The Massey Murder

A Maid, Her Master and the Trial that Shocked a Country

Charlotte Gray

• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN:
  9781443436427
• eBook ISBN:
  9781443409254
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: History

A Globe and Mail Top 100 Book of the Year

An Amazon Top 100 Book of the Year

Shortlisted for the RBC Taylor Prize

Longlisted for the BC National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction

A scandalous crime, a sensational trial, a surprise verdict—the true story of Carrie Davies, the maid who shot a Massey

In February 1915, a member of one of Canada's wealthiest families was shot and killed on the front porch of his home in Toronto as he was returning from work. Carrie Davies, an 18-year-old domestic servant, quickly confessed. But who was the victim here? Charles "Bert" Massey, a scion of a famous family, or the frightened, perhaps mentally unstable Carrie, a penniless British immigrant? When the brilliant lawyer Hartley Dewart, QC, took on her case, his grudge against the powerful Masseys would fuel a dramatic trial that pitted the old order against the new, wealth and privilege against virtue and honest hard work. Set against a backdrop of the Great War in Europe and the changing face of a nation, this sensational crime is brought to vivid life for the first time.

As in her previous bestselling book, Gold Diggers—which was made into a Discovery Channel miniseries entitled "Klondike"—multi-award-winning historian and biographer Charlotte Gray has created a captivating narrative rich in detail and brimming with larger-than-life personalities, as she shines a light on a central moment in our past.

{PART ONE}

The Story

{CHAPTER 1}

Bang!

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 8, 1915

Charles Albert Massey sauntered away from the new Dupont streetcar station, heading west into the chilly dusk. Most of a recent snowfall had been shovelled off the sidewalk by Toronto’s Public Works department, which meant that heaped banks of dirty snow protected pedestrians from cars, horse-drawn carriages, and delivery trucks. Dupont was a teeming downtown thoroughfare, lined with grocery stores and bakeries. Massey, a slender man of medium height, carefully picked his way around dog excrement and slushy puddles, thankful that, despite a hangover, he had remembered to pull galoshes over his leather shoes that morning.

Bert, as his friends called him, was a member of one of Canada’s most prominent families, a dynasty that had built its fortune by producing the wagons, tractors, threshers, reapers, and binders on which Canada’s newfound prosperity, and reputation as the “bread basket of the Empire,” was based. The thirty-four-year-old cut a stylish figure, with a diamond stick pin in his silk tie and his dark hair slicked back from his wide forehead. Right now, he was probably too eager to get home to let his thoughts linger on either agricultural implements or the fact that his American wife, Rhoda, had not yet returned from a visit to her family, the Vandergrifts, in Bridgeport, Connecticut—a visit that she had kept extending. When she left a week earlier, they had not parted on good terms. Rhoda didn’t share her husband’s sense of fun. A rather shy New Englander, she certainly didn’t have his appetite for fast cars and late nights: she preferred to stay out of the limelight.

After a block, Bert Massey turned south past the dairy at the corner of Dupont and Walmer Road. Within minutes, he could no longer hear the Dupont traffic or smell the sour milk from the empty churns in the dairy’s backyard. Bert lived in the Annex, the area between Bloor and Dupont, west of Avenue Road, that had been developed over the previous three decades as Toronto’s population exploded and streetcars allowed middle-class residents to live farther away from their workplaces. The Bloor Street end of Walmer Road was the fashionable part, with circular towers, portes cochères, and tall chimneys ornamenting spacious stone mansions. Most of the houses near Dupont, where Bert Massey lived, had been hastily constructed and lacked the imposing bulk, wraparound porches, and extensive grounds enjoyed by Toronto’s wealthier families—the kind of homes that Bert’s rich relatives lived in. Nevertheless, a few of the flourishes of grander mansions had migrated north to Walmer Road’s pokier residences. There were pillared porches, stained-glass windows in some front doors, and dormer windows for attic bedrooms in which servants slept.

Number 169, where Albert and Rhoda Massey lived, was particularly shabby. Squeezed between its neighbours, it lacked their balconies and decorated bargeboards. It was not even well maintained. If Massey had raised his eyes to his roof, he would see that a recent warm spell had melted much of the snow from his tiles, blocking the gutters and creating dangerous icicles overhanging the front porch. Did he make this typical homeowner’s check? Probably not. It was after six o’clock, so visibility was poor despite newly installed street lamps. And he was tired. After socializing until 1:45 a.m. the previous night at a neighbour’s, he had risen early to reach York Motors Ltd. on Yonge Street. Bert Massey did not work in the family firm; instead, he had a job at a Studebaker dealership, selling cars that were built with American-made parts and assembled in Walkerville, Ontario.

