The Massey Murder by Charlotte Gray Read Free Book Online Page B

underwear or socks (male prisoners got both) and had no access to books. A particular disgrace was that “thenight toilet pails [do] day duty for scrubbing. [This is] neither sanitary or modern. As many of these women are victims of social diseases, it stands to reason in the light of modern bacteriology that this state of affairs should desist.”
    There was little chance that the current governor of the jail would take any action on these complaints: he was as ineffective as he was well meaning, and he had no idea how to run a large, complex institution. The Reverend Dr. Andrew B. Chambers, vice-president of the Upper Canada Bible Society, had got the governor’s job solely on the grounds of his Conservative Party links, and in the words of a contemporary, he “simply wanted to be a friend to everybody, especially those in trouble.” Most people, including the chief turnkey and the guards, took advantage of him.
    But Dr. Chambers’s soft heart did save Carrie from exposure to the Don’s toughest elements. He decided that this woebegone young woman was far too feeble to be locked up with the other women prisoners, many of whom were delusional, violent, or worse. Since Carrie’s days on this earth seemed likely to be numbered, they should be as comfortable as possible. He sent her up to the prison hospital and put her in the charge of Mrs. Sinclair, superintendent of the Women’s Department. For the rest of the day, Carrie refused to eat or speak: she just stared around her in fear.
    Oblivious to Carrie’s lonely journey, the Local Council of Women delegation was still busy on the second floor, protesting to Mayor Church and the Board of Control against a proposal to move the Women’s Court out of City Hall.
    The number and range of Toronto’s women’s organizations in 1915 were truly startling. A middle-class Toronto woman could spend everyafternoon or evening attending the Women’s Conservative Club’s knitting circle, the sale of homemade dainties by the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, a knitting tea sponsored by the Political Equality League, or the Toronto Women’s Patriotic League’s collection drive for mufflers, socks, and wristlets for soldiers. The Heliconian Club ran regular sessions on literature, travel, and music for its members. In addition, there were church-sponsored groups, arts-focused clubs, and other get-togethers that allowed the wives of Toronto’s swelling professional classes to meet each other.
    All this activity stood in dramatic contrast to the way that the wives of Toronto’s elite, or those who aspired to join it, had conducted themselves until recently. The cornerstone of sociability in the late Victorian era was the “At Home,” an elaborate and suffocating ritual that might include a few intimates or a cast of hundreds, and took place in private houses during the afternoon. The rules were set by the wives and daughters of Toronto’s most patrician families, who shared their husbands’ stout belief that moral superiority sprang from good breeding and lots of money.
    An At Home event was rigidly formal. It began with a stiff white card, engraved with the holder’s name and address, and with a handwritten note of a weekday on the lower left-hand corner. The card was an invitation to join the holder for a tea on the day prescribed: it would be left with a maidservant at a door—but only after the hostess and her prospective guest had been formally introduced. Each society hostess had her At Home on a particular day, and over the years the occasions had grown increasingly competitive. Should the hostess offer a rose tea, a strawberry tea, a tea-and-talk, or a five o’clock tea?
    The city’s grandes dames slowly patrolled the drawing rooms of their social equals, sipping from bone china cups and making small talk. Their daughters dutifully handed around dainty sandwiches and petits fours and displayed their fathers’ or husbands’ wealth in the form ofsable collars