“Frail Cause of the Tragedy:” Evelyn Nesbit Blamed for Murder and Insanity

Evelyn Nesbit, 1900. Library of Congress, LC-DIG-ppmsca-12056

Evelyn Nesbit willingly shared her face with the world at the turn of the Twentieth Century. As a supermodel, she graced magazine covers and promoted products from soap to sewing machines. When her husband killed the man who raped her, she reluctantly shared her story with the world to defend his action. Nesbit felt this exposure much more acutely than she had previous publicity. Journalist Nixola Greeley-Smith labeled Nesbit the “frail cause of the tragedy.”

Burr-McIntosh Monthly (Feb. 1905).

Nesbit posed for hundreds of photographs and portraits before she reached the age of eighteen. Fans purchased her image on postcards, in magazine spreads, and on canvas; paintings were displayed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. Artist Charles Dana Gibson used Nesbit as the model for his Eternal Question woman and the larger Gibson Girl look it embodied. Lucy Maud Montgomery pinned Nesbit’s photo to her wall and based her famous character Anne of Green Gables on the image. Advertisers printed her face on beer trays, fans, tobacco cards, and calendars. Admirers sent her love letters, flowers, and money. Millionaires proposed and finally in 1905 she married Harry Thaw, heir to a coal fortune.

Woman: The Eternal Question by Charles Dana Gibson, 1901.

Nesbit abandoned modeling and her fledgling stage career when she wed, but her husband dragged her into the public eye more than ever before. Nesbit confided to Thaw before they married that she had been raped when she was 16. Thaw went through with the wedding and in 1906 murdered the villain, famous architect Stanford White, in front of hundreds of people. Nesbit testified in court about the rape to further Thaw’s legal defense that he killed White to avenge his wife’s honor. She also endured a multi-day cross examination by the prosecuting attorney, who was determined to expose her as immoral and unworthy of such a chivalrous act partly because Nesbit had continued a relationship with White even after he drugged and assaulted her. She also testified about White’s decadence, including free-flowing champagne, a red velvet swing, and a bedroom with mirrors covering the walls and ceiling. She said the court experience made her feel “stripped and naked and defenseless.”

Tonopah (NV) Bonanza, Feb. 9, 1907.

Everyone obsessed about the murder and trial, with Nesbit as the central character. Edison Studio released Rooftop Murder a week after the event and other filmmakers followed. New Yorkers tried to push their way into the courtroom and rushed Nesbit when she emerged from testifying. Elizabeth Schwenning, seventeen-year old from Pennsylvania, apparently “lost her mind sympathizing” with Nesbit and ran away from home to try to reach her in New York. Hawkers offered for sale Nesbit postcards and even little red velvet swings. Businesses grabbed attention by using her name and in the example below, contrasting Nesbit with their customers.

Salt Lake (UT) Herald, Feb. 8, 1907.

Musicians published sheet music for songs dedicated to her with titles such as “Nesbit Waltz” and “Sprinkle Me with Kisses,” publishing her photo on the cover. Authors rushed books into print. Poet Judd Mortimer Lewis wrote a poem that predicted that the jury would acquit Thaw because of Nesbit’s beauty. “Oh, Evelyn Nesbit Thaw, while lawyers jaw and jaw, and while they rant and saw the air, the jury sees that you are fair.” He concluded with “Thaw sits there, but they don’t see him, you are the whole entrancing show. And—as he’s yours—they’ll let him go.”

Times Dispatch (Richmond, VI), Jan. 28, 1907.

Newspapers across the country printed Nesbit’s testimony verbatim. Americans could now not only look on the beautiful face of Nesbit but debate, evaluate, sympathize, criticize, and speculate on her life and character. Charles Hughes, editor of the Alienist and Neurologist, argued that Nesbit lied on the witness stand since a woman never tells the truth about her “erotic life and relations” and because she had good reason to do so, namely to save her husband from execution. Congregational Minister Frank Smith however found, for an article in the Advance, that those operating barbershops, drugstores, and other gathering places in Chicago heard a nearly unanimous public voice that believed Nesbit’s story. Some writers used the occasion of the trial to publicize the fate of many youth seduced or assaulted. Many others blamed Nesbit’s widowed mother for failing to protect her and for exposing her to the life of a model and actress.

