by Simon Baatz
But the first ballot, taken shortly after noon on Friday, January 31, seemed to foretell that the jurors would never agree on a verdict. Eight men voted to acquit Harry Thaw on the ground of insanity; four, including Gremmels, voted to convict on the charge of murder. One juror, William Doolittle, an auditor for the New York Central Railroad, changed his vote on the second ballot to join the majority, but three men still remained steadfast in their conviction that Thaw was guilty.28
There was a brief snowfall that afternoon and a chill wind blew through Centre Street. The crowd outside the Criminal Courts Building gradually dispersed, taking refuge in the saloons along White Street. The two sets of attorneys, Jerome and Garvan for the state, Littleton, Peabody, and O’Reilly for the defense, spent the afternoon drinking together in Pontin’s Restaurant on Franklin Street, waiting for the verdict.
Some reporters arrived at the Tombs around two o’clock to interview Thaw in his cell, asking the prisoner if he expected a favorable decision. He had always anticipated an acquittal, Thaw replied, and he had no reason now to change his mind. “I think the jury is a good jury,” he answered. “I hope they finish the matter this time…. I deserve to be acquitted…. The result is finally going to be in my favor.”29
The warden, Billy Flynn, interrupted their conversation to report that a visitor, Raffaele Cascone, was waiting in the outside corridor, and Thaw, pleased that his friend had come to the prison, suddenly ended the interview. Cascone had spent several months as a prisoner in the Tombs, in an adjacent cell, and the two men had become close friends, talking together every day. They seemed to have little in common: Cascone, a leader of the Black Hand, had been indicted for the murder of a rival mobster in 1903. Cascone’s subsequent legal odyssey had given Thaw hope that he also would soon be free: Cascone had spent almost three years on death row in Sing Sing Prison, but his lawyers had won an appeal. Remarkably, after several witnesses had refused to testify against the defendant, the jury acquitted him of murder in his second trial.
Later that day, shortly before six o’clock, the jurors returned to the Knickerbocker Hotel for dinner. They had spent the day discussing the murder, combing through the evidence, and now they ate in silence, each man keeping his thoughts to himself. There had been no progress through seven ballots—three jurors were still holding out for a conviction on the murder charge—and no one was optimistic that they would soon reach a decision.
But that evening, after they had returned to the Criminal Courts Building, Charles Gremmels changed his vote. It was possible, he now admitted, that Thaw’s medical history, his nervous temperament, might have predisposed him to a sudden derangement and he may have become insane on seeing Stanford White at the theater. Gremmels joined the majority, voting on the eighth ballot to acquit Thaw. Now only two jurors, John Holbert and Frank Howell, still held out for conviction.
The next morning at ten o’clock, Evelyn Nesbit arrived alone at the courthouse. She had slept fitfully, full of anxiety that there had been no word from the jury. “Why can’t they agree?” she asked plaintively, speaking to a cluster of journalists waiting in the hallway. “I don’t see what keeps them out. A disagreement may mean a third trial, and that would be awful.” She gave a heavy sigh as she contemplated appearing as a witness for a third time. “Poor, poor Harry!”30
Travers Jerome arrived half an hour later. A reporter for the New York World called out a question to the district attorney, asking if he would put Thaw on trial a third time, but Jerome ignored the question, saying only that he had hoped for a decision the previous day. “I guess,” he replied, walking to the elevator, “it will be another disagreement. Too bad!”31
Shortly before one o’clock Jerome reemerged, appearing from the elevator, striding across the main hall toward the courtroom. There was a bustle in the hallways and corridors, a sudden stirring among the crowd as word spread that the jurors were about to enter the courtroom. Two bailiffs stood by the doorway, watching as the onlookers surged toward them, each spectator rushing forward to get a seat before the doors slammed shut.
Victor Dowling stepped onto the stairs that led to the bench, and simultaneously the jurors walked into the courtroom in single file, each man expressionless, his eyes looking directly ahead.
