The Girl on the Velvet Swing

by Simon Baatz

  Evelyn told her story a second time, but her account of the rape no longer had the force that it had possessed one year before. It played out exactly as it had the first time, but the recitation now seemed shopworn and stale. There had been no change in Evelyn’s appearance—she seemed not to have aged even a single day, and she was just as attractive as before—but there was a hardness in her voice, a glint in her eyes, a self-assurance in her bearing that had not existed in 1907. Jerome tried again to intimidate her, to bully her into submission, to confuse her on the details, occasionally comparing her answers to the responses she had given in the first trial, but she fought back relentlessly, matching him point by point, never allowing Jerome to win an advantage.

  Her testimony during the second trial was remarkably precise, corresponding exactly, in every particular, to her testimony in the first trial. She added only a few details to the account that she had given previously, details that aimed to convince the jury that Harry Thaw had been insane long before he murdered Stanford White.

  She remembered that Harry had returned to New York from Europe in December 1903 to learn that Stanford White had told her that he, Thaw, was a cocaine addict. Other men, friends of White, had confirmed the rumor, adding also that Thaw had whipped and brutalized young girls in his apartments.

  He had denied everything, telling her that there was no truth in such gossip, and Evelyn eventually reconciled with Harry, moving with him in January 1904 to an apartment in the Grand Hotel on Broadway. But the episode had caused Harry great distress. Stanford White had attempted to renew his relationship with Evelyn, telling her all sorts of stories, and Thaw could no longer feel confident that she would remain faithful to him. That month, Evelyn told the court, Harry had fallen into a deep depression. He brooded over the situation, worrying that she would abandon him, fearing that her love for him would evaporate.

  “He said,” Evelyn recalled, “that his life had been ruined, and that White… and his friends were constantly circulating unpleasant stories about him and hurting him in every way possible.”15

  One afternoon, without warning, Harry blurted out that his life had become unbearable—the pain of his existence was too much and he intended to kill himself. There was no way to prevent Stanford White from harming his reputation, and there was no reason for either of them, Harry or Evelyn, to live. They should both commit suicide that afternoon.

  “I did not know what to do,” Evelyn testified. “He was in a wild state…. He said that there was no use living: too many things had happened. He said that he was going to commit suicide…. He said he thought he would take laudanum and that I should take it, too. He thought we should go together.”16

  But, remarkably, his mood seemed to lighten as they talked, and gradually Harry became less fretful. He started to relax, he spoke less excitedly, he stopped pacing about the apartment, and his expression no longer seemed so anxious. Evelyn was able to change the subject, to engage him in his plans for their journey to Europe later that year, and soon Harry had forgotten about his threat to commit suicide.

  His depression would reappear intermittently, Evelyn testified, but there had been only one other occasion when Harry repeated his intention to kill himself. They had traveled to Paris in March 1904, staying in a suite of rooms at the Hôtel Palais d’Orsay in the Seventh Arrondissement. They had intended to remain only a few days in the capital before taking the train south to Monte Carlo, and Harry had proposed that they then travel through Europe by motorcar.

  One evening, shortly before their departure for Monte Carlo, Harry had gone for a stroll along the path that ran beside the Seine. He returned within an hour, abruptly entering the living room, walking hurriedly to the settee where Evelyn was reading a book. His face was white, the color of chalk, and he walked rigidly toward her as though something inhibited the movement of his arms. He announced that he had finally done it; he had swallowed a bottle of laudanum, and he would soon die from the poison.

  His appearance seemed to confirm the truth of his declaration: his face was deathly pale; his eyes were fixed with a glassy stare; he started to choke as though the poison had begun to work its malign effect. A telephone stood nearby, on a small table by the window, and Evelyn dialed the front desk, asking the concierge to send a doctor to the apartment. The physician, Maurice Gauja, acted immediately, using a stomach pump to flush away the poison, giving Thaw some morphine to calm his nerves, finally waiting until his patient was asleep in bed before leaving the apartment.17

  Harry Thaw’s suicidal impulses, according to the psychiatrists, were congruent with the diagnosis that he suffered from manic-depressive insanity. Charles Wagner, the superintendent of Binghamton State Hospital, testified for the defense that Thaw’s behavior alternated between two polar opposites: he would be deeply depressed, sitting motionless for hours at a time, sunk in a deathlike torpor, yet on other occasions he would behave excitedly, frantically engaged in some task to the exclusion of everything else.

