Interview with Paula Uruburu - Part II

Welcome to part two of my interview with Professor Paula Uruburu, author of the new biography American Eve: Evelyn Nesbit, Stanford White and the Crime of the Century.

Q. The trial of Harry K. Thaw seemed to set the tone for later celebrity trials of the century like O.J. Simpson, the Menendez brothers, where the victim seemed to be demonized in some way. Not that Thaw and Evelyn came out much better in the press.

It really was a watershed moment for the new century (which would see unfortunately other trial rooted in scandal and sensationalisms, each decade having its “trial of the century” – you mentioned a couple and I would add the Fatty Arbuckle , Lindbergh kidnapping,, and the Manson murder trials in this unholy unhappy pantheon.)

As I say in the book, at first, Harry was seen as the knigh t in shining armor and Evelyn the “ruined maid,” but once all the facts started to emerge about insanity and less than innocent behavior (in order to save Harry from the electric chair) the demonization had touched each of them.

Q. With so much written about the trial at the time, Evelyn’s two memoirs and Harry K. Thaw’s autobiography, where does a biographer begin to start sorting fact from fiction?

First by comparing what’s in those memoirs and then, trying to put them into the specific context x of the moment in which they were written and then the larger cultural context -- with a century of hindsight. Add to that significant detective work (such as finding hundreds of personal letters, the original trial transcripts) talking to real live people who knew the principals (family members, not all of whom are necessarily sympathetic), culling information from everymore impartial source possible (thousands of newspaper accounts, articles, etc.) and then hopefully using common sense and an informed vision of the forces of class and gender at work in such a complicated series of events.

Q. Harry’s mother was the complete opposite of Evelyn’s mother. Mrs. Thaw seemed to alternately smother and control Harry. When Harry was arrested, she did everything she could to make sure that he was acquitted, including having a film made of the murder. Not even OJ tried that!

Yes and I don’t think anyone would have been receptive to an OJ film (look what happened to his recent book deal that ended with an outraged hue and cry) But at the time of White’s murder, it was still an incredibly naïve period and the Thaw millions made it possible to utilize every means of media available to bombard an unsuspecting public only beginning to develop a taste for tabloid.. I say in the book it was a nation of “novice interpreters”and Mother Thaw at times did not realize that her own financial fueling of the media frenzy would come back to bite Harry and the Thaw family’s reputation – with a vengeance.

Q. There was certainly no ‘Dream Team’ in this trial. Thaw fought against being seen as insane. He insisted that he had the right to kill White because of his violation of Evelyn. How unusual was that for a defense? And do you think that Thaw was insane? It seemed fairly pre-meditated.

As I say in the chapters in the book that cover the trial, the “quaint” defense of the “Unwritten Law” which Harry’s lawyers tried to use in the first trial, was a Victorian holdover that would not fly even a year and a half later, when they had to go with the obvious insanity defense. Yet it was enough in 1907 for a hung jury even though Harry killed Stanny in front of 900 witnesses. I do think it was as premeditated as anything Harry could pull off – he had carried that gun around with him for a year and that day he had detectives tailing White’s every move. Once the “convenient or calculated” opportunity presented itself at the Madison Square Garden theatre, Harry made his fatal move. I do, however, also think he was totally demented.


Q. The district attorney William Travers Jerome (who as it happens was Jennie Jerome's double first cousin and Winston Churchill’s second cousin) also had a secret to keep, that he had a mistress. He also had a reputation for fighting against corruption. How important was this trial for him?

I think he was surprisingly naïve when he thought he could wrap this up as just another love triangle gone bad. He had no idea of the force of Mother Thaw’s will or of Evelyn’s astonishing presence in the courtroom – he had reduced many older, wiser professional men to fumbling idiots on the witness stand -- but Evelyn held her own with the “courtroom tiger.” If it was a question for the press of the Lady or the Tiger, I think most would say the lady won -- and this effectively dashed any hopes Jerome had in looking at the governor’s seat and possibly even the presidency at some time in the future (which had been the rumor). Having just lost our former governor to a sex scandal, I suppose not only has nothing changed in 100 years but it’s probably lucky for Jerome that things went the way they did -- since his own philandering might have come to light had he taken a higher public office.