The voice of the clerk rang out—“Harry K. Thaw to the bar!”—and Thaw, his shoulders square, his face white, a slight smile on his lips, stepped forward, moving one pace away from the defense table. He glanced over his shoulder, nodding first to his wife and then to his brother, before turning to face the jury.
“The jury will rise.” William Penney paused, waiting as the jurors rose from their seats. “Jury, look upon the defendant. Defendant, look upon the jury.
“Gentlemen of the jury,” Penney continued, “have you agreed upon a verdict?”
“We have,” Charles Gremmels answered, a touch of anxiety in his voice.
“How say you, gentlemen of the jury, do you find the defendant at the bar, Harry K. Thaw, guilty as indicted or not guilty?”
“We find the defendant,” Gremmels replied, glancing sideways at the other jurors, seated on his left, as if to seek their support, “not guilty on the ground of his insanity at the time of the commission of the act.”32
For a fraction of a second, no more, there was a hush, a sudden silence, and then the sound of a man clapping shook the spectators from their trance. The judge banged his gavel on the bench, signaling the bailiffs to arrest the offender, and the crowd watched as the officers escorted the man from the room. Harry Thaw, a triumphant grin on his face, had turned to look at his wife, hoping to catch her eye, but Dowling had already started to speak, and everyone’s attention was on the judge’s words.
“An obligation,” Dowling began, “now devolves upon the Court to discharge its duty…. Upon the testimony in this case, apart from any other consideration that might arise, the Court is satisfied that the enlargement of the defendant would be dangerous to the public safety…. It is ordered that the said Harry K. Thaw be detained in safe custody and be sent to the Matteawan State Hospital, there to be kept in said hospital until thence discharged by due course of law.”33
The grin had already faded from Thaw’s face, and he looked at his attorneys, expecting them to intervene. The lawyers had held out hope that the judge would allow the family to send Harry to a private sanatorium, but Dowling had defied their expectations, committing Harry to Matteawan, the state hospital for the criminal insane. A deputy sheriff, John Breitenbach, moved to escort Thaw from the courtroom, and the attorneys Martin Littleton, Russell Peabody, and Daniel O’Reilly all followed, walking in single file to the sheriff’s office at the rear of the building.
Only now, after Thaw had left the courtroom, did he understand that he would travel that evening under armed guard to the Matteawan asylum. The sheriff had already made the necessary preparations: a train on the Central New England Railway would leave Grand Central Terminal at five o’clock, arriving at Fishkill Landing two hours later. He told the attorneys that he would allow Thaw to cross back to the Tombs to collect his belongings, but there would be no delay otherwise.
“You never told me,” Thaw shouted, angrily turning on his lawyers, “he would send me to Matteawan. I will not go to Matteawan.” How could he live with the lunatics, the criminal insane? The Matteawan asylum, an institution with a fearsome reputation, contained hundreds of violent criminals, including some of the most notorious murderers in the state. The legislature had never provided sufficient funds for its operations, and the asylum attendants, overworked and underpaid, were not reluctant to use violence against troublesome inmates. It was impossible, unthinkable for him to spend even a brief period of confinement in such an infamous place.
“Where did you think he would send you, Harry?” Daniel O’Reilly, his patience stretched to its limit, refused to tolerate Thaw’s petulance any longer. “Did you think he would send you to Rector’s or Martin’s?”
Martin Littleton stepped forward, see
king to reassure Harry, trying to persuade him that there was no alternative. “You must go,” Littleton said. “There’s such a thing as public sentiment in this town.” Public opinion would not tolerate the immediate release of a man who had murdered another man before hundreds of witnesses. Many New Yorkers had viewed the shooting as justified and had favored Harry Thaw during the two trials; but the public was fickle, and he could lose sympathy just as easily as he had won it.34
That afternoon the heavy gates at the rear entrance of the Tombs suddenly swung open and a large black sedan edged its way through the waiting crowd. Several constables, each holding a wooden club, walked alongside the limousine, pushing people back, striking out at any onlookers who stood in the way. The car accelerated along Lafayette Street, and Harry Thaw, seated between two deputies, watched as the crowd fell back, hooting and yelling in its disappointment. The sheriff had allowed Evelyn Nesbit to travel with her husband as far as Grand Central, but she said nothing, only looking out at the stores as they traveled north along Broadway. The car left Broadway at Twenty-third Street, turning onto Fourth Avenue, and there, on the left, they could see Madison Square Garden, its great bulk looming over the neighboring buildings.