  “Symptoms of excitement and depression are characteristic of manic-depressive insanity,” Wagner explained. “Suicidal attempts often mark these cases…. Quick, irregular habits of speech, nervousness and restlessness are all characteristic.”

  “Have you an opinion,” Martin Littleton asked, “of the soundness of mind of the defendant at the time of the commission of the act?”

  “Yes. The defendant was of unsound mind, and in my opinion he did not know the nature and quality of the act, and did not know that it was wrong.”

  The judge, Victor Dowling, interrupted the witness, leaning forward in his chair to ask Wagner about his diagnosis. Harry Thaw had killed once; was it possible that he might kill again?

  “Is it not a fact,” Dowling asked, turning in his chair to look directly at the witness, “that attacks of manic-depressive insanity are likely to recur?”

  “It is,” Wagner replied.

  “Is there any certainty or way of telling when they will recur?”

  “No.…”

  “Is there any guide by which you can establish when lucid intervals will recur?”

  “No.”

  Dowling leaned back in his chair, a look of irritation on his face, indicating with a motion of his hand that he had no further questions. It annoyed him that Wagner had not been more forthcoming in his responses. It might be necessary to confine Thaw indefinitely—but Dowling would be able to make that decision only on the basis of the psychiatric testimony.

  The next witness, Smith Ely Jelliffe, was more accommodating, giving Dowling a better sense of the nature of Thaw’s condition. Jelliffe agreed that the defendant had a medical condition that psychiatrists classified as manic-depressive insanity, and the judge again inquired about the diagnosis.

  “Do you mean,” Dowling asked, “[that] patients are apt to commit assaults?”

  “Oh, yes,” Jelliffe replied. “They are apt to knock around and tear their clothes, rush through the streets or the wards of institutions they are confined in and do other maniacal acts.”18

  The psychiatrists for the defense—Wagner, Jelliffe, and a third expert, Britton Evans—agreed that Thaw was chronically insane. He had suffered manic-depressive insanity since childhood, and his condition was likely to persist for some time.

  But Travers Jerome, in his cross-examination, reminded the witnesses that they had all testified for the defense in the first trial, one year previously, and on that occasion they had told the court that Thaw had been insane only at the moment when he shot Stanford White. They had claimed that Thaw experienced a sudden derangement, a brainstorm, on seeing White at the theater, and in that moment of madness he had drawn his revolver and killed the architect.

  But now, in the second trial, the psychiatrists offered a diagnosis of Thaw’s condition that could not be reconciled with the first. They claimed now that Thaw had always been irrational, unable to distinguish between right and wrong, and that he was unaware of the nature of his acts, insane in both a medical and a legal
sense of the term. The expert witnesses, psychiatrists with extensive experience in treating mental illness, had thus followed the defense attorneys in lockstep fashion, abandoning their previous diagnosis for one that would better support Martin Littleton’s claim that Thaw had been insane since childhood.

  It was preposterous, the district attorney exclaimed, that the experts should so readily alter their medical opinions to fall in with the attorneys. How could the three psychiatrists claim professional integrity as scientists if they could so effortlessly change their diagnosis?

  Travers Jerome called Britton Evans to the stand, eyeing the witness with a look of contempt as Evans made his way across the front of the courtroom.

  “Dr. Evans,” Jerome demanded, “did you testify at the last trial that Thaw killed Stanford White while suffering from a brain storm?”

  “I can only say,” Evans replied, speaking cautiously, “that [it] was not a disease, but a phase of his mental condition. My recollection is that during a brainstorm he did the act, but that was not his disease.”

  “Answer the question, yes or no,” Jerome snapped. “Was it your opinion that he killed Stanford White while suffering a brain storm?”