Q. What was the nature of Evelyn’s relationship with Thaw after the trial?

That’s a complicated issue – since she felt the Thaws owed her big time for sacrificing her reputation and making herself a scandalous woman to save Harry’s life, she tried to stick things out and hoped for the best. But it was clear almost immediately that once Harry was in the insane asylum, Mother Thaw had no intention of rewarding Evelyn for her testimony. Yet she was now married to a lunatic incarcerated for who knows how long, and to say things were strained would be an understatement, especially since Harry grew more and more resentful that she was not grateful enough for what he did “for her” – which was to ruin any chances she might have had for a “normal “life.

Q. Evelyn’s life after the trial seemed to go from bad to worse for a time. What lessons, if any, can today’s young stars learn from Evelyn Nesbit? Can her story be viewed as a cautionary tale?

Without discouraging further scandalous behavior by adult women who are free to do what they like, I only wish that those young girls (not women) who are already in the harsh cynical light of celebrity-fueled fire – with names like Miley, Brittany, Lindsey, Mary-Kate and Ashley – or those contemplating fame based on such fleeting things as beauty or the whims of a fickle public, read Evelyn’s story and learn something from it. It is of course doubly difficult when, like Evelyn, virtually all of today’s teen-aged femme fatales are placed in harm’s way by parents with dubious motivations and atrocious parenting skill -- and that we are still a culture which delights in watching young women crash and burn for its own titillation and entertainment. As I say early in the book, those who don’t learn from history’s sins are doomed to repeat them -- and 100 years later NOTHING has changed.

Q. Evelyn lived long enough to see the movie 'The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing' with Joan Collins which you said that she thought that Joan Collins was too voluptuous to play her (how funny that both actresses cast to play her physically look nothing like her, at least in terms of body type). What do you think she would have
made of the continued fascination with her story?


Given that Evelyn wrote several letters in the last few years of her life about how she "rocked civilization," I'd say she would find the whole thing pretty amusing. She was able to have both literal and critical distance from the "Garden tragedy" by then. As "the girl who brought down the house" (much like Eve, Pandora, Helen of Troy, etc.) she ultimately believed that she was somehow destined to expose the sins of the rich and powerful.

I also think she would have had a great deal to say about the current state of affairs where young girls, who have much greater opportunities than those a century ago, are being "exposed" to the limelight by unscrupulous or deluded parents in the HD, TMZ, Hollywood Heat culture of today. Even though she could never bring herself to openly criticize her mother, she wrote again and again about how damaging it was to be exposed to fame at a young age

Thank you Professor Uruburu for joining me at Scandalous Women, and for allowing me to post the lovely images of Evelyn, as well as Stanford White and Thaw. You can purchase Professor Uruburu's book at Amazon.com or Barnes and Noble. Also please see her web-site to read an excerpt from the book as well as watch the trailer at American Eve.

Welcome Paula Uruburu - Author of American Eve

Scandalous Women is pleased to welcome Professor Paula Uruburu, author of American Eve: Evelyn Nesbit, Stanford White, and the Crime of the Century (Riverhead Books).

Paula Uruburu is an associate professor of English at Hofstra University. An expert on Evelyn Nesbit and the time period, she has been widely published and has appeared on A&E's Biography, PBS's History Detectives and American Experience, and been a consultant for The History Channel.

The scandalous story of America’s first supermodel, sex goddess, and modern celebrity, Evelyn Nesbit, the temptress at the center of Stanford White’s famous murder, whose iconic life story reflected all the paradoxes of America’s Gilded Age. Known to millions before her sixteenth birthday in 1900, Evelyn Nesbit was the most photographed woman of her era, an iconic figure who set the standard for female beauty. Women wanted to be her. Men just wanted her.

When her life of fantasy became all too real, and her jealous millionaire husband, Harry K. Thaw, killed her lover—celebrity architect Stanford White, builder of the Washington Square Arch and much of New York City—she found herself at the center of the “Crime of the Century” and the popular courtroom drama that followed—a scandal that signaled the beginning of a national obsession with youth, beauty, celebrity, and sex.

The story of Evelyn Nesbit is one of glamour, money, romance, sex, madness, and murder, and Paula Uruburu weaves all of these elements into an elegant narrativethat reads like the best fiction— only it’s all true. American Eve goes far beyond just literary biography; it paints a picture of America as it crossed from the Victorian era into the modern, foreshadowing so much of our contemporary culture today.

Q. Welcome Professor Uruburu. Over a hundred years later, the story of Evelyn Nesbit, Stanford White and Harry Thaw still continues to fascinate. What led to your interest in Evelyn Nesbit?

