What Happened to Florence Kinrade?

In my last post I reviewed Florence Kinrade - Lizzie Borden of the North by Frank Jones but did not go into what happened after the dramatic Coroner’s Inquest in which Florence was very aggressively questioned. This post goes into what happened next and thoughts on the book. There may be spoilers for those who treat the reading of non-fiction real life crime like crime fiction.

With Florence not incriminating herself at the Inquiry and no weapon and no motive and no way to conclusively prove the murderer was not a tramp Florence was never charged.

Florence married Monty (also known in his family as “Rosy”) and they moved to Calgary where he became a lawyer. 

I was astonished when I read that after Monty died in the 1918 Influenza Epidemic that Florence went back on stage singing with the Mildred Perkins’ Pantages Grand Opera Company in the early 1920’s.

I was fascinated that Jones, who started researching this book in the 1980’s, was able to track down almost 80 years after the murder members of the Kinrade and Wright families. He was able to trace the rest of Florence’s life.

It is his conclusion that Florence murdered her sister. The mysterious stranger as killer is always difficult to establish in real life. I explored the issue at depth in my posts on Robert Raymond Cook, the last person hung in Alberta in the early 1960’s.

Florence Kinrade - Lizzie Borden of the North is a great example of the difference between suspicion and proof.

There was enough evidence of “tramp” violence in the area to provide the possibility of a tramp killing Ethel.

Jones rightly discounts the probability of a tramp waiting some time between initially shooting Ethel and then the final shots that killed her based on a medical opinion of an interval between the two series of shots. I wondered about the reliability of that opinion. Even if it can be counted upon no one can eliminate the “tramp” theory.

The unflinching support of her family gave the Crown no assistance. Jones said they closed ranks to avoid losing another daughter. It the likely reason but it is difficult to argue in court parents will cover up the murder of a child by another child.

Were it Florence her planning has little sense. Killing her sister in the family home when Florence was the only person present was bound to bring close scrutiny upon her. She could not have counted on the sloppy police investigation that actually took place. Crime fiction publishers would have hesitated to publish such an improbable plot.

At the end he looks to analyses of Florence’s mental health by modern psychiatrists who, as is wont to happen with psychiatrists especially when they cannot talk to the patient and are reviewing notes, reach different conclusions. Was she a “moral imbecile” the description of that time for what is popularly called a psychopath?

It is a good book. I had never heard of Florence Kinrade. There is a mini-series to be made of this “unsolved” murder. The recounting of the inquest is gripping. The story of Florence’s life after murder did not flow as well. The analysis of the evidence is logical and well thought out. While the allusion to Lizzie Borden is plausible there is a much more interesting comparison to Scarlett O’Hara from Gone With the Wind. I found the subtitle involving Borden distracting and would have preferred it was not there.

It was sad to read the manuscript lay for decades on the shelves of the University of Toronto Press. It deserved to be published long ago.

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Jones, Frank - (2019) - Florence Kinrade - Lizzie Borden of the North