Sensational 1843 murders remain a mystery
Atwood book ‘Alias Grace’ turned Richmond Hill crime into an obsession
In the final hours of his life, before he walked to the gallows in downtown Toronto, convicted killer James McDermott wanted to make something clear: He was not solely to blame for two of the area’s most infamous murders.
McDermott, 20, wanted the world to know that 16-year-old Grace Marks also had blood on her hands for the slayings of Scottish-born gentleman Thomas Kinnear, and his pregnant lover and servant Nancy Montgomery.
Marks is the central character in the 1996 Margaret Atwood novel “Alias Grace,” made into a CBC and Netflix limited series, written and produced by Sarah Polley and directed by Mary Harron.
Atwood’s work is a highly researched, fictionalized take on the real-life Richmond Hill double murder — she notes in an afterword that she has not changed any known facts.
In Atwood’s story, a psychiatrist struggles to unlock the riddle of Marks’ guilt or innocence. The questions are daunting for anyone attempting to judge her.
Was she a dupe? A cunning lunatic? A jealous teen temptress? A motherless victim of circumstance? Someone afflicted with a split personality or memory loss? A stone cold killer?
Two hours before his execution at noon on Tuesday, Nov. 21, 1843, McDermott told authorities that he’d struck Montgomery with an axe but didn’t kill her.
According to a special booklet on the case published by the local Star and Transcript newspaper immediately after their trial, McDermott then told authorities that Marks “brought a piece of white cloth with her, tied the cloth tight round (Montgomery’s) neck and strangled her.”
With that on the record, McDermott was led to the gallows behind the limestone walls of the old Berkeley Street Gaol, near St. Lawrence Market.
He prayed on his knees for two minutes, stood up and was hanged.
“The assemblage of people was immense; the utmost order and decorum prevailed, and at one o’clock the body was cut down and taken into the Gaol,” The Star and Transcript booklet said. “It is understood a cast of the head is to be taken, and the body dissected.”
Despite McDermott’s final words, sorting out Marks’ guilt and innocence in the case has been a challenge for the past 178 years.
In her afterword, Atwood notes that Marks gave three versions of the Montgomery murder, while McDermott offered two.
And while McDermott was a proven liar, even liars sometimes tell the truth.
Marks said she was coerced into helping McDermott cover up the killings out of fear, according to The Star and Transcript booklet.
“He told me he put the muzzle of the gun very near (Kinnear’s) breast,” she said, according to the booklet.
“He said to me, Grace, now I know you’ll tell, and if you do, your life is not worth a straw,” she said.
Atwood first learned of the murders from the 1853 book “Life in the Clearings Versus the Bush,” a chronicle of 19thcentury pioneer life by Susanna Moodie.
Moodie isn’t much help in divining Marks’ guilt — she could spot a good story but she wasn’t a stickler for facts like spellings, ages or dates.
What is known for sure is that the bodies of Kinnear and Montgomery were found amid the vegetables in the root cellar of Kinnear’s Richmond Hill home, where Montgomery, McDermott and Marks were servants.
Kinnear was shot in the left side of his chest with a doublebarrelled shotgun.
Montgomery, who was pregnant, was clubbed over the head with an axe and strangled.
McDermott and Marks were almost immediately arrested in Lewiston, N.Y., with a stash of goods stolen from the victims.
Both were Irish immigrants who had only worked for Kinnear for only a few weeks.
There seemed no doubt that McDermott looked more guilty than Marks.
The trial summary prepared by the Star and Transcript described McDermott as having “a swarthy complexion, and a sullen, downcast, and forbidding countenance.”
In contrast, the summary described Marks as “rather goodlooking” and “totally uneducated.”
Their trials were likely held in downtown Toronto at the former courthouse on the northwest corner of Church and King across from St James’ Cathedral, says Bruce Bell, official historian for the St. Lawrence Market. A condo complex sits on the site now.
It didn’t help Marks’ cause that she appeared in court wearing clothes that were stolen from Montgomery.
There was far more at play than simple questions of innocence and guilt.
These were particularly classconscious times, less than a decade after the 1837-38 Farmers’ Revolt, and Kinnear and Montgomery were at opposite sides of the class hierarchy.
“The combination of sex, violence, and the deplorable insubordination of the lower classes was most attractive to the journalists of the day,” Atwood writes in her afterword.
The Star and Transcript reported that there were so many observers in court that “some alarm was created by a report that the floor of the courtroom was giving away.”
McDermott testified that the teen had goaded him to assist in the murders. “Grace Marks is wrong in stating she had no hand in the murder; she was the means from beginning to end,” McDermott said, according to The Star and Transcript.
He said she was upset after being fired by Montgomery.
“She said she had been warned to leave, and she supposed she should not get her wages,” McDermott reportedly testified. “She said … ‘I’ll assist you, and you are a coward if you don’t do it.’ I frequently refused to do as she wished, and she said I should never have an hour’s luck if I did not do as she wished me.”
In the Star and Transcript summary of the trial, McDermott is quoted as saying that, at one point, Marks wanted to kill Kinnear and Montgomery by poisoning their porridge, but McDermott refused.
That accusation doesn’t make a great deal of sense, as Marks wouldn’t need McDermott’s help to poison porridge.
Their trials were wrapped up in a day and a half. When the testimony was completed, it took the all-male jury just 10 minutes to reach guilty verdicts. McDermott was found guilty of “wilful murder” in Kinnear’s death while Marks was convicted of being an accessory before and after the fact. They were not tried for killing Montgomery, which was considered redundant.
They were both sentenced to death by hanging.
When the verdicts were announced, McDermott showed no emotion while Marks swooned, cried, collapsed and accidentally impaled herself, according to press reports.
Marks’ sentence was commuted to life imprisonment, after a massive public appeal for mercy.
Today, there’s a park near the former crime scene, close to the intersection of Yonge Street and Elgin Mills Road.