by Simon Baatz
Thaw had attended Harvard University for almost fifteen months, from November 1890 to February 1892, he acknowledged, but he had been an indifferent student, spending his time playing poker and drinking in the saloons on Main Street. He had been conspicuous by his absence from the lecture halls, and he had been a troublesome presence in the town, frequently refusing to pay his bills and getting into fights with waiters, bartenders, and anyone else who happened to cross his path. On one occasion, while playing cards, Thaw had threatened another student with a knife, and on another occasion he had drawn his gun after a dispute with a cabdriver over his fare. Cook now reminded Thaw that the police had restrained him, holding him overnight in a cell and confiscating the gun.
“Do you recollect the trouble with the cabman?”
“Yes. He overcharged me,” Thaw replied. “I went up to my room and got my gun. I did grab a shotgun and go down with it after the cabman, and it was taken away from me, but the gun was not loaded.”
“Were you drinking that night?”
“I think I was.”
There had been persistent rumors that the president of Harvard, Charles Eliot, had called Thaw to his office one day to expel him from the university. Thaw, according to the gossip, had abused a young boy in the town, and Eliot had acted immediately, telling Thaw that he could no longer consider himself enrolled as a student.
“Why did you leave Harvard, Mr. Thaw?” Cook demanded.
Thaw appeared to gasp slightly and he flinched, as if someone had struck him a sudden blow. His eyes searched the courtroom a second time, and the lawyers on both sides stared at him expectantly.
“Did you leave Harvard voluntarily or did the authorities invite you to go?”
But one of Thaw’s lawyers, John Stanchfield, interrupted, saying that the question was irrelevant. The court had convened to determine Thaw’s present state of mind, and Thaw’s presence at Harvard, twenty-five years before, had no bearing on the matter. The judge, Peter Hendrick, upheld the objection, telling Cook that his line of questioning was immaterial.31
Susan Merrill had testified only a few days before, and Cook now asked Thaw about their acquaintance.
“You know Mrs. Merrill?”
“I do,” Thaw replied tersely.
“You know her quite well?”
“Yes.”
Thaw admitted that he had been a few times to the building on Fifty-fourth Street, but he denied that he had ever assaulted any girls.
Did he admit, Cook asked, that he had given money to Susan Merrill to give to the girls whom he had attacked?
Thaw shook his head. It was all false, he said.
“I never paid money to Susan Merrill but only to obtain legitimate information.”
“How much did you pay her?”
“Twenty, twenty-five or thirty dollars, a small amount.”
He had gone to Fifty-fourth Street only because he was trying to bring Stanford White to justice. White had frequented the building in his insatiable pursuit of young girls. White was paying Susan Merrill to provide him with girls, and Thaw had given her small sums of money in exchange for information that he could use to prosecute the architect.32
Frank Cook, speaking to the jurors at his closing on July 14, reminded them that Thaw had lived a dissolute life. He had failed at every task he attempted, except one. “He never completed anything in his life,” Cook said, “except the killing of Stanford White.” He claimed to have acted in defense of his wife, always asserting that White’s misdeeds justified the assassination. Yet Thaw had rented rooms in several locations in Manhattan to assault young girls in the most wicked and depraved manner. Did any of the jurors, Cook asked, have daughters, young girls who might have answered the advertisements that Thaw placed in the newspapers? “This fellow Thaw,” Cook exclaimed, pointing his finger at the miscreant, “with his exaggerated ego and his degenerate mind, goes to Madison Square Garden, shoots White and then dispassionately breaks the gun.” Thaw’s lawyers had manipulated his young wife, persuading her to testify falsely in 1907 and 1908 that White had raped her. It had been a shameful episode, Cook concluded, an indelible stain on the history of the New York courts; and the jurors must end the farce by sending Thaw back to the asylum.33
But John Stanchfield, speaking in his turn, reminded the jurors that they were in the courtroom only to judge Thaw’s present condition. “There is no doubt,” Stanchfield began, “that Thaw was mentally distracted on June 25, 1906. The question is this: Is he sane to-day?” There had been no incidents during Thaw’s time in the asylum; there had been nothing untoward during his brief stay in Canada; and there was no record that Thaw had even lost his temper during the eighteen months that he spent in New Hampshire. “It was an honest, sober, upright and decent life that Thaw lived in New Hampshire. Every person who came in contact with him knew he had escaped from a madhouse, and therefore of necessity were particularly on their guard to see if he did not give some evidences of a mind disturbed.”