I actually mention this in the notes section of my book – and it fits quite nicely with your scandalous women – since it started with a course I teach called Daughters of Decadence.It’s a lit course on the depiction of women at the turn of the last century in short fiction, poetry and novels. I began to look for images of women to enhance my lectures and kept coming across the hypnotic face of Evelyn Nesbit. Like so many others, I became obsessed with her image and wanted to know more than what I thought I knew from reading Doctorow’s brilliant historical novel Ragtime.

Q. Evelyn’s mother seems to have abdicated her role both as a parent as a breadwinner. She’s not even really a stage mother in the sense of say, a Dina Lohan. And she abandons her when Evelyn needed her most during the trial. What is your take on Mrs. Nesbit?

Well, as I say in the book, initially I was sympathetic to the plight of a woman left a widow with two children and no social programs or avenues of help at the time. But then, the more research I did and the more I learned, she became what I call a “monster in human form” – not all monsters are easily recognizable as such, which makes them all the more insidious and dangerous – as certain parental behaviors in the news currently appear to me.(think Lohan, Spears, Cyrus …).

Q. Nowadays we are so used to people becoming famous seemingly out of nowhere like Paris Hilton and Nicole Ritchie. But Evelyn’s fame was something new back then. Her photographs were everywhere, and she seems to have posed for most of the great photographers and artists of the day. What do you think it was about Evelyn that made her such a celebrity?

Two things. She was an extraordinary-looking girl (I stress that since she started modeling at 14) and had an extraordinarily natural beauty, completely against the type of the time – which made her stand out and which connoisseurs of the artistic avante garde like White recognized. Hers was also a case of unique timing, since new technology converged with Evelyn which literally made her the poster girl of the Gilded Age. It was the New Century in search of symbols to represent the age and she was It.

Q. Stanford White was also very well known at the time as well. How was he able to keep his proclivities so secret from the public for so long? Particularly with the likes of Anthony Comstock and the Society for the Prevention of Vice around?

This was the last gasp of the gilded period where an unspoken conspiracy of the rich and powerful were able to keep their private sins separate from the public sphere they ruled over. White was almost found out with the Pie Girl incident( people will have to read the book to find out what that was) but he begged the newspapers to keep his name out of things and pretty much succeeded. After his murder the walls of secrecy came tumbling down.

Q. In many ways, Stanford White seemed to fulfill the roles of both father and lover to Evelyn. Do you feel that the loss of Evelyn’s father when she was young led her to seek out father substitutes? She wrote in her memoirs that he was the only man that she ever really loved; do you think that’s true?

I believe Evelyn when she says that “Stanny” was the only man she ever truly loved – and while I would leave it to the psychologists to offer a more expert opinion on whether or not Evelyn had an Electra complex., I do think that there was some fusion (on confusion) of daughter-love with what became a sexual relationship once White crossed the line with Evelyn. As she says, even though at first he struck her as appallingly old, his youthful exuberance and playfulness eventually won her over. I do think her brief “frolic” with John Barrymore , by the way, was more of a crush and not really love.

Q. Why was Thaw so obsessed with Stanford White?

Thaw wanted desperately to be part of the “smart set” and social elite in Manhattan (as he perceived he was in Pittsburgh and certain European capitals .) But when his crazy antics and abrasive personality manifested themselves, he was virtually banned form every club in the city – many of which White had built or was a member of – and Thaw believed White blackballed him – he saw White as the source of his social disgcrace and thus a perfect target for obsession and revenge.

Q. Why did Evelyn eventually marry Thaw after learning about his darker side?

That’s the hardest question for me since she in fact had a very intelligent and intellectually curious mind (which her beaut y overshadowed overwhelmingly). I think her decision was based on several factors -a childhood of poverty versus what she perceived of as the comfort of the Thaw millions; added to that is the fact that Stanny had already “ruined” her as far as legitimate suitors would be concerned; and like all practiced sociopaths, Harry effectively cut her off from other avenues of choice and promised,(and gave convincing evidence) of being able to curb his darker appetites and behave especially in the presence of his Mother in whose house they would live.

Q. All three principals seemed to have a duality to their nature, Stanford White and Thaw certainly, but even Evelyn seemed to have two sides to her as well.

