A Model, an Architect, a Millionaire, and a Murder
Evelyn Nesbit, Stanford White, Harry Thaw, and the “Trial of the Century”
Stanford White, Evelyn Nesbit, and Harry Thaw. (public domain)
NOTE: An earlier version of this story was first published on Medium. If you are a Medium subscriber, you can read the original here. Reading on Medium earns me some money. My Substack is currently subscription-free. Thank you.
Exceptional beauty can be both a blessing and a curse. It can atttaract attention, admiration, and opportunity. It can also attract jealousy, covetousness, and the wrong kind of people. We’ve seen this play out repeatedly throughout the ages. The adored one must have intelligence, self-esteem, and self-control to successfully navigate what, for many, becomes a perilous voyage, especially since most of the passengers board this ship of celebrity at a very young age.
Evelyn Nesbit: The Artist’s Ideal (1884/85?–1967)
Evelyn Nesbit was the daughter of an attorney and a housewife. She was born on Christmas Day in either 1884 or 1885 (Nesbit herself was unsure of the year) in Tarentum, Pennsylvania.
In her early years, she developed a love of books and took music and dancing lessons.
Her father died when Nesbit was about ten years old, and she, her mother, and younger brother were without an income.
Mrs. Nesbit, whose only work experience was as a reasonably well-to-do housewife, was mostly unsuccessful in finding a way to support the family. As it turned out, there was a goldmine sitting under her nose: Evelyn.
The family eventually wound up in Philadelphia, where Mrs. Nesbit, 14-year-old Evelyn, and 12-year-old Howard all found employment at Wannamaker’s department store. One of Evelyn’s customers turned out to be a female artist who was struck by the girl’s beauty and charm and asked her to pose for her.
Other artists and photographers were drawn to young Evelyn’s exceptional beauty and asked her to pose as well. It wasn’t long before she was making far more modeling than her family could earn at Wannamaker’s, and would eventually become the family’s sole support.
In 1900, the Nesbits relocated to New York, where, with the help of letters of introduction from Philadelphia artists, Evelyn Nesbit became one of the most sought after artists’ models of the decade.
Nesbit posed for celebrated artists such as James Carroll Beckwith, Frederick Church, and Charles Dana Gibson (who inspired the Gibson Girl ideal of feminine beauty with a series of popular pen and ink illustrations).
Nesbit’s image appeared in advertisements, on numerous magazine covers, penny postcards, and tourist souvenirs. Hers was perhaps the most famous face of the era. Women wanted to look like her and men wanted to possess her. One of these men was society architect Stanford White.
In 1901, Evelyn Nesbit, bored with the long hours of posing required of an artist’s model, persuaded her mother to allow her to enter show business and joined the chorus of a popular Broadway show Floradora. Soon after, she secured a one-year contract as a featured player in another show, The Wild Rose.
It was during her stint as a chorus girl that 16-year-old Nesbit was introduced to 48-year-old architect Stanford White by fellow “Floradora Girl” Edna Goodrich.
Stanford White: The Master Builder (1853–1906)
Stanford White was an American architect and a partner in the firm of McKim, Mead, and White, which was at the forefront of the Beaux-Arts architectural movement.
He designed homes for wealthy clients as well as municipal buildings, houses of worship, and monuments such as New York City’s Washington Square Arch.
White’s marriage to Bessie Springs Smith in 1884 produced a son, Lawrence Grant White, in 1887.
Stanford White’s interests included collecting rare and costly things and having encounters with beautiful women. It was inevitable that Evelyn Nesbit would come to his attention.
Nesbit became a frequent visitor to White’s multi-story apartment on 24th Street in Manhattan. Among other exotic and luxurious furnishings, the apartment boasted a green swathed-room with a red velvet swing suspended from the ceiling. During her first visit, White pushed Nesbit in the swing while her friend Edna looked on. The occasion was an innocent outing by all accounts.
White ingratiated himself with Nesbit’s mother, providing the family with accommodations at a luxury hotel at his expense and offering to help Evelyn’s brother get into a prestigious private school.
Harry K. Thaw: The Mad Millionaire (1871–1947)
Another person drawn to Evelyn Nesbit was Harry K. Thaw, the son of railroad and coal baron William Thaw, Sr. of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and the heir to a multi-million dollar fortune.
Thaw became obsessed with Nesbit when he saw her in The Wild Rose and, over the next year, attended close to forty performances.
When a friend arranged an introduction with Nesbit, Thaw used the alias “Mr. Munroe” and subsequently showered her with gifts and money before revealing his true identity.
When Evelyn had to undergo an emergency appendectomy, Thaw convinced Mrs. Nesbit that a trip to Europe would be just the thing to help her recover. He took them on an exhaustive tour, which strained the relationship between mother and daughter and prompted Mrs. Nesbit to insist on returning to the United States.
Thaw and Evelyn continued the trip with Thaw pestering Evelyn to become his wife. She was reluctant to do so because she had become aware that Thaw was obsessed with the notion of female purity, and her relationship with White and with other men, including actor John Barrymore, had been anything but chaste.
In Paris, Thaw subjected Nesbit to intense interrogation on the subject of her relationship with men, finally wearing her down. She admitted that, when she was 16-years-old, Stanford White had plied her with champagne and raped her as she lay unconscious in his apartment.
The pair continued their journey, arriving at Katzenstein Castle in Germany. It was there that Thaw’s true nature became abundantly clear. He locked Nesbit in her room and, over two weeks, subjected her to beatings with a whip and numerous sexual assaults. When his manic phase had passed, he became apologetic and upbeat and was still intent on marrying her.