Frank Cook had spoken about events in Thaw’s life many years before; but Cook had said nothing about the man Thaw had become. Cook had deliberately omitted any mention of the time spent in New Hampshire, preferring instead to speak of Thaw’s student days twenty-five years earlier. “I am submitting this case to you,” Stanchfield appealed finally, “with the hope and expectation that you will restore Harry K. Thaw to his citizenship and to his mother and to his family who have stood by him so loyally.”34
The jury retired shortly before three o’clock that afternoon, but each man seemed instinctively to recognize that there would be no disagreement. One juror, Charles Basil, voted against his comrades on the first ballot, saying that he wished thereby to compel the jury to spend at least a few minutes discussing the evidence; but the second ballot, taken at half past three, confirmed that the verdict would be unanimous.
The clerk of the court, Frank McGurk, waited impassively, watching each juror as he filed into the courtroom. He called the roll, asking each man to identify himself, and then called for the jury’s decision.
“Gentlemen of the jury, have you reached a verdict?”
The foreman, David Robinson, a slight man of medium height, half-rose from his seat, handing a sheet of foolscap to McGurk. The clerk, without reading the typescript, passed the single sheet of paper to the judge.
The spectators, almost two hundred souls crowded onto plain wooden benches, waited in hushed silence; the attorneys, their faces turned to the judge, scarcely moved, each man trying to intuit the decision; and the bailiffs, standing guard alongside the walls of the courtroom, silently scanned the room, waiting expectantly to curb any enthusiasm from the crowd.
The judge returned the foolscap to the clerk, indicating with a slight nod that McGurk could now read the verdict to the court.
“Gentlemen of the jury, harken to your verdict. The question you have been asked is, ‘Is Harry K. Thaw sane now?’ and your answer is ‘Yes.’”35
There was a sudden exhalation, as if two hundred spectators had simultaneously released a sigh, allowing their breath to escape from between their lips. The judge reminded the lawyers that the jury’s decision was advisory only. He would give the final verdict later that week. “I will reserve decision,” Hendrick announced, “until I make up my mind. In the meantime I will remand him.”36
Hendrick had said that he would delay his decision, but few people had any doubt about the outcome, and two days later, on Friday, July 16, New Yorkers started to gather in Chambers Street in front of the New York County courthouse. The crowd soon filled the street, packed shoulder to shoulder along its length, from Broadway on the west side as far as Centre Street on the east. There was a celebratory mood among the sightseers, confident that Harry Thaw’s ordeal would soon be over; but the atmosphere inside the courtroom was more somber, even solemn, as the attorneys waited for Hendrick to announce his decision.
“Gentlemen,” Hendrick began, “I have reached a decision in this case and it is based up
on my own judgment fortified by that of a very intelligent jury…. It is overwhelmingly founded on the weight of evidence, and I declare as the decision of this court that Harry K. Thaw is sane.”37
It had been a long ordeal for Harry Thaw and now it was over. He remained inside the courtroom for only ten minutes, staying long enough to shake hands with the jurors and to take leave of his attorneys, and then he emerged into bright sunlight at the top of the stone stairway that led from the door of the courthouse down to Chambers Street. His broad grin told the waiting crowd that he was a free man, and he lifted his hat in acknowledgment of their cheers. The sheriff, Max Grifenhagen, ordered his men to force a passage for Thaw down the steps to a waiting sedan; and slowly the car edged its way through the crowd as far as Broadway. The sedan accelerated as it turned onto Broadway, and Thaw was soon en route to Pittsburgh to celebrate his freedom.