In theory, Bert Massey had a great job in a booming industry. In the past few years, automobiles had gone from exotic rarities to status symbols. Back in 1908, traffic monitors at one Toronto intersection noted only six automobiles in ten hours. Cars were expensive (around $1,400 each—twice the annual salary of a schoolteacher, and four times as much as an ordinary labourer earned), so ownership was slow to gather momentum. But within four years, the motoring craze had taken off, and the same intersection was seeing 382 cars each day. Now, in 1915, there were close to 100,000 vehicles on Canadian roads, the majority of them in the increasingly urban central provinces. It was all quite chaotic: there were no stop signs or traffic lights, and drivers in some provinces stuck to the British custom of driving on the left-hand side of the road, while in others they followed the American custom of driving on the right. Prince Edward Island had banned automobiles altogether until 1913. But what man could resist progress, or the excitement of having a McLaughlin-Buick, or a Ford, or a Cadillac, or a Reo, or a Hupmobile parked outside his home? Even Laura Borden, the irreproachably respectable wife of Prime Minister Robert Borden, cheerfully drove herself through Ottawa’s muddy streets in an electric car.

Bert’s job as a Studebaker salesman gave him a certain social flash, since his friends could glimpse him cruising down Yonge Street, one hand on the steering wheel as he showed a potential buyer how to signal for turns, or double-declutch during a gear change. It certainly suited his employer to have a Massey as a salesman. This week, Bert had been busy helping hang banners and bunting in York Motors’ state-of-the-art showroom for a display of four splendid new Studebaker models in mid-February.

But in practice, Bert’s income didn’t match the flash: he sold on commission, and with a war on, sales had slumped. The job required him to be smartly dressed, on his feet, and professionally charming all day, no matter how rude or stupid the customers. Today had been particularly exhausting, so icicles hanging off his porch were the least of his concerns. Anyway, Bert Massey didn’t bother much with routine chores—in his wife’s absence, he had barely bothered to sweep the snow off the sidewalk.

Before Bert Massey reached home, he met Ernest Pelletier, the sixteen-year-old paper boy who had just delivered a copy of the Toronto Daily Star to the Massey house. Massey flashed his most charming smile as he pulled out a quarter to pay for delivery of the Star for the previous month. Ever since Christmas, the war in Europe had dominated the Star’s front page: today, the news was that Britain’s Russian allies had attacked German troops in the Carpathians on the eastern front, and its French allies had dynamited a German trench on the western front. As usual, the Star had found a poignant local human-interest story for the middle of the page. A short article described how, the day after a local woman had received an official telegram informing her that her husband was dead, a letter had arrived from him containing the message, “Cheer Up Girlie, I’ll Be Home by May.”

Bert Massey turned off the sidewalk towards his front door. He had no idea what awaited him.

Behind the front door stood the Massey family’s English domestic servant, Carrie Davies. Carrie was a mere slip of a girl, a mousy eighteen-year-old who rarely spoke unless spoken to. She was one of hundreds of thousands of demure little housemaids in cities all over the English-speaking world, from Sheffield to Chicago, Manchester to Melbourne, Tunbridge Wells to Toronto. In her black dress, white cap, and starched apron, Carrie blended into the background decor that, similarly, scarcely varied across continents—heavy velvet curtains, dark wood panelling, framed sepia photographs. In the bourgeois world of 1915, the Carrie Davieses barely merited a glance, let alone a footnote in history. Women like her formed the silent army that kept households humming, and yet remained almost invisible to many of its employers. Carrie’s life was particularly exhausting because she was Bert and Rhoda Massey’s only servant. They couldn’t afford the army of cooks, butlers, parlour maids, and lady’s maids that kept up the houses of richer Masseys. Carrie had to do everything, during days that began at six in the morning and might not finish until well after 9 p.m.

