DOROTHY MORT
On December 21, 1920, authorities responded to an emergency at the Mort household in Sydney, Australia. One man was dead, still seated on the couch. A woman at the residence had a gunshot wound to the chest but had managed to survive. What events had led to the attempt to end the lives of two people that night? This week on Out of the Past: the story of Dorothy Mort.
Dorothy was not the first person in her family to suffer from mental illness (a term that would not even have been used at the time). A few years after she married Harold Mort, her father William Mackay Woodruff’s mental health deteriorated badly. After several days of walking around, talking about how easy it would be to kill a person with an ax, Woodruff attempted to do just that: he attacked Dorothy’s brother and mother with an ax, breaking their skulls. When he realized what he was doing, he tried to kill himself out of remorse. He laid naked on his front lawn, rambling about trains, until the authorities arrived. He was found not guilty by reason of insanity, but he nevertheless served several years in prison, and killed himself shortly after his release in 1919. Needless to say, all of this devastated
Dorothy and caused her to suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder for most of her life.
The dead man on the couch also suffered from post-traumatic stress. His name was Claude Tozer, and he was a bit of a celebrity in the area. His work helping the wounded during WWI earned him a great deal of respect from the government, though he never recovered from the nightmares of trench warfare. Tozer was also a celebrated cricket player, both before and after the war. He began to rise in the ranks after the war, but continued his medical practice. When Dorothy’s husband sought help for her so-called “lunacy,” Tozer was the only doctor that was acceptable to Dorothy. In her own words, “I loved him immediately. He was so handsome and big and splendid that I thought how wonderful a son would be of his.”
After having regular checkups for a while, Tozer and Mort entered into a romantic relationship. Tozer took his time, but finally, he chose to hop right over the line of propriety and started sending propositions to Dorothy in their letters. In one of them, he claimed that he couldn’t wait any longer, and described himself as a sleeping volcano. Remember that this man was her doctor, and he was treating her for her mental and emotional issues. Even back then that was considered morally reprehensible. It’s hard to understand what Tozer was thinking, but the truth is that he was a known lady’s man, or “pants man,” as his teammates put it.
Eventually, Tozer grew tired of the relationship and invented an imaginary fiancee in order to break things off with Mort, but convinced her to meet for one last session of love-making. While Tozer opened a gift she gave him, Dorothy stood behind him and fired a gun she had recently purchased. She hit Tozer twice in the back of the head. She then came around front, unbuttoned his clothing, and shot him in the chest, then rebuttoned his vest for some reason. Lastly, she pointed the gun at her own chest and fired. She failed to kill herself.
There were hiccups during the whole process. After the first two gunshots, the housekeeper, Florence Fizzelle, knocked on the door to the drawing room. From inside the room, Dorothy reassured Fizzelle that everything was fine, and asked her for a glass of ice water. After ten minutes, Fizzelle heard two additional gunshots. Dorothy headed to her room, and stayed there for so long that Fizzelle began to worry. She forced her way into the room and found the injured Mrs. Mort. The authorities were contacted, and police found Tozer’s body in the locked drawing room. Dorothy Mort was carted off to Royal North Shore Hospital, saying, according to some sources, “If I can’t have him, no one can.”
In March 1921, Dorothy was tried for murder at the Central Criminal Court in Sydney. Her lawyers presented a case where she was described as mentally insane, and therefore not guilty. Her trial was a popular event, with large audiences every day. Dorothy’s poor husband, Harold, first learned of his wife’s affair in court. When he testified, he tried to make it clear that Dorothy was indeed mentally ill—she often spoke of suicide, or had dreams of her children being burned. It probably lent force to the insanity plea that Dorothy claimed during the trial to be pregnant as a result of her last encounter with Tozer—something she couldn’t possibly have known by then even if it were true. At any rate, the defense was successful: she was found not guilty, though she remained in Long Bay Gaol “at the governor’s pleasure.”
Dorothy lived a pretty luxurious life while incarcerated. She didn’t live in a cell, but rather a nice room in a screened-off area of the prison hospital, where she even had her own servant. She wasn’t required to wear a prison uniform, and her husband sent her fancy jewelry and clothing. She was referred to as “the belle of the gaol.”
During this time, Dorothy met another prisoner, Jean Falleni, and they became fast friends. Best friends, really. Dorothy was released after nine years, and though Jean was happy for Dorothy, they couldn’t help but feel depressed about the injustices in the system. Dorothy was easy for the courts to release because of her social status, race, and wealth; Jean Falleni was convicted on much looser evidence than Dorothy. By many accounts they shouldn’t have been convicted at all. Their Italian heritage and identity as a transgendered woman made it difficult for the prejudiced courts to show mercy.
Dorothy worked hard for her friend. She created a group that lobbied the New South Wales government to release Jean Fellini. The group argued that Jean’s treatment was unfair and cruel, especially compared to Dorothy’s. Jean was eventually released in February of 1931, not too long after Dorothy.
After Dorothy’s release, she returned to her husband and children, unfortunately having missed a great deal of their childhoods. She lived with her family until passing away in 1966.
There are a lot of important issues wrapped up in this case. The first is the ignorance about mental illness. Dorothy obviously had a condition that was hereditary. Her husband complained to Doctor Tozer that his wife suffered from bouts of suicidal behavior. The doctor should have recognized this and drawn a connection to her father, a suicide victim who also had homicidal tendencies.
But Tozer didn’t make this connection. One reason for this is that he had no training in the field of psychology, yet chose to take on a psychiatric patient. Another reason, obviously, was his conflict of interest. He was too busy trying to pursue a physical relationship with his patient. Tozer was also all wrapped up in his cricket career. Perhaps this tragedy could have been prevented if someone had recognized the warning signs.
Luckily for us, the stigma around mental health has diminished in the past few decades. Doctors take mental illness seriously, and have been able to do a lot more comprehensive research about human behavior, because more people are admitting that they need treatment. New research helps to understand and treat conditions nobody even saw as illnesses back in Claude Tozer’s day.
It’s difficult to find a lot of information on this case, but when I did, I was surprised how many articles focused so much on Tozer’s cricket career. Many of them were filled with sports statistics and rankings for all the different years he played. Articles usually take the opinion that he was a great sports hero who was tragically killed by some crazy lady. These sources skim over or fail to mention Tozer’s treatment of Mort. He was her doctor, and he took advantage of her in a vulnerable state. There’s a phenomenon called transference that comes on when treating psychiatric patients wherein the patient transfers their feelings of love to their doctor. It is the doctor’s responsibility not to take sexual advantage of patients in this state. Nobody deserves to be murdered, but Tozer’s conduct as a medical professional was reprehensible.
Comments