an alibi. Now, judge, jurors, and spectators would screen all subsequent evidence and argument through the lens of her purity.