But tonight, this particular young woman carried a gun—Bert Massey’s own .32-calibre Savage automatic pistol. Such guns (“The most powerful, accurate and rapid fire pistol invented”) were available in the Eaton’s catalogue for $18. And she was standing close to the door because she had just told the paper boy that her employer was not yet home. When she heard Bert Massey mount the steps to the verandah, she raised her right arm. At first, Bert did not see her in the shadows. Then Carrie pulled the door open and stepped forward. A shot rang out. A sharp pain erupted in Bert’s left side. He gaped at the young woman before backing quickly down the steps. A second shot rang out. Bert had barely reached the street before he fell and the life began to drain out of him. Carrie Davies lowered the gun, turned round, and disappeared into the house, shutting the door behind her.

Ernest Pelletier was halfway down the block when he heard the shots. For a second, he assumed that the sharp crack was the sound of one of the new electric street-lamp bulbs exploding. Then he swung round—and watched in disbelief as the man to whom he had spoken only seconds earlier staggered down his front steps and collapsed on the sidewalk. Ernest sprinted back to him. Beatrice Dinnis, who lived at 126 Walmer Road, had seen the flash of a gun and heard Bert exclaim, “Oh,” as he buckled to the ground. She was one of the first passersby to cluster around the fallen man, who was groaning in distress. One stranger hammered on the doorway of 169 Walmer, but there was no answer. So he went next door and asked for a glass of water, explaining that a man had been taken ill on the sidewalk.

Nobody knew what to do. A woman screamed. There was no observable wound, no gush of blood. Yet Bert Massey was obviously in desperate straits. Curtains twitched in Walmer Road windows as neighbours peered through the gathering darkness at the huddle of shocked witnesses. A youth who lived at number 133 ran to telephone the police. Dr. John Mitchell, who lived a few doors north and was familiar to his neighbours, shouldered through the crowd, loosened Massey’s collar, and had him carried into the house next door, number 171. By the time Charles Albert Massey had been laid on a chesterfield there, he was dead. He had not uttered a word since the first shot was fired.

The police wagon arrived minutes later.

Patrol Sergeant Lawrence Brown and two constables marched up to the front door of number 169 and knocked. Again, no one came to the door. Sending Constable Follis to the back door and instructing Constable Martin to stand guard at the front door, Brown entered the unlocked house. Most of the lights were on in the evening gloom.

The front hall was a cramped space: ahead of him, the sergeant saw a staircase leading upwards, and to his right, through an open door, an empty sitting room. The stocky policeman walked carefully towards the back of the house. In the kitchen, someone had just finished making supper, and there was an unbaked loaf of bread on the table. Brown heard a noise from below, and was startled to see Bert Massey’s fourteen-year-old son, Charlie, emerge from the basement in his shirt sleeves. What had he been doing? Perhaps he was smoking one of his father’s cigarettes, or even taking a quiet swig from a bottle “borrowed” from the liquor cabinet. Sergeant Brown didn’t care. He was more concerned by the boy’s expression of shock at seeing a policeman in the house. The noise of the gunshot had not reached the basement, and Brown realized that Charles Albert had no idea of what had occurred. The policeman took Charles to the front door and instructed Constable Martin to look after the boy. White-faced and frightened, Charles kept asking what had happened. Nobody told him.

Sergeant Brown continued his search of the house. The ground-floor rooms were empty, so he cautiously started up the staircase. When he reached the landing, he heard a tremulous call from the third floor: “Who is there?” He replied, “The police.” The girlish voice said, “Come on up,” but Brown drew his revolver and said, “Come on down.”

It was barely half an hour since the two shots were fired. In a bare attic bedroom, Carrie Davies had risen from the table where, in a state of eerie calm, she had just finished writing two short notes. One was to Maud Fairchild, her married sister who also lived in Toronto. The second was to her friend Mary Rooney, another domestic servant who worked for Bert Massey’s older brother and his wife, Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Massey, a few blocks away on Admiral Road. Carrie behaved as if in a stupor, oblivious to the furor outside in the street. When she heard the policeman’s voice, she had thrust her hands into the arms of a shabby brown cloth coat and picked up the gun again. This time, she held it by the muzzle. Then she started downstairs.

On the second-floor landing, Sergeant Brown stared up in astonishment at the slight figure proffering a pistol as she came towards him. Without taking his eyes off Carrie’s expressionless face, the burly policeman grasped the weapon by its handle, and then followed her back to her room.