Neither Evelyn nor Harry made any remark, seeming not to notice the place where Harry had killed Stanford White, and ten minutes later the limousine arrived at Grand Central. Evelyn tearfully embraced Harry as they stepped away from the car, whispering her affection, promising to visit him at the asylum early the next week. She stood watching, tears in her eyes, as the deputies escorted Harry into the terminal, waiting until she could see him no longer, and then she turned away, solitary and alone, finally disappearing into the crowds of passers-by on the avenue.35
7
ASYLUM
February 1, 1908–August 17, 1913
A DOZEN PHOTOGRAPHERS STOOD WATCHING THE TRAIN AS IT entered the station. Some passengers stepped onto the platform and the photographers moved closer, the flashbulbs of their cameras suddenly flaring, the bright lights casting shadows in the evening darkness. Several reporters shouted questions at Harry Thaw as a deputy sheriff, Joseph Bell, escorted the prisoner to a waiting cab. It was a short ride, slightly less than three miles, from Fishkill Landing to the state asylum, a large redbrick building on the heights above the Hudson River.
The asylum—the Matteawan State Hospital for the Criminal Insane—had first opened in 1892. Its main building, three stories high, contained administrative offices and residential quarters for the doctors and nurses. Several large dormitories, constructed on the Kirkbride plan, in an echelon pattern that allowed each dormitory to receive sunlight, extended outward on either side of the administration building, along a ridge that overlooked the Hudson.1
The bucolic location, in the open countryside, three miles from the nearest village, could not have been more agreeable; but conditions within the asylum had sharply deteriorated since the turn of the century. The asylum had opened with a capacity for 550 patients, but in February 1908, when Harry Thaw first arrived, there were more than 700 inmates. The staff had squeezed additional beds into the wards and placed more in the corridors, but the cramped conditions led inevitably to fights among the patients.
The Matteawan State Hospital for the Criminal Insane opened in 1892 with a capacity for 550 patients, but by February 1908, when Harry Thaw entered the asylum, it had more than 700 inmates. (Dr. Robert Matz Collection, New York Academy of Medicine Library)
The attendants, men and women recruited from nearby villages, had scant loyalty to the institution. They worked long hours for low pay, and they received neither any provision for disability nor any pension. There was a lack of discipline among the staff, and even the doctors, overworked and underpaid, had little sympathy for the men and women in their care. Violence and abuse were commonplace.2
The superintendent, Robert Lamb, had already indicated that there would be no special treatment for the new inmate. Harry Thaw would spend his first week in an observation ward to determine the character of his illness. The physicians would then assign him to the appropriate ward for the remainder of his time at the asylum. “He cannot have any special quarters,” Lamb remarked in an interview with a reporter from the New York Herald, “for all the patients here are treated alike. During the day he will associate with the men and dine at the table in the main dining-room. Thaw will be given no special work to do.”3
Lamb assigned Thaw to a dormitory in the North Ward, a large, narrow rectangular room designed to accommodate fifty inmates. A row of beds, each bed only three feet from its nearest neighbor, ran along both sides of the dormitory, and a small wooden dresser stood at the foot of each bed. Each morning at six o’clock a loud bell sounded for reveille, and at seven o’clock all inmates, except for those in the isolation wards, gathered for breakfast—oatmeal, milk, and coffee—in the main dining hall.
