The Massey Murder
A Maid, Her Master and the Trial that Shocked a Country
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4.0 • 25 Ratings
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
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.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Novels about Canadian true crimes by Margaret Atwood (Alias Grace) or Lynn Crosbie (Paul's Case) might capture public attention, but this book by one of Canada's top biographers and historians (Gold Diggers) captivates as an evocative and eye-opening history lesson. Set in the bourgeois world of 1915 Toronto, the expertly-paced procedural follows the fate of an English-born servant, Carrie Davies, whose characteristic "hard, hard life" as one of the city's nearly 12,000 domestics underwent a sudden and radical transformation when she shot Charles Massey, the scion of an influential family, claiming he'd ruined her character. Depicting rapidly changing Canada as a place "riddled with anachronisms and paradoxes" where "seams of hypocrisy and prudery ran deep," the story winds from the Toronto's Women's Court in the heyday of maternal feminism and warring newspapers to a bitter, alcoholic defense attorney, self-important judicial functionaries, courtroom mobs filled with morbid curiosity, and families with unchallenged patrician attitudes. The unfolding drama was a welcome distraction from the "pitiless meat grinder" of war in Europe. While the two-day trial featured competing "gothic horror story" theatrics, the jury of Carrie's 12 social peers eventually obeyed a peculiar logic, reflecting the nation's shifting values.
Customer Reviews
An important read
As a male who “emigrated” from Quebec in the 80’s, I found this book quite striking. I can’t believe it took me 40 years to finally read it. Thank you Charlotte Gray for opening my mind to a point of view I had not prior entertained seriously.