“I shot him,” the young woman announced. Sergeant Brown stared at her, and then gave her the standard caution: “You needn’t make any statement unless you like, but any statement you make may be used as evidence either for or against you. [Do] you understand that?” Wide-eyed, Carrie intoned, “Yes.” Almost as an afterthought, she added, “He ruined my character … They have been good to me and I have been good to them, but he disgraced my character.” The policeman looked at the gun, and then back at her. Carrie began to cry, and repeated, “He has ruined my life … Take me out of here.”

Brown didn’t ask her to explain her remark. He took her firmly by the arm and escorted her out the front door of number 169, through a crowd of shocked onlookers. Carrie kept her head down. She appeared to be clinging to Sergeant Brown rather than being unwillingly frogmarched away from the scene of the crime. After the sergeant had bundled her into the paddy wagon, Constables Martin and Follis, solemn and silent, climbed in after her.

A few minutes later, the paddy wagon drew up outside Police Station 11, on London Street close to Bathurst, so that Sergeant Brown could make a note in the duty register of her name, age, and birthplace. Until now, Carrie Davies had behaved as though nothing had happened: she was her meek little self, doing what she was told. But at the police station, she overheard horrified whispers that Mr. Massey was dead. She gasped, then broke down in tears.

Sergeant Brown knew that this case was more than the London Street station could handle. So Carrie was bundled back in the wagon and driven downtown, to police headquarters at City Hall, at the intersection of Queen and Bay Streets, where Inspector George Kennedy, Toronto’s most senior detective, had his office. The police sergeant ushered the now-terrified young woman into the inspector’s presence. When the detective began to question her, she admitted in her pronounced English accent that she had pointed a gun at her employer and pulled the trigger. Her motive for the killing, she sobbed, was that “he tried to ruin me.”

Brown and Kennedy exchanged shocked looks. Sergeant Brown had already told Inspector Kennedy that this was more than a routine crime, because the dead man was a Massey. Kennedy’s eyebrows had nearly lifted off his face when he realized he would be dealing with a family that was already a Canadian legend: the Masseys were respected for their fierce Methodism, appreciated for their public benefactions (Toronto’s Massey Music Hall and Fred Victor Mission were only two of the numerous Massey good works), and resented for their power. By the start of the twentieth century, Methodists like the Masseys—along with the Eatons and the Flavelles—were on their way to becoming Toronto’s new capitalist class, an elite that challenged the city’s Victorian aristocracy in both wealth and snobbery. Bert Massey’s relatives lived in one of the grandest houses in Toronto, “Euclid Hall” on Jarvis Street, and Bert himself, as a child, had been dressed like a prince, in velvet coats and broderie anglaise collars. The family was not used to seeing its members enmeshed in gossip.

Now this frightened young woman had uttered the sensational accusation “He tried to ruin me,” and the two Toronto policemen realized that they had a major scandal on their hands. “Ruin,” in this context, meant only one thing: that Bert Massey had tried to have sexual intercourse with his maid. Reporters on the crime beat would swarm City Hall as soon as they got wind of the shooting—Kennedy could already hear a buzz of excitement in the front office. Moreover, at the time of the crime, Bert Massey had been unarmed and several feet from Carrie—an apparently law-abiding breadwinner returning from a long day at work. Carrie had taken him completely by surprise. Was she speaking the truth? And anyway, how many eighteen-year-old domestics knew how to fire a revolver? Under questioning, Carrie stammered that she had worked for Mr. and Mrs. Charles Albert Massey for two years, and she repeated that they had always been kind to her.

The two policemen stared at the wretched girl in dismay. Still, all they could do was follow procedure. Inspector Kennedy began the routine questioning—name, age, height—and then took Carrie through the events of the evening, noting her answers in longhand. Within half an hour, Carrie had answered all the questions put to her, and Kennedy, in a rush to get the paperwork finished so she could appear in the police court the following morning, had instructed his assistant to take Carrie away. In his haste, he forgot to ask her to sign the statement.

Carrie was taken to the Court Street station, the hub of the police department, which was three blocks south of City Hall at the busy corner of Church and Adelaide Streets, behind the elegant Georgian facade of the Adelaide Street courthouse. The police station had cells in the basement for transient prisoners—cells that were cramped, dirty,...

Table of contents

• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• List of Characters
• Map of Toronto
• Part One: The Story
• Part Two: The Law
• Part Three: The Trial
• Part Four: Aftermath
• Sources
• Acknowledgements
• Credits
• About the Author
• Also by Charlotte Gray
• Copyright
• About the Publisher