Yes that’s another reason why I find the story so fascinating – three larger-than-life people from very different backgrounds all converged at the moment of America’s cultural identity crisis at the turn into the new century. People wanted to hang on to outdated stereotypes (the melodramatic scenarios of the Victorian era) when it all began, but the culture was already in transition – and Evelyn was far more a modern girl in spirit than the age allowed. Without any sort of guidance, she had to make her own way, which meant having to survive and embrace decadence.at certain moments, all brought on by her incredible beauty.

Q. Do you think it was possible for the tragedy to have been averted any point? Or do you think it was inevitable in some way?

Evelyn talks in her own memoirs a lot about Fate and I can’t help but see her life and her position in this new world “Garden tragedy” as some weird convergence of larger forces. . The fact shat she was “Evie” and Stanny was the creator of the Garden, infiltrated by the devious snake Harry Thaw only underscores for me the mythic inevitability of the whole thing.

Come back tomorrow for Part II of my interview with Paula Uruburu!

Evelyn Nesbit and the Murder of the Century

It was called the Murder of the Century. Eighty years before the trial of OJ Simpson captured the attention of the nation and the world, there was the murder of architect Stanford White by Harry K. Thaw at the entertainment complex that he created Madison Square Garden. The story had everything, society -- money, rage, lust, envy. Within a week of the murder, the Biograph Company had produced a motion picture dramatization.

And at the center of this love triangle gone wrong was a young copper haired beauty named Evelyn Nesbit.

She was born Florence Evelyn Nesbit on Christmas Day in 1884 in Tarentum, a small town near Pittsburgh, PA, the same city that her future husband, Harry K. Thaw hailed from. But while Harry grew up in the lap of luxury living on the big hill, Evelyn and her family were barely scraping above the poverty line after the untimely death of her father when she was 8. Her mother tried to turn their home into a boarding house with minimal success. They often had so little money that they were reduced to eating mustard sandwiches. A dreamy child, Evelyn spend her time imaginging an existence where she was a princess in a castle, or rescued by a handsome prince from the poverty of her existence. But the reality was that there was only one person who could save the family and that was Evelyn.

From the time she was born it was clear that Evelyn was going to turn into a great beauty. When she was fourteen, her mother moved the family to Philadelphia, where Evelyn and her mother soon took jobs at Wanamaker’s department store. However, Evelyn was soon discovered by a local artist, Mrs. Darragh who was taken by her beauty. While she didn’t have the voluptuous figure that was popular during the Gilded Age, Evelyn was willowy, with the type of figure and face that artists adored sketching. Soon Evelyn found she was being sought out by artists such as Carl Blender and F.S. Church.

Modeling in the 19th century was not the career aspiration that it is today. It was considered, like acting, one step above prostitution. Well brought up young ladies didn’t model. In Evelyn’s case, despite her mother’s misgivings, she was able to earn enough to keep the family intact, fed and clothed. Soon Evelyn decided that the family should move to New York, where she could make even more money as an artist’s model. They took rooms in a boarding house on 22nd Street, and Evelyn using a letter of recommendation from an artist in Philadelphia, began making the rounds of the studios of famous artists.

Soon Evelyn had met and posed for Carroll Beckwith, who introduced her to other New York artists, among them Charles Dana Gibson, Frederick S. Church and photographer Rudolf Eickemeyer. Before she knew it, she was one of the most sought after artist models in the city. Sculptor George Grey Barnard used her for his famous piece “Innocence” which is now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Photographic fashion modeling, while in its infancy, was becoming more and more popular in the fifteen daily newspapers, and paid more as well. Evelyn learned that she could make up to $5 for a half-day shot or $10 for a full day shoot (that’s about $40 per hour in 2008 dollars). With this kind of money, she was able to bring her younger brother Howard to New York to live with them.

The minute her pictures began to appear in the paper, Evelyn was famous, and theatrical producers began to come around wanting to feature her, not caring whether or not she had any actual talent. Evelyn was cast as one of the Spanish dancers in the hit musical Floradora, but what she really wanted to be was part of the Floradora Sextette, 6 girls who were the show piece the show. Stage Door Johnnies flocked to escort the Floradora girls out to parties and to dinner at restaurants like Delmonico’s and Rectors. Often they send around flowers backstage with money attached. One of these Stage Door Johnnies was Stanford White, the most famous architect in New York if not the entire country. At the time that they met, Evelyn was 16 years old and ‘Stanny’ as he was known was 47, and married with a wife and son conveniently spending most of their time out on Long Island.

