Nesbit

The southern Missourian
January 5, 1926

Evelyn Thaw Wanted to Die; Takes Poison
... Chicago, January 5 - (AP) - Evelyn Nesbitt Thaw attempted suicide today by drinking 6 ounces of a powerful disinfectant and this afternoon her condition became serious. Her physicians where forced to administer heart stimulants but they held out some hope for recovery..
... Evelyn said this afternoon, through her physician, that "she took the poison because she was feeling bad and wanted to die."
... The physician added his belief that Miss Nesbitt would recover.

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St. Petersburg Times
March 2, 1945

WALTER WINCHELL
Letter from Evelyn Nesbitt Thaw
... The writer of the letter below was the Belle of New York when she was a show girl almost 4 decades ago. Evelyn Nesbitt was one of the most beautiful girls in the world. Her husband, Harry Kendall Thaw, a multi-millionaire, shot and killed Stanford White, a famous architect, at Madison Square Garden, when it was located at Madison Square (24th St.), Manhattan. Thaw was saved from the electric chair when he was adjudged insane at the time of the killing. This is the first time, we believe, she has ever written to a newspaperman about any part of it.
... Dear Walter Winchell: you have always been one of the newspapermen who have dealt justly with me, that is why I am writing you this letter.
... "Yesterday another Thaw case article appeared in a NY paper and the terrible untruths it contains regarding me and my dead mother are so monstrous that I am just about frantic.
... "One man wrote a book about Stanford White in which he tries his best to blame John Barrymore for White's offense against me. And in yesterday's story it is strongly hinted James A Garland might be a guilty party.
... "The truth is I met Barrymore long after I knew White and, as Jack always told people, I was the only girl who refused to marry him.
... "The yachting party aboard Garland's steam yacht was a Sunday trip to West Point and there were other guests. I did not like Mr. Garland and only saw him a few times.
... "The affair with White did not begin in the Madison Square Garden Tower. It happened in one of his secret hide-outs on W. 24th St., where he had superbly decorated two floors over the rear of Schwartz's toy shop. That was the locale of his famous red velvet swing and the room of mirrors.
... "On my death bed-in my last moments on earth I could not tell you any different, for this is the truth.
... "Every reporter who covered the Thaw trials-men like Irvin S Cobb, Frank O'Malley, Charlie Somerville, etc., heard the DA apologize to me in open court during the second trial, for he had learned much meanwhile about White and the 24th St. place from a cleaning woman.
... "White was a brilliant architect, but like many a great man-there was another side to his character.
... "I never said I drank a glass of champagne and immediately lost consciousness." I had never had champagne before and a pint of it made me dizzy and I passed out as the saying goes. I've seen people not used to alcohol get quite tight on two cocktails.
... "After my marriage Thaw exacted a solemn promise from me that any time I saw White I should tell him-and that is why I gave him the note in Martin's.
... "My much maligned mother never owned a diamond or jewels in all her life. She was a home body-incapable of the mercenary machinations of which some lawyers thought fit to accuse her in those when I was between 15 and 16 years-young girls new little or nothing about sex and we even thought smoking a cigarette practically a crime.
... "As to Thaw's mental condition-one of the relatives told me mother Thaw- while carrying Harry- had accidentally rolled over on and smothered her first child- in her sleep. She thereafter suffered brain fever. If true- this might account for a great deal.
... "And I was never in the 'Floradora Sextette.'
"Sincerely, EVELYN NESBITT."

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Lodi News Sentinel
January 16, 1967

'Gibson Girl' Evelyn Nesbitt Thaw Dies
... SANTA MONICA, CALIFORNIA (UPI)-Evelyn Nesbitt Thaw, "the world's most beautiful girl," and central figure in New York cabaret society's most sensational murder trial 60 years ago, is dead.
... The onetime showgirl who was a model for artist Charles Dana Gibson, originator of the celebrated "Gibson Girl," died Tuesday at a convalescent home in this Los Angeles suburb. She was 81.
... A requiem mass will be said for her at St. Martin of Tours in nearby Brentwood Thursday at 9 AM. Internment will be at Holy Cross, Cemetery in Inglewood, California.
... Mrs. Thaw lived in a limbo of obscurity in her declining years - a sharp contrast to the days which the name Evelyn Nesbitt flashed on the marquees of Broadway and European capitals.
... That name made headlines of a different sort on the night of June 25, 1906, when her millionaire husband, Harry K Thaw shot and killed architect Stanford White in full view of bejeweled society belles and their escorts in white ties and tails, at the rooftop supper club in the old Madison Square Garden in the heart of Manhattan.
... Thaw later claimed he shot White because his wife, 20 at the time, confessed intimacies with White which she said took place before her marriage to the millionaire.
... In two sensational trials, Mrs. Thaw testified in her husband's behalf but she once said "White was the only man I ever loved."
... The first trial resulted in a hung jury. Thaw was acquitted in the second trial but was committed to a sanitarium as insane. He died in 1947.
... The case was hashed and rehased in Sunday supplements for years and by more sophisticated magazines in recent days.
... The trials received wide and flamboyant press coverage in the style of the day.
... Famed author Irvin S Cobb covered the story for the old New York World and described Mrs. Thaw as "the most exquisitely lovely human being ever looked at."
... Her charms, he said, included "A head that sat on her flawless throat as a lily on its stem, eyes that were the color of blue-brown pansies, and the size of half-dollars... a mouth made of rumpled rose petals..."
... She appeared at the trial dressed in a pleated-skirt and middle blouse with a large bow at the throat.
... During a period of 11 weeks in 1907, the case boosted the circulation of New York newspapers by 100,000 readers a day, it was said.
... Evelyn Nesbitt was born on Christmas Day, 1884 near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
... At the age of 16, she went to New York and became an artist's model and stage dancer.
... After the murder trials, she toured Europe with a dancing troupe and bore a son, Russell. Thaw denied paternity but Mrs. Thaw said the child was his. They were divorced in 1916.
.... Mrs. Thaw married her dancing partner, Virgil Montani, in 1918. They were divorced in 1933.
... During the 1930s she became a burlesque dancer, still clinging to her old glamour but she came on hard times. Twice, according to newspaper reports, she attempted suicide.

" Made It Ma... Top - O' - The - World! "