Evelyn Nesbit, 1913. Library of Congress, LC-DIG-ggbain-13972

Nesbit, in contrast, never seemed to blame her mother. She published her story in 1914 and admitted that becoming so famous at a very young age was probably harmful. Nesbit found herself shunning the “commonplace—a leisure that is entirely for those folk who get a good amount of placid joy in finding things as they expect them, and expect very little.” She argued, however, that she posed and acted simply for the money her family desperately needed and realized that “freakish notoriety was not desirable from any point of view.” Nesbit kindled her celebrity for decades with this mixture of disdain for publicity and need for excitement as well as money (in 1915 she divorced Thaw, who was found not guilty due to insanity). She acted on stage and in films, danced, operated a tea room, created pottery, and wrote another memoir. Nesbit remained best known however as the girl on the red velvet swing who caused one man to die and another to go insane.

“Evelyn Thaw Dodging a Camera, White Plains” Library of Congress, LC-DIG-ggbain-04049

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Sources and Further Exploration

Atwell, Benjamin H. The Great Harry Thaw Case or A Woman’s Sacrifice. Chicago: Laird and Lee, 1907. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=nnc2.ark:/13960/t5hb10d01&view=1up&seq=9

“Editorial.” Alienist and Neurologist 28 (Nov. 1907): 510. https://www.google.com/books/edition/Alienist_and_Neurologist/ni1YAAAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=%22evelyn+nesbit%22&pg=PA245&printsec=frontcover

“Evelyn Nesbit Thaw on the Stand.” Fargo (ND) Forum and Daily Republican, Feb. 7, 1907. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn85042224/1907-02-07/ed-1/seq-1/#date1=1907&sort=date&date2=1907&searchType=advanced&language=&sequence=0&index=16&words=Evelyn+Nesbit&proxdistance=5&rows=20&ortext=&proxtext=&phrasetext=evelyn+nesbit&andtext=&dateFilterType=yearRange&page=13

“Girl Crazed by Reading about the Thaw Trial.” Times Dispatch (Richmond, VI), Feb. 22, 1907. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn85038615/1907-02-22/ed-1/seq-2/#date1=1907&sort=date&date2=1907&searchType=advanced&language=&sequence=0&index=6&words=Evelyn+Nesbit&proxdistance=5&rows=20&ortext=&proxtext=&phrasetext=evelyn+nesbit&andtext=&dateFilterType=yearRange&page=41

Greeley-Smith, Nixola. “Thaw and his Family Scrutinize Faces of Jurors, Looking for a Sign of Hope, As Lawyer Delmas Pleads for his Life.” Evening World (NY), April 9, 1907. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030193/1907-04-09/ed-1/seq-3/#date1=1907&sort=date&date2=1907&searchType=advanced&language=&sequence=0&index=5&words=GreeleySmith+Nixola&proxdistance=5&rows=20&ortext=&proxtext=&phrasetext=nixola+greeley-smith&andtext=&dateFilterType=yearRange&page=1

Lewis, Judd Mortimer. “The Blind Goddess.” Cairo (IL) Bulletin, Feb. 27, 1907. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn93055779/1907-02-20/ed-1/seq-2/#date1=1907&sort=date&date2=1907&searchType=advanced&language=&sequence=0&index=11&words=Evelyn+Nesbit&proxdistance=5&rows=20&ortext=&proxtext=&phrasetext=evelyn+nesbit&andtext=&dateFilterType=yearRange&page=36

Thaw, Evelyn Nesbit. The Story of My Life. London: J. Long, 1914.

Uruburu, Paula. American Eve: Evelyn Nesbit, Stanford White, the Birth of the “It” Girl, and the Crime of the Century. New York: Penguin Books, 2008.

Williams, Samuel. “Reporting the Great Murder Trial.” Pearson’s Magazine 17 (April 1907): 455-462. https://www.google.com/books/edition/Pearson_s_Magazine/4rIRAAAAYAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=%22evelyn+nesbit%22&pg=PA462&printsec=frontcover