Stanford stood over 6 feet tall, with red hair and a moustache. He had incredible energy, often working on 40 and 50 projects at the same time. The architectural firm which he helped to co-found, McKim, Mead & White was responsible for the Arch in Washington Square Park, The Players Club, the Metropolitan Club and various other landmarks around New York City, including the magnificent Madison Square Garden (the second building on the spot and the last to actually be on Madison Square). He also spent more than he earned, entertaining lavishly. He was not only the architect but he also furnished the houses that he built, taking buying trips to Europe where he would return laden down with furniture and art work.

He also had a reputation for ‘befriending’ teenage girls, luring them to his lavish private tower apartment at Madison Square Garden, or to a little studio hideway on West 24th Street (now sadly demolished) that came complete with a red velvet swing. Stanford would push his darlings on the swing, sometimes while they were naked, Evelyn later wrote how he would push her higher while she kicked a hole in the Japanese parasols that were hung from the ceiling. Evelyn’s mother however chose to overlook his dubious reputation for his patronage. White had Evelyn’s teeth fixed, and took her and her mother out shopping. Eventually, money was found to send her brother to military school, and to move her and her mother to a better apartment in the city.

When Evelyn’s mother had to go out of town, Stanford promised to look after her daughter. He looked after her alright. According to the story she told Thaw and then later on in court, White brought her back to his private apartment, plied her with champagne that was drugged, and then took her virginity. However, at the end of her life, Evelyn claimed that Stanford White was the only man she had ever loved. Despite the dubious beginnings of their relationship, Evelyn was White’s mistress for about a year. She soon learned that she wasn’t the only one enjoying the attentions of Stanford White.

Evelyn was soon being courted by other men, including the young and extremely gorgeous John Barrymore who was 22 at the time. However, at the time that they were together, Barrymore was not the matinee idol and movie star that he became later on. He was broke and dabbling as an artist and photographer. Still he was madly in love with her and proposed to her at least twice. She also became pregnant with his child. White swooped in to fix the situation, sending Evelyn off to a boarding school run by Cecil B. DeMille’s mother in New Jersey, where she was treated for ‘appendicitis’ for the first time (apparently she later on had a second attack of ‘appendicitis.’ Who knew you could have more than one?)

Her fortunes took a turn for the better or worse, depending on how one looks at it, when she made the acquaintance of Harry K. Thaw of Pittsburgh as he was fond of introducing himself. Harry Kendall Thaw was the heir to a multi-million dollar mining and railroad fortune. While Evelyn and her family moved from place to place, trying to stay one step of ahead of abject poverty, Harry’s life was one of privilege with mansions, servants, ponies, luxurious coaches and private schools. He also, from birth, was subject to temper tantrums, fits, and violent outbursts. Still he managed to somehow get into Harvard, where he spent his time playing poker. When Harry’s father passed away, his will left him a trust that would allow him a measly $200 per month. Harry’s indulgent mother, known to everyone as Mother Thaw, immediately raised his yearly allowance to $80,000 a year.

Thaw was obsessed with the theater, and he was a regular attendee at Broadway shows. He squired chorus girls around town, but there were darker rumors that Thaw had a penchant for dog whips. Harry was a huge fan of the show Floradora, and a particular fan of a certain copper-haired beauty named Evelyn Nesbit. He first approached Evelyn under an assumed name, “Mr. Monroe,” before finally revealing himself. Evelyn, at first, wanted nothing to do with him, but Thaw was persistent. He even managed to find out where she was in New Jersey, pursuing her with a vengeance. Finally Evelyn agreed to go out with him.

Harry worked his charm on her mother as well, persuading her mother that a trip to Europe was just what Evelyn needed to recover from her ‘appendicitis.’ They spend several weeks traveling around France, but before they left Stanford White gave Evelyn a line of credit for $500 just in case. It was while in Europe that Thaw first revealed his true colors. He would fly into rages on the slightest provocation, or disappear for a day or two, finally returning with a manic gleam in his eye. Finally, Evelyn learned that Thaw was addicted to cocaine and morphine. After her mother had had enough of Thaw’s behavior, she returned to the States. Thaw had promised to hire a chaperone to watch over Evelyn but that somehow never materialized.