  “Yes.” Evans seemed to shrug as he gave his answer. “I testified that he had a brainstorm.”

  “That’s all.” Jerome abruptly turned away from Evans, signaling to the judge that he had no more questions for the witness. He also interrogated Charles Wagner and Smith Ely Jelliffe that afternoon, demanding that each man acknowledge that, in now claiming that Thaw suffered from chronic insanity, he had contradicted his testimony from the previous trial.19

  Everyone had anticipated that Jerome would introduce expert witnesses in rebuttal; but Jerome, turning to address the judge, now informed Dowling that the state would close its case. It was an odd decision by the district attorney. The defense had entered a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity. The burden of proof of guilt lay on the prosecution to show that Thaw had been sane at the time of the murder; yet Jerome had decided not to offer any psychiatric testimony. What could it mean? Some observers speculated that Jerome was signaling to the jury that he no longer sought to send Thaw to the electric chair and that he might now be satisfied with a verdict that would send Harry Thaw to the asylum.

  Martin Littleton, in his closing address, jubilantly interpreted the absence of psychiatric evidence as an admission by Jerome that he could not prove that Thaw had been sane when he shot White. “New York is filled with doctors and scientists and neurologists and specialists and experts,” Littleton proclaimed. No city in the United States, not even Philadelphia or Boston, could rival New York in the prestige of its medical community; yet the district attorney had not offered any scientific evidence. “Why did he not call the names of the city’s pick of insanity experts? Where, oh, where, is this assembled genius of the profession of New York?”20

  The burden of proof lay with the state—there was a presumption of innocence in the American courts—yet Jerome had failed to make his case. On that basis alone, Littleton concluded, the jury should acquit the defendant.21

  But the available evidence, Jerome replied in his closing speech, showed that Harry Thaw had indeed been sane on the day of the murder. That same afternoon, a few hours before he shot White, Thaw had played poker with some friends at the Whist Club before returning to the Hotel Lorraine. He left the hotel around six o’clock with Evelyn Nesbit, taking a cab downtown to meet Truxton Beale and Thomas McCaleb at Café Martin. They had walked across Madison Square after dinner, arriving at the theater in the middle of the first act of Mamzelle Champagne.

  Jerome faced the jury as he spoke, seeming to address each of the jurors in turn, leading them through the events of the day of the murder. It was the culmination of the trial, and a large crowd had squeezed into the courtroom to hear Jerome’s closing address. Josiah Thaw, seated next to Evelyn Nesbit, was there to support his elder brother, but neither Harry’s mother nor his sisters were present. Thaw’s attorneys, Martin Littleton, Russell Peabody, and Daniel O’Reilly, sat in the front row, not bothering to take notes while Jerome talked, but Harry Thaw, seated among his lawyers, occasionally scribbled some notes on a large pad of paper.

  No one expected either Stanford White’s widow, Bessie, or his son, Lawrence, to be in court, but Charles Hartnett, White’s private secretary, was there, seated alone in a corner of the room, trying to be as inconspicuous as possible. A few actors could be seen, scattered among the crowd: Cecilia (Cissy) Loftus, the vaudeville star; Robert Hilliard, reputedly the most handsome man on Broadway; George Nash, then appearing in The Witching Hour, playing the role of the district attorney; and William Collier, the comic actor who had made his reputation with Eddie Foy’s touring company. The impresario Charles Dillingham, one of Stanford White’s closest friends, sat in the center of the room, in the same row as the author Richard Harding Davis. The heiress Aimée Crocker had known White well, and she too had come to court, hoping to hear Jerome denounce the assassination of her friend. Finally, a few politicians were also among the spectators: Joseph Corrigan, a Democratic Party stalwart and city magistrate, and Patrick McGowan, the president of the Board of Aldermen, were both in the audience.22