It had been nine years since the murder of Stanford White and finally it was over. Thaw, by one estimate, had employed forty lawyers and had spent more than $1 million in a legal odyssey that had eventually reached its destination. There had been several distinct legal actions, and each one had engendered its own series of ancillary lawsuits. The State of New York had fought Thaw step by step, blow by blow, spending more than $300,000 in its campaign to convict Thaw and to keep him in the asylum.38
Editorial opinion in the New York newspapers was sharply divided. It had been a valiant fight, according to the Morning Telegraph, and Thaw’s victory had been deservedly earned. He had been insane when he pulled the trigger but he had since demonstrated his sanity. “The average citizen,” proclaimed the Telegraph, “does not take with much seriousness the conclusions of so-called experts…. There has been little doubt in the minds of most thinking men of Thaw’s mental restoration for several years.”39
The verdict was not unexpected, the New York World decided, but it was nevertheless deplorable. Thaw had had the opportunity to win his freedom only because of his family’s vast wealth. It was a disgraceful episode that had tarnished the legal system of New York State, and the community had every expectation and hope that Thaw would now disappear from public view. “The Thaw money, operating through lawyers, doctors, experts and legal processes… kept the question of the prisoner’s sanity before the courts…. The Thaw money has brought reproach to the medical as well as the legal profession.”40
Thaw had used the legal system to get the result he desired, the New York Press declared. The courts had first absolved Thaw of the crime of murder on account of his insanity and had now restored him to health. The laws of New York, the Press stated, had permitted this regrettable travesty. “If you have plenty of money to hire the right kind of legal talent so as to get the right kind of legal action you may kill a man with some inconvenience, but with perfect safety to yourself.”41
But no one could have felt more dismay and regret at the verdict than Evelyn Nesbit. She had twice testified against her husband, telling the courts that he had threatened to kill her, and she was now terrified that he would take his revenge. “All I ask of him is that he leave me in peace to continue my stage career,” Evelyn told the reporter for the New-York Tribune. “I do not want his name, and I do not want his money.” She had sacrificed her reputation for his sake, saving him from the electric chair, receiving nothing for her efforts; now she wanted only that he leave her alone. She had shared her life with him and she knew his vengeful, vindictive nature. She knew also that Harry was violent and unpredictable: an explosion of rage, an outburst of anger, might occur at any time, for no apparent reason, and she was fearful that she might be his next victim.42
10
EPILOGUE
FRED GUMP STOOD ALONE IN THE CENTER OF HERALD SQUARE ON Christmas Eve 1917, watching the passers-by on the sidewalks jostling against one another, each person heedless of his or her neighbor in the rush to get home before the holiday. Macy’s department store dominated Herald Square on the west side, and a never-ending stream of shoppers went in and out, triumphantly clutching their packages as they spilled out onto Broadway. From time to time, the Sixth Avenue elevated train clattered noisily overhead, the din drowning out all the other sounds in the square, the shadow of the carriages faintly visible on the roadway below. The New York Herald newspaper building, an elaborate confection designed by Stanford White in the style of the Italian Renaissance, stood directly ahead, on the northern edge of the square, and Gump could see through the large plate-glass windows that the printing presses were running full tilt, churning out that afternoon’s edition of the newspaper.
Gump, nineteen years old, recently graduated from Central High School in Kansas City, had arrived in New York that afternoon. It was his first time in the East, his first experience of the metropolis, and he was awestruck by the ceaseless tumult, the anthill crowds, the enormous buildings, and the restless urgency of the city. He had taken a cab from Pennsylvania Station to the Hotel McAlpin on the east side of Herald Square, leaving his suitcase with the concierge, and now he was about to go uptown for a rendezvous with his patron, Harry Thaw, at the Century Theatre on Sixty-second Street.
