Evelyn Nesbit(1884-1967)
- Actress
Ms. Nesbit, artists' model and chorus girl, was at the heart of what was
known at the time as the Crime of the Century. Her abusive husband,
Pittsburgh millionaire Harry Thaw, murdered 52-year old architect and
socialite Stanford White (of the firm McKim, Mead, and White), who had
taken advantage of 16-year old Evelyn and subsequently become
her lover a couple of years before she married Thaw. Harry Thaw's mother
mother quickly financed propaganda, even a film, to portray her son as
a protector of women's virtue; at the same time, the media reported the
very-married White's many other transgressions involving young women.
After his first trial ended in a hung jury, Thaw was retried in 1908 and
found insane. He was sent away to a mental institution for the criminally
insane in upstate New York, from which he which he escaped once; in 1915
he was released with reputation untarnished--a homicidal hero.
