Evelyn Nesbit Testified for the Man Who Beat Her
Cold Print Archive
78 views
Evelyn Nesbit Testified for the Man Who Beat Her
In 1906 a Pittsburgh millionaire named Harry Thaw shot the architect Stanford White three times in the face, in front of an audience, on the roof of Madison Square Garden — a building White had designed himself. Thaw said he did it because White had ruined his wife. The trial that followed has been repeated as the story ever since: a husband avenging the girl the older man had preyed on. The unwritten law.
Two men, and a wronged girl between them.
The wronged girl was Evelyn Nesbit. She was sixteen when Stanford White assaulted her in 1901. That was three years before the murder — and two years before she married Harry Thaw, who in 1903 took her to a rented castle in Austria-Hungary, locked her in a room and beat her with a whip.
So the man who shot her abuser was also her abuser. And she testified for him.
That is the part the retellings lose. To argue Thaw had been driven temporarily insane by what White did, the defence needed Nesbit on the stand at twenty-one, describing the night in the mirrored room in public, in detail, to a courtroom of reporters. She did it. She was on the stand for days. And she was to be paid if it worked. The figures given for that arrangement come from rumour and later recollection and this film says so — what is not in dispute is the shape of it: the worst thing that had happened to her was a commodity, purchased on condition of a verdict.
It worked on the second attempt. The first jury deadlocked seven to five for conviction; the second found Thaw not guilty by reason of insanity. He was committed to Matteawan, where his money bought him furnished rooms and privileges, and when the legal route took too long he simply escaped to Canada. He was extradited. In 1915 a court declared him sane.
One year later he lured a nineteen-year-old named Frederick Gump to New York and attacked him with a whip.
Thaw lived another thirty-two years and died rich in 1947. He left Evelyn Nesbit ten thousand dollars. She had been cut off immediately after the second trial and spent decades in vaudeville, silent films and cabarets; she was an alcoholic and a morphine addict for years, and got out of it. In 1955 she was hired as technical adviser on the Hollywood film made about her.
There is a detail worth knowing. Nesbit told her own story, twice, in print, under her own name — a memoir in 1914 and another in 1934. The person at the centre of the most heavily covered scandal in America set out her own account, commercially published, not hidden. The version that stuck is the 1955 picture.
CHAPTERS
0:00 The hook
1:09 The most photographed face in America
2:29 The apartment on West Twenty-Fourth Street
4:18 Harry Thaw
6:28 The roof
7:24 What the trial required of her
10:05 For life
10:29 Frederick Gump
11:41 What each of them got
13:09 She wrote it down twice
14:52 Close
Fourteenth film in a series on Gilded Age America. Same method as the rest: the
official version, then the documents. Madison Square Garden appeared in the
fourth and fifth films — the same building, a different decade.
SOURCES
Trial coverage of 1907 and 1908. Evelyn Nesbit's two memoirs, The Story of My
Life (1914) and Prodigal Days (1934). Court and committal records for Matteawan
and for the Gump case. Contemporary press from the Hearst and Pulitzer papers,
which were in a circulation war throughout.
Where the record conflicts the film says so — the sum Nesbit was promised for
her testimony, and the paternity of her son.
A note on handling: this is the story of a girl of sixteen who was assaulted and
a woman of twenty-one who was made to describe it in public. What the record
says is stated once, plainly. The well-known cheesecake studies of Nesbit are
not used in this film.
IMAGE CREDITS
Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons, originally held by the Library of Congress
and others. Most used:
Portraits of Evelyn Nesbit by Otto Sarony and Sarony Studio, 1901
Evelyn Nesbit and her son, by Arnold Genthe, 1913
Evelyn Thaw, Bain News Service press negatives
Harry K. Thaw, and the crowd at the Tombs during the trial
Thaw jury, New York
Stanford White in 1895
Madison Square Garden, by McKim, Mead & White
Interior of Madison Square Garden at night
Arcade and staircase, McKim Building, by McKim, Mead & White
#EvelynNesbit #StanfordWhite #GildedAge #History
Evelyn Nesbit Testified for the Man Who Beat Her
Cold Print Archive
78 views
Evelyn Nesbit Testified for the Man Who Beat Her
In 1906 a Pittsburgh millionaire named Harry Thaw shot the architect Stanford White three times in the face, in front of an audience, on the roof of Madison Square Garden — a building White had designed himself. Thaw said he did it because White had ruined his wife. The trial that followed has been repeated as the story ever since: a husband avenging the girl the older man had preyed on. The unwritten law.