He had first met Thaw thirteen months earlier, in November 1915, in an ice cream parlor in Long Beach, California, where he was on vacation with his parents. Thaw had asked about his plans after graduation, and Gump answered that he might study engineering at college. Did he know, Thaw asked, that the steel magnate Andrew Carnegie had recently established an engineering school, the Carnegie Institute of Technology, in his hometown, Pittsburgh? The Carnegie Institute had been in existence only fifteen years, yet already it had an excellent reputation. Thaw asked Gump for his address in Kansas City, promising to send more information.
Later that month, Gump, thinking nothing of his encounter with Thaw, returned to Kansas City with his parents. But Thaw surprised him, sending him several letters, offering to pay for his education, to give him a monthly allowance, and to act as his guardian during his stay in Pittsburgh. Gump’s parents had no reason to question Thaw’s motives, and they were keen for their son to accept the offer. They believed, along with most Americans, that Thaw had suffered unjust persecution for taking his revenge against the man who had raped his wife. Thaw, moreover, had earned a reputation, since his release, as a generous philanthropist, contributing thousands of dollars to worthy causes in Pittsburgh.1
Fred Gump had taken up Thaw’s suggestion, and he had now come to New York to see his benefactor before traveling west to Pittsburgh. Thaw had invited him to a performance of The Century Girl, a musical revue presented by Florenz Ziegfeld, and later that evening, after the show, they arrived back at the Hotel McAlpin, where Thaw had reserved a suite of rooms on the eighteenth floor. The Hotel McAlpin, then the largest hotel in North America, with more than one thousand rooms, had been designed to impress, and it did not disappoint. The enormous lobby, constructed with violet-rose Breche marble from Italy and pale-yellow Caen limestone from France, soared three stories and included murals around the walls by Thomas Gilbert White. The McAlpin, the only hotel in New York with a telephone in every room, boasted a ballroom, several restaurants, a Chinese tearoom, a Turkish bath, a grillroom with terra-cotta murals, and a hospital with its own surgical and medical staff. It was more modern than the Knickerbocker, more opulent than the St. Regis, more profitable than the Plaza, and more fashionable than the Waldorf. In short, the Hotel McAlpin could claim to be among the leading hotels in the city.
A bellhop accompanied Harry Thaw and Fred Gump to the eighteenth floor. Their apartment, set apart from its neighbors by its location at the far end of the building, was decorated in the art nouveau style and contained a large sitting room, several bedrooms, two bathrooms, and a parlor. Gump had spent hours earlier that day traveling on the train—he was exhausted—and he readily accepted Thaw’s suggestion that he take a bath before retiring.
Half an hour later, as Gump stepped naked from the bath, the bathroom door opened unexpectedly. Thaw stood in the doorway, holding a ba
throbe in his left hand. Gump reached for the robe and Thaw suddenly attacked, beating him across his shoulders with a whip. Gump fought back, striking his assailant with his fists, trying desperately to free himself, but Thaw had the advantage of surprise.
“You are my slave now,” Thaw cried triumphantly, dragging his victim into the sitting room, forcing him to his knees, and continuing to beat him with the whip. “You will submit to me, won’t you?”
Gump pleaded with Thaw to stop, and the whipping ended as suddenly as it had begun. Thaw, holding the whip high above his head, as if to strike again, ordered Gump to swear always to be his slave and to obey his commands.
Thaw, satisfied that he had beaten his victim into submission, eventually went to bed; but Gump, terrified that Thaw would attack a second time, remained awake throughout the night. On one occasion, around two o’clock, he silently tiptoed to the door leading to the hallway, hoping to escape while Thaw slept, but the door was locked and the key was nowhere to be found.
Only the next morning, after breakfast, did Gump manage to slip away. He knew no one in New York, and his only thought was to get out of the city as quickly as possible. The train for Kansas City left Pennsylvania Station at midday, and that evening Gump arrived home and described his ordeal to his parents, showing them the welts on his shoulders and torso.2
His father acted quickly, arranging for a lawyer, Frank Walsh, to return with Gump to New York to file a complaint with Edward Swann, the Manhattan district attorney. Swann was also quick to respond, arranging for a photographer to take pictures of Gump’s wounds and sending his detectives to the Hotel McAlpin to investigate.