Death in Queen City is a telling of the death of Frank Westwood and subsequent trial of the very unconventional, Clara Ford. From start to finish, the story was entrancing. Brode set the stage in such a way that conveyed the attitudes of the time and how those attitudes impacted the fate of Ms. Ford. She was illegitimate, a woman of color, likely had and illegimate daughter of her own and had admitted killing a man in Chicago - a crime for which she was never tried. There were serious inconsistencies in Ms. Ford's story but public sympathy was heavily on her side.
I watch true crime shows weekly and found it interesting the techniques used in Ms. Ford's case that are still used and controversial today. The media questioned the "Police Sweatbox." Ms. Ford was interrogated for six hours. Surely anyone would tell the police what they wanted to hear if they were sequestered for six hours? How could a mere woman stand up to that pressure? There's controversy in the court system today over similar techniques used in securing confessions in the US court system.
Brode cites several contemporary cases in this work that I'd like to know more about. He relates the case of a man who pushed his wife over Niagara Falls because he had another wife at home. He tells of a woman in Tennessee who killed her lesbian lover because she refused to run away with her and then begged the police not to wash the woman's blood from her hands. I'd also enjoy reading Brode's account of the Lizzie Borden case.
The social mores conveyed were interesting. A woman in men's clothes was thought to be sexually perverted and probably homosexual which would account for a sudden affinity to violence. Black witnesses were expected to be jolly, docile and ignorant. One of the few black witnesses was heard to say, "Why did you think I couldn't read?" The times were changing. Brode tells us that attitudes were changing toward Toronto's black citizenry as a result of the end of the Civil War. Fashions were changing as well. Women's clothes were restrictive and hindered actually doing things that women of the day needed to do. Women were thought to be incapable of great harm to others as they were nurturing and loving and violence was against their nature.
Ford's case was a media sensation and every outlet had a differing opinion. Did she kill Westwood because she was lesbian? Did Ford kill Westwood because he tried to rape her? Were Westwood and Ford lovers and had he found someone else? Arthur Conan Doyle, author of Sherlock Holmes, weighed in on the case himself while visiting Toronto.
Death in the Queen City is true crime book that simply cannot be put down once picked up.
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