Two men, and a wronged girl between them.
The wronged girl was Evelyn Nesbit. She was sixteen when Stanford White assaulted her in 1901. That was three years before the murder — and two years before she married Harry Thaw, who in 1903 took her to a rented castle in Austria-Hungary, locked her in a room and beat her with a whip.
So the man who shot her abuser was also her abuser. And she testified for him.
That is the part the retellings lose. To argue Thaw had been driven temporarily insane by what White did, the defence needed Nesbit on the stand at twenty-one, describing the night in the mirrored room in public, in detail, to a courtroom of reporters. She did it. She was on the stand for days. And she was to be paid if it worked. The figures given for that arrangement come from rumour and later recollection and this film says so — what is not in dispute is the shape of it: the worst thing that had happened to her was a commodity, purchased on condition of a verdict.
It worked on the second attempt. The first jury deadlocked seven to five for conviction; the second found Thaw not guilty by reason of insanity. He was committed to Matteawan, where his money bought him furnished rooms and privileges, and when the legal route took too long he simply escaped to Canada. He was extradited. In 1915 a court declared him sane.
One year later he lured a nineteen-year-old named Frederick Gump to New York and attacked him with a whip.
Thaw lived another thirty-two years and died rich in 1947. He left Evelyn Nesbit ten thousand dollars. She had been cut off immediately after the second trial and spent decades in vaudeville, silent films and cabarets; she was an alcoholic and a morphine addict for years, and got out of it. In 1955 she was hired as technical adviser on the Hollywood film made about her.
There is a detail worth knowing. Nesbit told her own story, twice, in print, under her own name — a memoir in 1914 and another in 1934. The person at the centre of the most heavily covered scandal in America set out her own account, commercially published, not hidden. The version that stuck is the 1955 picture.
CHAPTERS
0:00 The hook
1:09 The most photographed face in America
2:29 The apartment on West Twenty-Fourth Street
4:18 Harry Thaw
6:28 The roof
7:24 What the trial required of her
10:05 For life
10:29 Frederick Gump
11:41 What each of them got
13:09 She wrote it down twice
14:52 Close
Fourteenth film in a series on Gilded Age America. Same method as the rest: the
official version, then the documents. Madison Square Garden appeared in the
fourth and fifth films — the same building, a different decade.
SOURCES
Trial coverage of 1907 and 1908. Evelyn Nesbit's two memoirs, The Story of My
Life (1914) and Prodigal Days (1934). Court and committal records for Matteawan
and for the Gump case. Contemporary press from the Hearst and Pulitzer papers,
which were in a circulation war throughout.
Where the record conflicts the film says so — the sum Nesbit was promised for
her testimony, and the paternity of her son.
A note on handling: this is the story of a girl of sixteen who was assaulted and
a woman of twenty-one who was made to describe it in public. What the record
says is stated once, plainly. The well-known cheesecake studies of Nesbit are
not used in this film.
IMAGE CREDITS
Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons, originally held by the Library of Congress
and others. Most used:
Portraits of Evelyn Nesbit by Otto Sarony and Sarony Studio, 1901
Evelyn Nesbit and her son, by Arnold Genthe, 1913
Evelyn Thaw, Bain News Service press negatives
Harry K. Thaw, and the crowd at the Tombs during the trial
Thaw jury, New York
Stanford White in 1895
Madison Square Garden, by McKim, Mead & White
Interior of Madison Square Garden at night
Arcade and staircase, McKim Building, by McKim, Mead & White
#EvelynNesbit #StanfordWhite #GildedAge #History