The craving for financial security was intense in Evelyn Nesbit. Thaw had pursued her for four years and, despite his sometimes despicable and bizarre behavior, his ability to provide a secure future and lavish lifestyle were enormously appealing. At last, she agreed to be his wife.
The couple were married on April 4, 1905. But Harry Thaw was unable to come to grips with the fact that one man had robbed him of the opportunity to bed a virgin bride, and that man was Stanford White.
In Thaw’s mind, Stanford White was behind all of his most grating disappointments and humiliations. Not only had he assaulted his wife and stolen his her virginity, but he had been instrumental in Thaw rejection by New York’s elite.
As one of the leading figures in the upper echelons of New York society, White had poked fun at Thaw’s attempts to be accepted as part of that circle, referring to him as “the Pennsylvania pug,” a comment which unfortunately had made its way into the newspapers.
Murder most foul
On June 25, 1906, Thaw and Nesbit went to see a show, Mam’zelle Champagne, with friends in New York. The show was playing at the rooftop theatre of Madison Square Garden. It was a hot evening, but Thaw wore a long overcoat over his tuxedo.
Stanford White arrived at the rooftop garden at 11:00 pm and sat down at his regular table. Thaw, upon seeing White’s arrival, tentatively approached him several times and then withdrew. Then, during the finale, “I Could Love A Million Girls,” Thaw approached White, drew out a pistol, and shot him three times at close range, twice in the face, killing him instantly.
Eyewitnesses reported that Thaw remained standing over White’s body, brandishing the pistol aloft and crying, “I did it because he ruined my wife! He had it coming to him! He took advantage of the girl and then abandoned her!”
Thaw was arrested and charged with first-degree murder. His request for bail denied, he was detained at the Tombs prison but remained in high spirits. He was confident that the public was in full support of his ridding the world of Stanford White.
The “Trial of the Century”
District attorney William Travers Jerome preferred not to take the case to trial and was hoping Thaw could be declared legally insane. Thaw’s first defense attorney Lewis Delafield concurred with the prosecution believing that an insanity plea was Thaw’s only hope of avoiding execution.
Thaw fired Delafield. He was adamant that the murder was justified and believed that his attorney was trying to railroad him into a mental institution.
Thaw’s mother, Mary Sibbet Copley Thaw, was also determined that her son would not bear the stigma of clinical insanity.
As it turned out, she had been paying people off to cover up his aberrant behavior for most of his life. Thaw was a frequent user of cocaine and morphine, and Harvard expelled him for “immoral practices” and threats against students and faculty.
Mrs. Thaw convinced the defense team to present a plea of temporary insanity and spent $500,000 on a group of doctors whose job it was to substantiate that her son’s murder of White was a single aberrant act.
Harry K. Thaw was tried twice for the murder of Stanford White. The first trial took place from January to April of 1907. After 47 hours of deliberation, the jury was unable to reach a decision.
At his second trial in January and February of 1908, Harry Thaw pleaded temporary insanity. He was found not guilty by reason of insanity and sentenced to incarceration for life at the Matteawan State Hospital for the Criminally Insane near Fishkill, New York.
Aftermath
Due to his family’s wealth and influence, Thaw’s accommodations at Matteawan were much more comfortable than that of his fellow inmates, and he enjoyed special privileges they did not. Nevertheless, he was determined to get out one way or another.
Thaw’s legal team immediately began maneuvers to get him released. After a series of events, including his escape from Matteawan, flight to Canada, and extradition to New York, Thaw was able to secure a trial to determine whether or not he was still insane. On July 16, 1915, a jury decided in Thaw’s favor, and he was set free.
In January of 1917, Thaw was arrested and charged, this time with the kidnapping, beating, and sexual assault of 19-year-old Frederick Gump of Kansas City, Missouri. At his trial, a jury deemed Thaw to be insane, and the judge ordered his confinement at Kirkbride Asylum in Philadelphia.
He was ultimately judged sane and regained his freedom in April 1924. Harry K. Thaw died of a heart attack in Miami, Florida, in 1947, leaving an estate equivalent to $11 million in today’s dollars. In his will, Thaw bequeathed Evelyn Nesbit roughly 1% of his net worth.
Thaw never expressed regret for the murder of Stanford White. Twenty years after the event, he reportedly claimed, “Under the same circumstances, I’d kill him tomorrow.”
Evelyn Nesbit gave birth to a son, Russell William Thaw, on October 25, 1910, in Berlin, Germany. Although she claimed the boy was Harry Thaw’s natural son who was conceived during a conjugal visit while Thaw was at Matteawan State Hospital, Thaw never recognized the child as his own.
After Harry Thaw’s second trial, the Thaw family cut Evelyn Nesbit off from all financial support. She divorced Harry Thaw in 1915.
Evelyn Nesbit enjoyed modest success working in vaudeville and silent films, at least six of them with her son Russell Thaw. A brief second marriage to dancer Jack Clifford was difficult due to Evelyn’s continued notoriety. The couple split in 1918 and divorced in 1933.
In the 1920s, Nesbit ran a tearoom in Manhattan but struggled with alcoholism and drug addiction. By the 1940s, she was living in Los Angeles and teaching ceramics and sculpting.
Nesbit received $10,000 as a technical advisor on a highly fictionalized movie version of her life called The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing. Joan Collins starred as Evelyn Nesbit in the film.
Upon its release, film critic Bosley Crowther of the New York Times said, “Outside of the brightly decorative and rococo settings and costumes, there is practically nothing to warrant attention in “The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing.”
Evelyn Nesbit died in a nursing home in Santa Monica, California in 1967. She was 82 years old.
What a story and this is a great retelling, Denise! By the way, I saw that movie years ago. Did you?