Having finally gotten the object of his desire alone, Thaw pressed Evelyn about her relationship with Stanford White, who he hated with a passion bordering on obsession. There are various theories for Thaw’s unwavering animosity for White. One story has it that Thaw had invited a show girl Frances Belmont and her friends to huge party with all his male cronies. On the night before the party, Frances walked in to Sherry’s restaurant with her beau, Frank Crowninshield, the future editor of Vanity Fair. Thaw was there also and snubbed her. Furious, Frances decided to take all her friends to a party at White’s tower instead, leaving Thaw waiting without entertainment for his male friends. Thaw blamed his humiliation on White.

Thaw pressed Evelyn for details of her ‘seduction’ by Stanford White. When he discovered what White had supposedly done to her, he flew into a rage, beating Evelyn with a whip until she begged for mercy. When Evelyn returned to New York, she went straight to Stanford and told him what Thaw had done. White had Evelyn give her statement to his lawyer, and Thaw was forbidden to see Evelyn until she came of age, even though she’d already turned 18. If Evelyn had hoped that telling White about Thaw would rekindle his feelings for her, she was sadly mistaken. White had moved onto to another pretty young thing. He would always have a fondness for Evelyn but their relationship as lovers was now over.

Although she had previously told Harry that she could never marry him because she planned on devoting her life to the stage, Evelyn now changed her mind. Her mother had remarried a Mr. Holman, Stanny was no longer available to her, and perhaps after seeing what a life of luxury could be like, decided to make the best of it and marry Thaw. She’d seen how contrite he could be after one of his rages. Perhaps she felt that in some strange way, marrying Thaw kept her close to Stanny given Thaw’s feelings towards him. Harry had already informed her that he had detectives following White’s every move. His hatred of White was so complete that he even went to Anthony Comstock, head of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice and reported that White had debauched over three hundred young girls. He also kept a pistol on his person, claiming that the Monk Eastman gang, on White’s orders was after him. Thaw and Evelyn were wed on April 4, 1905 in Pittsburgh when she was 20 and Thaw was 33.

After their marriage, Evelyn and Thaw moved in with his mother at the family estate in Lyndhurst. Although living with her mother-in-law was not how Evelyn envisaged her marriage, she decided to stick it out. She could always convince Thaw to take her to every play, opera, ballet and musical that played Pittsburgh. Her free time was spent redecorating her rooms in the gloomy house. For all their money, the Thaws apparently had no idea how to furnish a house.

Matters finally came to a head on June 25, 1906. Evelyn and Thaw were in New York staying at the hotel Lorraine, preparing to spend the summer in Europe. That night they had plans to see the first night of a new show Mam’zelle Champagne at the roof theatre at Madison Square Garden, which Evelyn found curious, given Thaw’s hatred of White. Before they left for the theatre, Thaw had left Evelyn at the hotel to have a few drinks down at Sherry’s, where the hat check girl noted that despite the June weather, Thaw refused to take off his overcoat. While they were at dinner at Cafe Martin, Evelyn passed Harry a note saying that the Beast, Thaw's preferred nickname for White, had been in the restaurant.

During the song, ‘I Could Love a Million Girls,’ Thaw went up to White and fired three shots at close range into White’s face, killing him instantly. He then immediately emptied the barrel of the gun and held it over his head to show that he had no intentions of firing again. Various people reported that Thaw either shouted, “You’ll never see that woman again!” or “You ruined my wife,” before firing his gun. Thaw was arrested and taken to the county jail where he had his meals catered by Delmonico’s while he awaited trial.

There were two trials. At the first Thaw plead temporary insanity, claiming that he had the moral right to kill White because of what he did to Evelyn. Evelyn showed up every day at the trial wearing a white blouse, dark skirt, and a charming black hat, looking more like a school girl than the 22 year old wife. Evelyn knew that she had a part to play, and she was ready. It was her greatest acting performance ever. Her outfit soon became a fashion statement due to drawings in the daily papers. When she took the stand, the district attorney, William Travers Jerome, couldn't shake Evelyn's story since she was telling the jury what she told Thaw, not what might have really happened concerning her relationship with Shaw. Instead he tried to smear her character, hammering her on the witness. His strategy had the reverse effect, he just looked like he was bullying a sweet, young girl.