  There was a hush in the courtroom as Jerome continued to describe Thaw’s movements on the day of the murder. Was it not strange, Jerome asked rhetorically, that the defense had failed to call those witnesses who could testify to Thaw’s behavior on that fateful day? One witness only, Christopher Biggan, the steward at the Whist Club, had appeared in court. Biggan said that Thaw had been nervous when he played bridge with other members of the club; but the defense had not called the cardplayers to testify. Charles Schwab, the president of the Bethlehem Steel Company, and John W. Gates, the principal shareholder of the Republic Steel Company, had both played bridge with Thaw a few hours before the murder; but neither man had appeared in court. “Do you think,” Jerome said, “that these gentlemen whose names I have mentioned would sit down and play cards with a lunatic?” Martin Littleton could have issued a subpoena, compelling their testimony, but neither Schwab nor Gates had given evidence. “Not one of these gentlemen has been called.”23

  Thaw had spent the evening with Truxton Beale and Thomas McCaleb, dining with them at Café Martin before going to the theater, yet the defense attorneys had called neither Beale nor McCaleb to the witness stand. One witness, Clinch Smith, had appeared for the prosecution, describing his conversation with the defendant at Madison Square Garden; but everything about that conversation indicated that Thaw had been sane.

  There was certainly ample motive for Thaw to kill Stanford White, Jerome continued. Thaw believed that the architect had raped his wife. He had learned that White had been gossiping about him, spreading malicious lies around New York that he was a cocaine addict who frequented prostitutes. There was reason for Thaw to think that White hoped to reignite the relationship that he, White, had enjoyed with Evelyn several years before. “White was a man whom this defendant,” Jerome paused dramatically, pointing directly at Thaw a few feet away, “wanted to put in the penitentiary. White was a man who had wronged this defendant’s wife…. This defendant believed that White was circulating stories about him, charging him with the basest of practices. If all this does not constitute a motive then I don’t know what men are made of.”24

  The weapon used by Thaw, a blue-steel double-action revolver, lay on a table at the front of the courtroom, and Jerome, still speaking, stepped three paces to his left, taking the gun in his right hand. “The defendant walked about the roof garden,” he declared. “He saw the man he had the most intense reason to hate, and then and there walked to where White sat at the table, leaning his head on his hand, and he shot three bullets into White’s body.” Jerome held the gun at arm’s length, aiming it at an imaginary victim, pulling the trigger to snap the hammer. Once, twice, three times, the sound, a loud click, reverberated around the silent courtroom. “He turned from his victim and, with
his arm raised, he held the gun on high—broken—a sign to the crowd that he had accomplished his vengeance.” Jerome also had now broken the gun and, holding it high above his head, turned about as if to show everyone the weapon.25

  Thaw had acted throughout with deliberation and intent and was therefore guilty of first-degree murder. There was not a scintilla of evidence in any of his actions to show that he had been insane. On the contrary, he had been aware, at every moment, of the import of his actions, carefully shooting at point-blank range, aiming to kill his victim. He had not afterward resisted arrest, telling his wife as she stood near the elevator that he had acted to protect her, calmly walking with the sergeant along Madison Avenue to the police station on Thirtieth Street.

  Jerome turned again to face the jurors, reminding them that they had sworn an oath to uphold the law. They could not accept the defense plea if they believed that Thaw had known, at the time of the murder, the difference between right and wrong, if he had known the nature of his act, and if he had known that it was wrong. “Your oath requires you,” Jerome said in conclusion, “to find this man guilty if you believe that he knew it was Stanford White he killed.”26

  The jurors left the courtroom, walking along a narrow corridor, each man taking his seat in the jury room. They had lived together at the Knickerbocker Hotel on Forty-second Street during the trial, and their shared experience had created a sense of solidarity among the twelve men. One or two had grumbled about their privation, complaining that they would not see their families during their confinement, but most felt privileged to play a part in such a sensational drama as the Thaw trial. They ranged in age from thirty-eight to sixty. The majority were married men with children, and they were generally well-to-do, each man having made his mark in his profession—in real estate, shipping, dry goods, banking, and the like. The foreman, Charles Gremmels, a ship broker, married with two children, was the youngest man in the room, but he had already given his comrades an impression of good sense, the conviction that he would organize their discussions in a purposeful manner.27