Evelyn Nesbit

As a teenager, she posed for an artist, John Storm, in Pittsburgh, and achieved some measure of financial success. In 1901, at age 16, she left Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to go to New York, where she continued modelling (posing for illustrators Frederick C. Church[?] and Charles Dana Gibson[?] and photographer Rudolf Eickemeyer, Jr.[?]). She became a Florodora girl on Broadway. A stunningly beautiful showgirl, she carried on simultaneous romances with her "stage-door Johnnies", and soon became seriously involved with a married architect, Stanford White. He quite possibliy drugged her, and certainly took advantage of her when he seduced her, a fact that she repeated often to her eventual husband. White arranged to have her educated at a New Jersey boarding school run by the mother of Cecil B. DeMille. She became known as "The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing", because White installed a swing for her to sit on at one of his hideaways.

Stanford was supplanted in her affections by Harry K. Thaw, also of Pittsburgh, son of a coal and railroad baron. Thaw's attentions led to two pregnancies, both terminated, with the hospitalizations both explained as "appendectomies" - an explanation best used only once. Thaw became increasingly jealous of Nesbit (he began carrying a pistol), and was especially sensitive about her prior relationship with Stanford White. After a trip to Europe with Thaw, Evelyn accepted his proposal and they married on April 4, 1905.

On June 25, 1906 Evelyn and Harry saw White at a restaurant (the Cafè Martin) and ran into him again in the audience of the old Madison Square Garden's roof theatre at a performance of Mamzelle Champagne. During the song, "I Could Love A Million Girls", Thaw fired three shots at close range into Stanford White's face, killing him.

There were two trials. At the first, the jury was deadlocked: at the second, Thaw pled insanity, and Evelyn testified. (Thaw's mother told Evelyn that if she would testify that Stanford White abused her and that Harry only tried to protect her, she'd receive a divorce from Harry Thaw and one million dollars in compensation. She did just that, and performed in court wonderfully: he was found not guilty. Evelyn got the divorce, but not the money). Thaw was incarcerated at the Asylum for the Criminally Insane at Matteawan, New Jersey, enjoying nearly complete freedom. In 1913 he walked out of the asylum and was driven over the border to Sherbrooke, Quebec. He was extradicted back to the United States, and in 1915 another jury found him sane.

He moved back to Pittsburgh, and his subsequent life was also filled with scandalous brawls, affairs, and lawsuits.

He died of a heart attack in 1947.

Books

• The Architect of Desire - Suzannah Lessard
• Glamorous Sinners - Frederick L. Collins
• Evelyn Nesbit and Stanford White: Love and Death in the Gilded Age - Michael Mooney
• The Murder of Stanford White - Gerald Langford
• The Traitor - Harry K. Thaw
• "The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing" - Charles Samuels
• "The Story of my Life" - Evelyn Nesbit Thaw - 1914
• "Prodigal Days" - Evelyn Nesbit Thaw - 1934

Fictional works based at least in part on the Thaw/White murder

• Ragtime - the film
• Ragtime - the musical play
• The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing[?] -1955