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The Massey Murder

a Maid, Her Master and the Trial That Shocked a Country
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Sep 19, 2014rpavlacic rated this title 4 out of 5 stars
This book recounts perhaps the first example in Canada of a woman who beat off a murder charge (several men had in previous years), despite several eyewitnesses to the act, on the grounds she feared she was going to be raped by her master, one of the country's economic scions. May very well also have been an early example of jury nullification, until then an almost exclusively American concept in law. Today, such a situation would have likely been treated as sexual harassment and such drastic measures would not have been required. As the author notes, it gave the country a brief respite from the horrible slaughter of soldiers during World War I. The ending was rather bittersweet for a true crime book.