Mrs Mort's Madness

Annotation. Four days before Christmas 1920, the troubled North Shore mother of two and budding actress Dorothy Mort shot her lover dead in cold blood. The tragic end to the brief affair with dashing young doctor, cricket star and War hero, Dr Claude Tozer, scandalised Sydney. Dorothy's respectable husband was devastated. Following a trial that mesmerised the public and sent the media into a frenzy, Dorothy was declared a not guilty on the ground of insanity and sentenced to nine years in Long Bay gaol. Upon her release, she returned to her husband and quietly lived out the rest of her life ... But was she really mad, or bad, or neither? In an absorbing blend of investigative non-fiction and biography, Suzanne Falkiner delves into the case that has bewitched Sydney for almost 100 years.