In the meantime a smear campaign was waged against the character of Stanford White. Newspapers dug up all kinds of stories concerning White's debauched behavior with models and showgirls. Other girls came forward and claimed that he was a perfect gentleman. Conspicuously silent where White's friends. Mother Thaw paid not only for a film to be made but also an Off-Broadway play that painted White as a degenerate and debaucher of young girls. It was one of the first cases where the defense went all out to smear the victim (a practice that has become de rigueur since then). In a shocking move, Evelyn's mother came forward to defend Stanford White's character, claiming that she had letters from White that proved that his intentions towards Evelyn had been honorable. However, Mother Thaw took care of the problem, paying her $25,000 for her silence.

The first jury was deadlocked, ending in a hung jury. At the second trial, his lawyers now pleaded that Thaw was definitely insane. Thaw’s mother, always referred to as Mother Thaw, offered to pay Evelyn $1,000,000 to testify that White had raped her and that the thought send Thaw around the bend. After the verdict came in that Thaw was found innocent by reason of insanity, he was treated like a hero. Many felt that the verdict was a miscarriage of justice that was bought by a great deal of money. It was clear from the testimony given that Thaw had suffered from severe mental delusions for years compounded by an addiction to cocaine and morphine. It was also clear that Thaw knew exactly what he was doing when he killed Stanford White.

After Thaw was sent to the Matteawan State Hospital for the Criminally Insane in upstate New York, he and Evelyn were divorced but she never received the $1,000,000 from Mother Thaw. Evelyn had initially tried to obtain an annulment from Thaw, until she found out it meant that she would have no claim to his estate if anything happened to him. Mother Thaw, however, was a shrewd woman and she'd had Evelyn tailed by detectives who discovered that Evelyn had not

been the adoring wife except in public while Thaw was in jail awaiting trial or while he was incacerated at Matteawan.

Thaw meanwhile enjoyed almost total freedom at Matteawan. While there, he spent his time trying to get the verdict of insanity appealed. The case went all the way to the United States Supreme Court but was upheld. Thaw managed to escape temporarily to Canada in 1913. He was extradited back to the States, but was finally released in 1915 after being judged sane. But that wasn't the end of Thaw's trouble's. Thaw was accused of sexually assaulting and horsewhipping a young boy and was sent back to a mental hospital until 1924. After his release, he moved to Virginia where he bought a historic home called Kenilworth, ingratiating himself with the locals. When he died in Florida in 1947, he left Evelyn $10,000 in his will.

The years were not kind to Evelyn after White’s death. She gave birth to a son, Russell Thaw, in 1910 that she claimed was Thaw’s child but he denied it, and Evelyn eventually admitted that Russell was not Thaw’s although she refused to say who was. She went into vaudeville, with a partner Jack Clifford who she later married, demonstrating the new dances like the fox-trot. She attempted suicide several times, and miraculously she and Thaw apparently attempted to reconcile but nothing came of it. She lived quietly for many years in New Jersey, where she taught ceramics, after overcoming an addiction to morphine (an addiction she was introduced to by Thaw), and alcoholism.

When the film The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing was in production starring Farley Granger, Joan Collins and Ray Milland, Evelyn acted as a technical advisor. She also published two memoirs, The Story of My Life and Prodigal Days. In recent years, her story has entered the national consciousness through E.L. Doctorow’s novel Ragtime and the movie and musical based on the book. Evelyn died in a nursing home in Santa Monica, California at the age of 82 in 1967.

The real victim in all this is Stanford White. Not only was his life tragically cut short, but his reputation blackened to such a degree that his name was spoken in hushed whispers after his death, to the point that even his own family were ashamed to be related to him. The unholy trinity of scandal, violence and sexual impropriety still haunt the memory of a brilliant architect who should be remembered for the brilliant buildings he gave the world, not his sex life.

These three people from disparate backgrounds are now intertwined in the history of New York’s Gilded Age, as symbols of the decadence that symbolized the city. Could White’s death have been prevented if Evelyn had never married Thaw? No one will ever know for sure. Thaw clearly had it in for the man he called “The Beast” but his relationship with Evelyn spurred his obsession to unnatural heights. Evelyn, for her part, never seems to have gotten over her relationship with White. Having lost her father at such a young age, White was both lover and father substitute. Her relationship with Thaw in some way kept her connected to Stanford White, and even in death, her name will always be coupled with his as part of the “Murder of the Century.”

For further reading:

The Architect of Desire by Suzannah Lessard (White’s great-great grand daughter)
Evelyn Nesbit and Stanford White: Love and Death in the Gilded Age - Michael Mooney

Film:
American Experience – The Murder of the Century
The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing
Ragtime