Grace Fortescue
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Grace Hubbard Fortescue, née Grace Hubbard Bell (November 3, 1883 in Washington D.C. – 1979) was a New York socialite who decided to take the law into her own hands and murdered a defendants in the alleged rape of Grace's daughter that resulted in a trial embraced by white Americans and earned her a one-hour sentence for manslaughter.
Grace Hubbard Fortescue was the granddaughter of Gardiner Hubbard, the first president of Bell Telephone. She was the daughter of Charles John and Roberta Wolcott Hubbard Bell of Twin Oaks on Connecticut Avenue in Washington, DC.[1] Newspaper reports indicate that Grace could be classified as a prankster when a youth she and her friends stole a trolley car for a joy ride through the streets of Washington and on another occasion she blocked traffic on Pennsylvania Avenue by joining hands with friends and roller skating down the avenue.[2]
Her husband was U.S. Army Major Granville "Rolly" Fortescue, one of the sons of Robert Barnwell Roosevelt, the uncle of U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt, but the marriage was not financially successful as she would have wished. She was the mother of Thalia Fortescue Massie.
Outwardly, the Fortescues appeared to be wealthy country gentry. In reality, financial affairs became a primary concern for them after Granville's final retirement from the army. With the exception of a short stint as a fiction editor for Liberty Magazine in 1930, he did not have steady employment, preferring to wait for the fortune his wife would inherit at the death of her parents.[2]
A graying woman of fair complexion, standing at 5-feet 6-inches (168 cm) tall and weighing 134 pounds (61 kg), Grace Fortescue was charged with murder and convicted by a jury of manslaughter after the death of Joseph Kahahawai, one of the defendants in the alleged rape of her daughter.
Also charged and convicted with Fortescue were two sailors, Edward J. Lord and Deacon Jones, as well as Fortescue's son-in-law, Thomas Massie who participated in the abduction and murder of Kahahawai.
As of January 8, 1932, a criminal record indicates that while in Honolulu, Grace Fortescue lived on Kolowalu Street in Manoa Valley, a short distance from her daughter's home on Kahawai Street.
Attorney Clarence Darrow defended Fortescue, Jones, Massie and Lord and obtained a commutation of their sentence of ten-years imprisonment for manslaughter to one-hour in the executive chambers of Territorial Governor Lawrence M. Judd.
[edit] Source
- ^ Fortescue, Granville Roland (1875-1952) undated, retrieved on 2008-06-07.
- ^ a b Spinzia, Raymond E. "Those Other Roosevelts: The Fortescues" The Freeholder Magazine Online of the Oyster Bay Historical Society, 2006, retrieved on 2008-06-07.
- David E. Stannard, "Honor Killing", Viking Penguin, 2005 (illustration number 28, entitled Mug Shots and arrest file of Grace Fortescue) ISBN: 0670033995
