Thalia Massie
 | This article needs additional citations for verification. (September 2024) |
Thalia Massie | |
|---|---|
| Born | February 14, 1911 Washington, D.C. |
| Died | July 3, 1963 (aged 52) |
| Occupation | socialite |
Thalia Fortescue Massie (February 14, 1911 – July 3, 1963) was a member of a socially prominent U.S. family involved in a series of heavily publicized trials in Hawaii.
Life
[edit]Thalia Fortescue was born February 14, 1911, in Washington, DC.[1] Her mother was Grace Hubbard Fortescue (1883–1979) Through her mother, she was a grandniece (and cousin twice removed) of Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of telephone.
Her father was Granville Roland Fortescue (1875–1952)[1] who was for proprietys sake called the adopted step-son of the politician Robert Barnwell Roosevelt, but was in fact the biological son of Roosevelt and his mistress (and later wife) Marion Theresa "Minnie" O'Shea.
Through her fathers family,she was a first cousin once removed of US President Theodore Roosevelt.
Thaila was oldest of the three daughters born to the couple. Her sisters were Kenyon and Marion. The family due to her fathers career as as a military man and a war correspondent the family found were living in Belgium when the first World War broke out in 1914. Their mother Grace took her daughters, three year old Thalia,two year old Marion and Kenyon who was just one month old and traveled from Ostend[2] by steamer to Dover. After depositing the children at the home of her sister Helen in London[2], their mother traveled to Warsaw to join their father at the front.
Their father though wounded in the Meuse-Argonne offensive survived the war and the family returned to the United States.
The girls father due to his military career and was often absent from his childrens lives ,while their mother was occupied with her life as a socialite, and seldom had time for her daughters.[2]
The family had three homes, the Hotel Shelton in Manhattan, one in Washington and large mansion on Long Island,Bayport Wildholme which had belonged to Thalias paternal grand-father. The property had in fact been left to Thalias uncle John Ellis Roosevelt[2] ,but he allowed his brother's family to live there.[2]
Thalia was first taught by private tutors[2] and then later educated at a convent school in Belgium.[2] Then followed a sucession of boarding schools, Hillside School in Norwalk, Connecticut[3][2]and then the National Cathedral school[3][2] in Washington. Thalia and her sister it was said was only allowed to come home during Christmas or summer break[2], so as not to interfere with her parents social life.
Despite the familys seeming affluence, after her father retired from the army, their financial situation was somewhat insecure as the inheritance from his father had Granville was unable to hold down a steady job. Thalias mother was obliged to give bridge lessons to her friends in exchange for money[4] and their living expenses were paid by checks sent to her by her step-mother.[2] Described derisively by a contemporary as being "lazy,dissolute and heavy drinker"[4], he lived on the expectance of the inheritance to come to his wife after the death of Thalias grand-father.[2]
Marriage
[edit]In November 1927,at the age of sixteen she married the Navy lieutenant Thomas Hedges Massie (1905–1987) at the Washington National Cathedral. At the time of their marriage Massie had recently graduated from the United States Naval Academy.
Massie first posting was at New London, Connecticut, but he would eventually be stationed at Pearl Harbor in 1930[1]
The cases
[edit]In September 1931, Thalia Massie was found by a passing driver, Eustace Bellinger, wandering along Ala Moana Road in Honolulu at about 1 am on a Sunday morning. She had been beaten and had suffered a broken jaw after being abducted while leaving a party at the nearby Ala Wai Inn. When questioned by Bellinger and his passenger George Clark Jr., she stated that a group of 5 or 6 Hawaiian boys had assaulted her. Later at the hospital she claimed to police that she had been raped as well as assaulted.
Subsequently, five young men, Horace Ida, Henry Chang, Joseph Kahahawai, Benny Ahakuelo, and David Takai, two of Hawaiian ancestry, two of Japanese ancestry, and one of half Chinese/Hawaiian ancestry, who were initially arrested for assaulting a Hawaiian woman, Agnes Peeples, earlier that same night were later also charged with the rape of Massie. Joseph Kahahawai, a boxer, admitted to the earlier assault on Peeples, whom he had slugged and knocked over during a road rage incident at King and Liliha Streets, but all defendants denied having been involved in the assault on Mrs. Massie. The men were represented by two of the foremost criminal lawyers in the islands, William Heen and William B. Pittman, and the mixed-race jury deadlocked along racial lines. The five defendants were released on bail to await retrial at a later date.
Thalia's mother, Grace Fortescue, was deeply disturbed by the release of the defendants and many U.S. Navy personnel at Pearl Harbor were outraged. A short time later, Joseph Kahahawai was abducted when leaving the courthouse after a probation hearing and was found, shot dead, in the back seat of Grace Fortescue's car. Defended by attorney Clarence Darrow of Scopes Monkey Trial fame, Fortescue, Thalia's husband Thomas Massie, and two Navy sailors were eventually tried and convicted of manslaughter in the death of Kahahawai. Originally sentenced to 10 years, their sentence was commuted to one hour in the executive chambers of Governor Lawrence Judd of the Territory of Hawaii.
Thomas and Thalia Massie divorced on February 23, 1934, in Reno, Nevada. In 1953, at the age of 42, Thalia married 21-year-old Robert Thomlinson Uptigrove.[4] They divorced in 1955. She died of an overdose of barbiturate pills[5] in Palm Beach, Florida, on July 3, 1963.[6]
Family tree
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See also
[edit]References
[edit]- ^ a b c Ancestry.com Historical Person Search: Thalia Bell Fortescue, accessed May 2017.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Stannard, David E. (2006-05-02). Honor Killing: Race, Rape, and Clarence Darrow's Spectacular Last Case. Penguin. ISBN 978-1-4406-4921-9.
- ^ a b Fortescue (1927-09-26). "Marriage of Massle". The Brooklyn Daily Times. p. 10. Retrieved 2025-04-25.
- ^ a b c Spinzia, Raymond E (Summer 2006). "Those Other Roosevelts: The Fortescues" (PDF). The Freeholder. II: 8–9, 16–22.
- ^ Harris, Paul (1999). Black Rage Confronts the Law. NYU Press. p. 219. ISBN 978-0-8147-3592-3. Retrieved July 23, 2010.
- ^ Peter Van Slingerland, "Something Terrible Has Happened" (1966) (PAGE NEEDED)
External links
[edit]- "American Experience - The Massie Affair - More about the film The Massie Affair - PBS". pbs.org. 2005-04-07. Archived from the original on 2015-11-17. Retrieved 2017-06-01.
- "Massie case," Kelli Y. Nakamura, Densho Encyclopedia (17 Aug 2013).