There was little organized activity during the day; inmates could read in the library or play checkers and chess in the recreation room. Occasionally a choral society or theater group from one of the nearby villages would perform in the auditorium. There was a pervasive torpor, an unavoidable tedium that had taken hold of daily life in the asylum. A bell sounded at noon for lunch in the dining hall and the inmates gathered again at six o’clock for dinner—bread and butter, cold meats, stewed prunes, and tea—before going to bed at nine o’clock each evening.4
Thaw was sullen and withdrawn during his first day at Matteawan. He had no access to either cigars or alcohol—an intolerable imposition, he protested—and he regarded the other inmates in his dormitory with foreboding. Quimbo Appo, a triple murderer, occupied an adjacent bed, and Appo was the first inmate to approach Thaw, asking for his assistance in an escape plan. Other inmates, resentful at their treatment in the asylum, welcomed any opportunity to speak to a newcomer, and they too buttonholed Thaw, telling him their complaints. Thaw, who regarded himself as sane, unhappily shared his dormitory with rapists, arsonists, and murderers. It was a distressing experience, made palatable only by his expectation that he would soon be released.5
His attorneys Daniel O’Reilly and Russell Peabody had accompanied Thaw on the train journey from New York, telling him that he would quickly win his freedom. It was necessary only, O’Reilly confided, that the superintendent of the asylum sign a certificate of recovery to testify that Thaw had regained his sanity. Alternatively, Thaw could petition the courts for a writ of habeas corpus, claiming that, since he was no longer insane, there were no grounds for his continued detention.
There had been a recent precedent in the case of Richard Preusser, a stockbroker who had shot and killed a gambler, Myles McDonnell, during a quarrel. Preusser’s lawyers had persuaded the jury at his trial in June 1906 that he was insane. His behavior in the courtroom had been appropriately eccentric; his wife had testified to his peculiarities; and expert witnesses had all claimed that Preusser was a paranoiac. The jury had agreed with the diagnosis and the judge had committed Preusser to Matteawan, but he remained in the asylum for only five weeks, the superintendent, Robert Lamb, agreeing almost immediately to sign a certificate of recovery.6
There was no reason why Harry Thaw should not also win his freedom in like manner. Thaw’s murder of Stanford White had been more noteworthy on account of the celebrity of his victim, and Thaw had shot White before hundreds of witnesses; but it was necessary only to allow public interest to subside for Thaw to quietly leave the asylum. It required patience on Thaw’s part, his lawyers told him, an acknowledgment that a certain amount of time must pass to avoid the suspicion that his wealth had unfairly purchased his freedom, allowing him to evade justice.
Evelyn Nesbit, accompanied by Daniel O’Reilly, visited her husband for the first time on Monday, February 3, arriving at Fishkill Landing on the midday train from Manhattan. O’Reilly had arranged for them to have lunch at a nearby hotel, Holland House, before continuing on to the asylum; but news of their arrival spread rapidly through the village, and a cr
owd of sightseers trailed behind as they walked along the high street, not abandoning the pursuit until Evelyn entered the hotel.
It was a chilly day, with temperatures close to freezing; there had been a light snowfall the previous evening, and the carriage ride to the asylum, winding along backcountry roads, seemed interminable. But suddenly their destination appeared above them, on the brow of the nearest hill. It was an incongruous sight: the massive redbrick buildings, stacked together on top of the ridge, stood alone in open country. There were no other carriages on the road, no nearby houses, no signs of life, not even any birdsong to break the silence, but only an endless snowy-white expanse stretching out on all sides. The asylum was not, as Evelyn had anticipated, a melancholy place, gloomy and forbidding. The compact redbrick construction seemed rather to promise efficiency and resolve, a determination to cure the afflictions of the inmates who resided within its walls.
Harry had been waiting expectantly for her visit, and he held her in his arms, kissing her affectionately. He had arrived on Saturday evening, almost forty-eight hours before, and already he had become more accustomed to his surroundings. The food was surprisingly edible, he told Evelyn, and the superintendent allowed inmates to order meals from the village. Harry had entertained himself that morning by playing the piano in the recreation room, and he expected soon to join the orchestra. It was unfortunate, of course, that the superintendent had banned smoking; but several of the attendants were more accommodating, and it was possible to sneak a cigarette in the courtyard at the rear of the building. The other inmates were certainly an eccentric lot—no one could deny that—but the truly dangerous men were kept in the isolation wards, Harry said, and his companions in the open wards seemed harmless.7
