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

Part 9: An Epic Summation by Mr. Mack

After all the evidence was in, Dorothy’s attorney rose. It was time for his grand defense.

Sidney Mack’s address to the jury is an amazing piece of oratory but it would take hours to read it. He was afflicted with the stereotypical qualities of a defense attorney. He was verbose and hyperbolic. He loved rhetorical questions. (Did Mr. Mack like to ask himself questions? Yes, he did.) So I’ll summarize it with a few representative outtakes to give you a feel for his speaking style and his defense of Mrs. Mort. Sidney Mack was probably a beloved character. The journalists referred to him only as Mr. Mack and when they quoted his sentences they often used ALL CAPS for emphasis.

Mr. Mack began like this: “If your verdict is one of guilty, this poor little wreck of humanity will be sentenced to death—sentenced to hang by her frail neck until she is dead. That’s what a verdict of guilty will mean. And that’s what will happen to her after all she has gone through. After all the anxiety, the shame, the horror, the seduction, the betrayal by the man she sacrificed everything for, the hell she has experienced. the hell she has come out of, the hell she is going through now, you are asked to find this poor, frail wreck guilty of murder!”

“The murder of a man who betrayed her and the very best, most sacred traditions of his profession. A man who was there fulfilling what was supposed to be a sacred duty—healing the sick. A man we have all got to trust our lives with, TRUST OUR WIVES, our young girls, our little children. If we cannot trust these things to them, it would be better if the medical profession was abolished altogether. Thank God this is as rare as anything can be… She was young, beautiful, and accomplished. I’m not trying to arouse your sympathy. She is here in this position through the malpractice of a man who was trusted by her and trusted by her husband.”

You see how Mr. Mack talks now?  He pointed out that the police never checked to see if a stranger had been lurking around the house and shot Dr. Tozer from somewhere outside. He then declared somewhat illogically there was no question Mrs. Mort was insane when she killed Dr. Tozer.

But his focus was Claude Tozer. He was outraged the doctor had wondered why God made neurotic women.  “He might as well have said, ‘Why did the devil make untrustworthy doctors?’”  The doctor was supposed to help a woman suffering from hysteria. She was susceptible to his advances. He knew Dorothy Mort was married with children. She was ready to divorce her husband and abandon everything for him, imagining she would marry Claude. “But he was going to have his fun at her expense then leave her to her fate.”

Mr. Mack waved a sheet of paper wildly. “He writes this letter, dated 3rd July, to his patient. He was the trusted medical advisor. He had only been attending upon her about a week, and obviously this gallant cavalier wasted no time. He starts off ‘Dear Lady Diana’ and talks about ‘mingling tears and sympathies.’ Fancy that! He’d only been treating her a week and he wrote that to her. One of those neurotics God should not have created! Nauseating, isn’t it? A love letter written by a man who should have been doing all he could to cure her. Instead he was doing all he could to KILL HER. The path he set her to tread was the path that leads to madness and he knew it.”

Mr. Mack read Claude’s letters, pausing after each sentence to add his commentary. “He talks of the kind of dreary nights she spends. Only an intimate lover would dream of writing that. Little he cared. All he was thinking of was his own lust and his own pleasure. He ends with ‘Yours Longingly, Claude.’ Yours longingly! A doctor to his neurotic patient!”

Mr. Mack shook his head.  “Although the man is dead, I cannot spare him. He set out to seduce this woman, and he was going to see it through to the bitter end. He had no intention of going back. He was leading this poor, weak thing on to destruction and he knew it. He didn’t care…Just imagine this gay chevalier writing to a woman standing on the brink of a fiery furnace of insanity!”

“Then the crash came! About the middle of December he comes to her—this man who had written all these passionate love letters and calmly tells her—the woman he had led astray, the woman he had corrupted—that he is going to marry another woman.”

Mr. Mack produced a bizarre new theory. What if Mrs. Mort confessed to her husband that she was in an illicit relationship with Claude Tozer? Maybe she told him about it the night before the murder and the real reason Mr. Mort called the doctor to their home was so he and Dorothy could decide what to do. After the doctor arrived, maybe Mrs. Mort produced the revolver and shot herself.  “If that happened, what a state of panic the doctor must have got into…A professional man lives on his honor. If this [story] came out, his honor was gone,” Mr. Mack said dramatically. “Would it have been unnatural for him to seize the revolver and commit suicide? No, it would not. If you exclude the confessions this woman made when she was mad, there’s nothing to show that that didn’t happen.”

“You’ve been asked to put sentiment aside,” Mr. Mack thundered. “I defy you to put sentiment out of it! I’m talking to men with red blood in their veins and hearts in their bodies. You will give this woman mercy. I’m going to ask you to look at the facts and say you are not satisfied this woman committed this murder. After all the pain of these terrible experiences–all the suffering and sorrow–all the shame–are you going to say that she is to receive further punishment within the confines of an asylum for killing the man who was first her lover, then her seducer, and finally her betrayer?”

Mr. Mack’s summation was over but it had taken hours. The prosecutor and the chief justice, on the other hand, were noticeably brief.

Read Part 10: The Verdict! 

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