If you haven’t read the earlier installments of this series, go to The Mad Love of Mrs. Mort, Part 1

Part 7: There are no half-tones in the neurotic mind

In March 1921, Dorothy Mort went on trial for Claude Tozer’s murder at Sydney’s Central Criminal Court. Her defense sought a not guilty by reason of insanity verdict.

Mrs. Mort was led in. Once again she was shrouded in her heavy veil. Sydney’s Sunday Times wrote, “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. To most people Dorothy Mort would not seem beautiful at all. The face behind the thick veil, haggard now, must always have been rather peevish, frankly commonplace.” The Times was sure Dorothy would be found insane–and they believed this would be a just verdict.

The newspaper painted a fantastic scene of the courtroom. “There sits Dorothy Mort. With her, guarding her, mothering her, is a wardress who straightway commends herself as a very kind woman. When anything is exposed that may disturb or terrify the little veiled woman, the wardress interposes a fan before the hidden eyes. All the time the wardress has one hand round the shoulders of the little woman, and a shoulder of her own always there for comfort and support.”

I’ve read about lots of trials from this era in the United States with many oddities—but this wardress person seems to have functioned almost like an emotional support animal. I wonder if this is something that was or is common in Australia?

Dorothy sat silently in the courtroom. “It cannot be pleasant at any time to sit in court and have one’s secret thoughts and weaknesses fumbled and dissected by hands not very skilled in that most delicate form of surgery,” the Times mused. The article offered an interesting psychological profile, noting that Mrs. Mort lived a conventional life but she wanted much more. “Dorothy Mort, being above all things true to her type, yearns to do things that are conspicuous—to act in melodrama, to strut on the film, anything like that. She goes in for amateur theatricals, and makes a poor enough list of it. She seeks out a picture-making man, and he finds that she has no initiative, no sense of proportion, no poise; is difficult to teach to the point of impossibility. The nerves, experimented with overmuch, become frayed. Private sorrows ill-borne incinerate the nerves already frayed… There are no half-tones in the neurotic mind: one adores, or one hates.”

The defendant listened to testimony from medical witnesses and law enforcement, all of which went to prove that she had killed Dr. Claude Tozer. A timeline was established and the layout of the part of her home where events transpired was given. It would be up to her attorney, Sidney Mack, to humanize her.

Apart from what we’ve already learned, a few interesting points were brought out at trial. The first concerned a letter Dorothy had written to Claude’s mother. It was dated December 10, eleven days before she killed Mrs. Tozer’s son. It isn’t clear whether Mrs. Tozer ever received the letter, or if this was the letter that Dorothy asked Police Inspector Arthur Leary not to send.

To Mrs. Tozer,

Your son has loved me and I think more perfectly and wonderfully than is permitted most people. He forgot, as his recent letter says he might, and we agreed to part. I have twice asked him to let me release him, but he would not have it. Without a word of warning or even a suggestion, he asks another girl to marry him, and then tells me, and also that the worst of it is he loves me, too, but feels things are hopeless between us. Had he told me first and then asked this girl to be his wife I would at once have given him his freedom. For five wonderful months he has made me happy, begging me to trust him, as I implicitly did. I have been a most unhappy woman and from our first meeting he loved me and swore to make me care.

The shock I cannot survive. There are more cowardly things than taking one’s own life, and one is treachery to a woman—a trusting woman.

One of the last wonderful things he said, “First I want your love, Di, then your soul, and lastly your body.” He suggested divorce, but neither of us could bear that; but he said he would wait for me and that he was content to do so.

He looks ghastly and says how unhappy he really is but it is too late.

Diana Mort.

 

What does this letter tell us about Dorothy and what was in her mind? Why did she write to Mrs. Tozer, and when she did write, did she already know she would kill Claude? Why sign her name Diana?

There was one other very important witness who would give testimony at Dorothy’s trial. Go to Part 8: Dorothy’s Acting Career.

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